This was filmed out of melancholy, it just so happened. My father died in 1990, and I made it to the funeral just in time for the funeral, almost missing the ceremony. From Novaya Zemlya, on Vice-Admiral Zolotukhin's plane (for which I bow deeply to him every time), at the request of his academy classmate, a corporal relative of mine, I asked for help flying from NZ to the funeral of a sailor and a Novaya Zemlya resident (my father, mother, sister, and so on had all been there at different times). And he didn't refuse. It was a difficult time; just in November 1989, the primary water lifting station burned down, and for various reasons, the valves were shut off—probably a survival instinct among sailors—the intercompartment bulkheads are sealed shut. This backfired—frozen water ruptured all the water pipes. November marks the beginning of the polar night—dead black as a black man's, the beginning of real bad weather—when one storm after another comes crashing down, the gaps between them shorter than their duration. Everything happened—I don't want to recount it here—it's all been described and laid out where necessary. We melted snow, filtered water, but most importantly, there was no sewage system! To paraphrase—he lived through it, let alone in the circus; he only laughs half the time. Well, we survived and fought, okay. Some of the women managed to evacuate on the icebreaker Arktika, but it was impossible to evacuate by ship—the weather was terrible. Water for technical needs (to fill the stills for the transmitters)—even that was a real struggle—everything from the fire truck to our Ural truck got stuck—were pulled out of the snow with tractors hitched to each other, and water was hauled in buckets. You can imagine the scene. At home, too, but the water smelled of kerosene; they brought in whatever they could. My father died on April 2nd, but they somehow leaked a telegram—somewhere between the 4th and Thursday, the time of the funeral—and decided it was April 4th. The Aporela was already showing some breaks in the weather—a polar day, so it wasn't all that bad. But the problem wasn't fixed; people were welding plastic pipes in tents in the Arctic (!) in winds so strong that they blew away both the tent and the welder, and the polyethylene wouldn't warm up. They tried to use water from Gavrilov Bay, but the silt levels there were terrible, and the sewage was draining along the terrain, replenishing the bay's flora and fauna. Filters and joints instantly clogged. So they pulled water from karst drinking lakes. Zolotukhin was then the commander of unit 31100—in charge of the test site's MTS management; later he became the test site commander. Well, his Tu-26 or AN-26 was there, I can't remember. I think it was a Tu-2. It's an hour and a half to Arkhara and back. I arrived in time, saw him off, and my father's friend, an old arctic wolf and sailor, Igor Stepanovich Stepanov (captain-mentor), a seasoned veteran, arrived for nine days. He's a friend of mine since before the war, served in a penal battalion. I met Stepanych and his wife, we walked past, and it was time for us to go to Moscow with my sister and her husband, so that we could get home to Novaya Zemlya from Astatfyevo (military airfield) on a military plane. I left my wife and son behind, but my wife returned in December and we finally left—my mother was left alone, there was no choice. We arrived home by train, four hours late, and as soon as we got on board, the bell rang. Stepanych bent over to adjust his pillow in the train and collapsed in front of my wife and my brother, who was seeing him off. That's it. Friend followed friend. I'll skip the details—I sat in Arkhar for 3-4 days, as usual, depending on the weather. I arrived back and felt sick. Alone, my father, Stepanich—the whole story is sad. So I took a selfie out of sheer boredom. I don't know what I was thinking. That's the story. The rest, as is customary in a collage, I already included a couple of days ago.
P.S....where did the author find Rodchenkov?)))
Well, we survived and fought, okay. Some of the women managed to evacuate on the icebreaker Arktika, but it was impossible to evacuate by ship—the weather was terrible. Water for technical needs (to fill the stills for the transmitters)—even that was a real struggle—everything from the fire truck to our Ural truck got stuck—were pulled out of the snow with tractors hitched to each other, and water was hauled in buckets. You can imagine the scene. At home, too, but the water smelled of kerosene; they brought in whatever they could. My father died on April 2nd, but they somehow leaked a telegram—somewhere between the 4th and Thursday, the time of the funeral—and decided it was April 4th. The Aporela was already showing some breaks in the weather—a polar day, so it wasn't all that bad. But the problem wasn't fixed; people were welding plastic pipes in tents in the Arctic (!) in winds so strong that they blew away both the tent and the welder, and the polyethylene wouldn't warm up. They tried to use water from Gavrilov Bay, but the silt levels there were terrible, and the sewage was draining along the terrain, replenishing the bay's flora and fauna. Filters and joints instantly clogged. So they pulled water from karst drinking lakes. Zolotukhin was then the commander of unit 31100—in charge of the test site's MTS management; later he became the test site commander. Well, his Tu-26 or AN-26 was there, I can't remember. I think it was a Tu-2. It's an hour and a half to Arkhara and back. I arrived in time, saw him off, and my father's friend, an old arctic wolf and sailor, Igor Stepanovich Stepanov (captain-mentor), a seasoned veteran, arrived for nine days. He's a friend of mine since before the war, served in a penal battalion. I met Stepanych and his wife, we walked past, and it was time for us to go to Moscow with my sister and her husband, so that we could get home to Novaya Zemlya from Astatfyevo (military airfield) on a military plane. I left my wife and son behind, but my wife returned in December and we finally left—my mother was left alone, there was no choice. We arrived home by train, four hours late, and as soon as we got on board, the bell rang. Stepanych bent over to adjust his pillow in the train and collapsed in front of my wife and my brother, who was seeing him off. That's it. Friend followed friend. I'll skip the details—I sat in Arkhar for 3-4 days, as usual, depending on the weather. I arrived back and felt sick. Alone, my father, Stepanich—the whole story is sad. So I took a selfie out of sheer boredom. I don't know what I was thinking. That's the story. The rest, as is customary in a collage, I already included a couple of days ago.