My great portfolio, definitely, had an effect, and here we together with the father almost faint with joy, finding our name on the coveted list of enrolled applicants. In honor of such a case, my father took me to the restaurant "Central", near the main building of the university, and I, for the first time in my life, grown up drinking vodka with my father, sitting in a posh restaurant and getting something new for me, hitherto Untested, "zhlobskoe" pleasure from lackey servility of the waiter.
The next day my grandmother made a festive family banquet in honor of my admission to the university. God, how I loved these family banquets! Our heroic grandfather, a front-line soldier, a KGB colonel in reserve Vasily Fedorovich Sokolov, wore his military medals and medals and appeared to the festive table as a deity from Olympus.
Yes, my grandfather Vasily Fedorovich had an outstanding military past, which, of course, could become the theme of a separate military - patriotic narrative: after a serious injury and a concussion in battles for Moscow in December 1941, he was transferred for further service in military counterintelligence " SMERSH "(" Death to Spies "), where during the period from 1942 to 1945 inclusive actively fought with spies and saboteurs of various stripes, as well as suppressed the bloody uprising of" Bandera "in Western Ukraine.
Grandfather was always very stingy for the details of that terrible war. From childhood, I only remember his shocking story about how the "Bandera", who, as you know, never voluntarily surrendered to the "Chekists" before launching a bullet in his temple, from some special gangster courage ( They say that even after death, nothing worthy of this "filthy Moskali"!) Shot themselves in the left hand, where almost everyone had a personal watch - a gift from the Wehrmacht "to the faithful sons and true liberators of Ukraine").
After a short "heroic" foreplay of the grandfather - the order-bearer, the grandmother solemnly placed on the table a decanter, like water in a mountain stream, with chilled vodka of her own preparation (she absolutely did not trust the factory vodka, preparing an exclusive home drink from the purest, 90-degree, medical Alcohol); The table was bursting with all sorts of phenomena, from which I have with Zhenya (Zhenya is my younger cousin with whom we grew up in the family as brothers), just "drooling" in anticipation of the upcoming "royal meal." Soon the whole family "beau monde" is important at the table, and the traditional family "show" begins, which I, with almost "sadistic" impatience, expect all evening - a stormy family debate about the role of Stalin's personality in History.
The tradition of festive banquets in our family begins already from the sixties of the last century, when Aunt Vitya's own sister, Victoria Vikentievna, was still alive. The father of his grandmother and aunt Vitya - Vikenty Pavlovich - was a Polish revolutionary, exiled in 1905 by the tsarist regime to the Siberian city of Tomsk, from where, in fact, the entire lineage of our mothers originates. In fact, her grandmother's name was Helen, therefore, until she came of age she passed Galina, and only with the receipt of a passport at the age of 18 began to be called Elena. Unfortunately, the woman Vitya did not have her own children, so she poured all her unrealized maternal tenderness onto me and Zhenya. Is it any wonder that my brother and I always fled with enthusiasm, we hurried to visit my aunt Vitya, where we were caressed, fed all sorts of "delicacies", presented with generous gifts.
Only my aunt Vitya and my grandmother could cook such amazing Polish dishes as "begos" (in Altai it is called "bigus") - stew from fresh cabbage with smoked sausage and pork ribs; Duck in apples and salad with fish balls and prunes! Everything is so tasty, and there are so many, too many on the table, that my father, who always had a hungry military childhood before his eyes, always had a terrible indigestion after the banquet. The first ideological attack, traditionally, begins with Aunt Rita. She recently graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Sverdlovsk State University and with all the fibers of her soul hates Stalin's "personality cult". Grandfather, on the contrary, was an ardent Stalinist; His father always treated the so-called moderate opposition of the "waverers", from time to time changing his political views on the History of Russia, so that the "show" promises to be very bright and memorable! In vain, the grandmother before the start of the banquet from all its participants takes a "subscription" about not "getting" grandfather - after the first glass of vodka, everything repeats with enviable constancy.
"Daddy, I'm telling you - Stalin was a real demonic person, a match for Hitler! Hitler and Stalin are "two boots - a pair". What can I say? Even Hitler, a fascist, did not mock his people as Stalin did! "" You understand a lot, little fellow! - began to start a grandfather. - Do you know what a terry counter-revolution flourished in the late 1930s? Yes, if Stalin did not start repression, "kirdyk" would have come to the country! "
"No, Dad, you're wrong," Father entered into a dispute. - Here Uncle Sergei, for example, says: what Stalin did in the army is a real sabotage. Interrupting the whole army commander on the eve of the war is just a complete insanity! "" Many of your uncle Seryozha - a penal battalion - understands (his father's uncle, being a fighter pilot, was captured in German at the very beginning of the war, and after escaping from the camp - Battalion, and in the assault of his company, specially assembled from the
