Tashkent in winter today is nothing like it was 20–30 years ago or earlier. Winter weather now is closer to autumn or spring. From my childhood — before school and during my school years in the 1960s–1970s — I remember above all cold winters with deep snow that stayed on the ground for a long… Read More »
It took me thirty-five years to recover from the autumn smells that haunt me — the smells I associate with cotton harvesting and Soviet cotton campaigns in Uzbekistan. I picked cotton as a student at one of Tashkent’s universities in 1979, 1980, and 1981, living for at least a month on wooden bunks in field… Read More »
Recently, I realized when I missed my chance to become rich — in August 1991, when I happened to be on that very square in Moscow, at that very hour, just a few dozen meters away from the future president of Russia. I was near the tank, but didn’t climb up I saw Yeltsin being… Read More »