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I had just received your letter and immediately decided to write a reply. To tell you the truth, I don't believe your suppositions concerning our fate, not in regard to a long trip awaiting us, but about us not having to deal with Germans. I don't know if the fact that after the New Year they're going to change us to summer uniforms - take away valenki, sheepskin jackets, etc. - can serve as a proof of that. It's possible and logical to suspect that in Yugoslavia or beyond Vistula they are not needed. But all these are only suppositions and thoughts - a negative trait in a soldier. Almost always it happens not as you reckoned. In short: if we live - we'll find out. And life is not too bad. The grub is extremely presentable, conditions - not bad.

I started studying radio technology. You know, the more I deal with this thingie, the more I like it. Not a bad line of work, worth some attention and useful at that. What do you think? I have a favor to ask. If you can get any literature on electrical or radio technology, please send a package. You could get it in Moscow, but not here. Of course, when selecting aim for a student in a radio department of the Moscow Bauman Institute of Communications, and not a Master or Doctor in Physics and Mathematics. Approximately. And hopefully, not just a description of principal circuits, but practical calculations of various circuit details, etc. And just when I get money, I'll send it to you. Please.

As they say: "There's time for work, and an hour for play". So I use this hour for naughty things, as you would say. I'm sick. Sick of being a good boy all the time. I roam around visiting sluts (yes, yes, exactly that) and spend my free time in their company *, having one little vulgar thought in my mind, - how would I know, maybe they'll do me in somewhere, it would be a pity to die without having experienced certain things. I know it's trivial, but to hell with it. Please don't think that I'm loosing it, no. I feel rather sturdy. In this case we, four Sergeant Majors, instructors from the radio school **, behave like Paul Baumer and his friends. Remember their visits to cheap bars and making a drunkard of Tjaden?

A little about my friends. One of the four hasn't finished his 5th year at Rostov Railway Institute. Literate, well developed, intelligent lad. The second one - a civilian radio operator in the past, from the Far East Merchant Marine, the third is about the same - a teacher having just graduated from a pedagogical institute, Tatar by nationality, but a very well-read and literate man, and me. You know me.

The work at the school is interesting. I like it. The most important thing - it's beneficial for yourself. You prepare to teach your classes, and get something for yourself out of it, and you have to prepare well, otherwise you'll get into an awkward position. There are people with education better than mine among the students, so I can't just lie my way out if I don't know something. I'll wrap up for now. Until the next letter. Write me about how you celebrated the New Year. I'm sending a photo. The picture was taken here. I'm writing, by the way, on Norwegian paper, and sending the letter in a Kirkiness envelope. So - I shake your hand. Your Yu.K. 31.12.44 (December 31, 1944)

Comments by Yuri Koriakin

* Yes, well, but this is bravado. This is boyish bravado. So we drank a little, squeezed them. They were afraid and squealed. We could've raped them and nothing would've come of it, but when she screams, tries to tear loose, cries, I couldn't do it like that.

** In January '45 in Vologda, where our regiment was transferred, the army school for radio operators was organized. In those times my 9 grades of education were considered as not bad, because sometimes we got illiterate people, or those who'd seen a railroad for the first time. It's not an exaggeration - a commander escorting a group of such recruits told us that he was barely able to drive them into the train cars. Once we got some tangerines as a gift, but there were less of them than people in the squad, as so we organized a contest: for that, we were blindfolded, given a pair of scissors, and the tangerines were each hanging by a thread a meter away. You had to blindly cut the thread. So one guy from Buriatia cut one off and asks: "How are you supposed to eat it?". And the soldiers suggested him: "First eat the skin from the surface, and then, if you feel like it, you can eat what's inside." He bit it like an apple and said: "That's also tasty." That's how he ate it. So, I was a radio operator with a pretty impressive experience, that's why I was sent to this school as an instructor. That's where I lectured and conducted classes. The classes weren't long - 2-3 weeks.

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