Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless. Vlad Rekovski
from the words of my mother’s sister, aunt Mina.) The Rekovskys family had five children at that time, my mother was born after the war, in 1947. Just imagine: as soon as the family settled down, my grandfather Alexander Rekovsky (born on July 21, 1909) was taken into the labor army, grandmother Ekaterina (born on March 9, 1911) was also taken into the labor army, and a little later, three months later, the children were left alone. The older sister Mina, who was twelve at the time, took full responsibility for the younger sisters. The sisters were between two and six years old. Mina went from door to door, begged, got food and warm clothes, wandered through the garbage dumps, collected what could still be used for food, and, if possible, worked as a nanny. The two youngest sisters could not overcome the hardships of hunger and died one after another during the first year after moving to Novosibirsk.
Time passed and the situation got worse. Mina found out the address of the camp where her father worked and wrote him the following letter: “Our beloved daddy, we live in our last breath. Our two little sisters starved to death three months ago, and now it’s our turn. Come to us as soon as possible, otherwise we may not wait for you! Your daughter Mina”.
When my grandfather received this letter, only one person could help him in this situation. This was one of the camp officers with the rank of captain. After the main working day, the grandfather helped the family of this officer, who lived on the territory of the labor camp, – he prepared firewood for them. In the evening, grandfather brought firewood to their house and stoked the stove. And so, he once again fired up the stove and handed this letter to the officer’s wife with words of help and asked to give him the opportunity to go to Novosibirsk to bring his children. It was unlikely, but he nevertheless hoped very much: he had no other opportunity to get out of the camp, even for a couple of days.
And the very next day, my grandfather received a three-day leave of absence from the camp director. These were the most cherished three days in his entire life!
He received two cans of stew, a loaf of bread and a little sugar on the way from the officer’s wife. My grandfather returned to the camp three days later and brought with him three thinner, exhausted, but infinitely happy daughters. My grandfather’s luck set a good example for other fathers who worked in this labor camp. They began to intercede for the children before the leadership of the colony and to bring them from dugouts near Novosibirsk, left not of their own free will.
The year 1945 came, my grandmother returned from the labor camp, and the Rekovskys family moved to Novosibirsk. Despite the fact that they did not have the right to leave this area for several more years, they were happy that they were together after four such difficult years.
In 1947, my mother, Lydia Aleksandrovna Rekovskaya, was born. The Rekovsky family continued to live in Novosibirsk, since the regime established by Lavrentiy Beria after the end of World War II did not allow the Germans to leave the regions where they were deported in 1941. Only in 1954, after Beria’s death, did German families receive passports. Now they, like all free people, could freely move around the territory of the USSR. After so many years of hardship and the cold of the north, the Rekovskys decided to leave for the union Republic of Kyrgyzstan, in the city of Frunze, now Bishkek. There they built a one-story house with snow-white walls, in which there was a garden planted with all kinds of fruit trees that grew only in this strip. In the seventies and eighties, my family and I came to them every summer from the Urals on vacation to eat fruit and homemade sweet German krebel, which my grandmother so willingly baked.
I remember very well this kind and very lively granny, who in her life never spoke Russian, but only spoke German with the dialect of the Volga region, the so-called Plattdeutsch. In the summer after work, my grandfather was constantly swarming in the garden, preparing dried fruits, soaked watermelons and preparing his signature plum wine. It was their new, calm and measured world.
Transfer to the city of Miass. Temporary solution
So, I made the final decision to go to Germany, abandoned plans to organize a pasta factory and moved with my wife from Yekaterinburg to Miass, continuing to engage in wholesale trade. In addition, before leaving for Germany, I decided to get a job at the Ural Automobile Plant (UralAZ), in the commercial service. In the nineties, almost all enterprises in the country worked without money supply and barely kept themselves afloat. The primary task for any enterprise at that time was to close its debts for the supply of raw materials and the necessary energy resources for production, and for this they used the so-called “offset” scheme. I went to work in such a unit, which is responsible for all offsets at the enterprise, and which called the “department of commercial services”. There were seven of us. For a relatively short period of work in the department, in addition to small contracts, I managed to conclude one large contract with our customer from Khanty-Mansiysk for 1 billion 100 million rubles and send it to our suppliers of components through Ural- and Mostransgaz. I also gained a huge and valuable experience of communicating with the general and commercial directors of the largest enterprises in Russia, and regular trips to enterprises of partners made me even more mobile, collected and sociable. After three months of work, I got a Volga-3110 service car with a driver. It was already a success. But the salary for this work was purely symbolic for me, and it was enough for me for about a week. My main income came from my commercial activities, which I carried out in parallel with my main job. For these purposes, I found a driver with a VAZ-2103 car and arranged it part-time as my personal driver. His name was Sergei. It was a partner, not just a driver. Sergei was in the indicated place on one my call always, at any time of the day or night. I could always rely on this person as myself. Sergey has always clearly fulfilled my tasks not only in our city, but also in Yekaterinburg, as well as in other regions. He did not drink or smoke, and, moreover, he could sleep little and not lose concentration on the roads. Here it is, the skill of an experienced person!
I will tell you about one interesting case that happened to us in Yekaterinburg.
When I arrived in Yekaterinburg, my friend Miroslav Nitkovsky called me (I changed his name and surname for several reasons), he worked in the department for combating economic crime and asked me about one service. We met with Miroslav, and he explained what exactly needs to be done. Someone was selling freight cars according to an ad posted in a newspaper in Yekaterinburg. We had to call the seller and make an appointment to inspect the goods after the fact, then clarify the price, and this task was completed.
The next day we did so. The seller made an appointment for us at the “Sorting” station, we arrived. The car had Chelyabinsk license plates, everything looks believable. We met. The seller in a suit, very intelligent, showed us the cars, we bargained a little more and parted on the fact that we would inform about our decision by phone in the evening. Of course, we didn’t call him. My friend only needed the car numbers to track them after they were sold and set off. A week later, the operation ended, the cars were arrested after the illegal sale. As it turned out, an employee of the Yekaterinburg railway administration was selling them. The big boss with stars on his shoulder straps invited Miroslav to his office, thanked him for the excellent work and signed a report on his promotion and assignment to him of the next rank. And the boss briefly added before Miroslav left the office: “Miroslav Mikhailovich, you bring this matter into my office. We will deal with this comrade further ourselves!” This is how that system worked in the nineties.
2018 year. India, Goa
Today is Saturday, November 11th. I am writing the book for the sixth day, immersing myself in my memories to such an extent that I think and scroll through all the events of past years constantly in order to choose the most important and interesting for the reader and write about it right away. I start thinking early in the morning, when I wake up and am still in bed; I think when I swim in the pool with my incredibly active daughter Vlada, when I walk and talk with my beloved wife Catherine. My thoughts are completely immersed in those past years.
Sunset