Sergei Mironov shares his memories

CHILDHOOD

Sergei Mironov spent his childhood and school years inSt. Petersburg, in the outskirts of former Tsarskoye Selo. His address was 30,Krasnaya Artilleriya street. "The expression 'to go to the city' in our suburb outskirts did not mean to go toLeningrad, though it seems logical as the town ofPushkinisLeningrad's suburb. Instead this expression meant to go to the center of Pushkin. So you can see that the district I lived in was indeed an outskirt. And it was actually an advantage, for we were city children who had all the benefits of living in the country", - recalls Sergei Mironov.

He used to live like any other soviet child in the 1960s. "Each summer all the parents from our apartment building took turns in providing cultural entertainment for all the children of our building. They took us on cultural trips to museums or to the river Popovka, and it was during those trips that I saw petrified remains for the first time, and geology became my life long passion", - Sergei Mironov says. Soon the entire room where he lived with his parents was filled with limps of rocks. "My mother scolded me and tried to throw the rocks away, but I was against it".

Sergei Mironov used to live in a communal apartment, which was quite common in those days. (A communal apartment is usually a large apartment that belonged to some merchant or professor before the revolution, in soviet time all the rooms in such apartments were divided into smaller ones and each small room was occupied by a person or a family; the people living in a communal apartment shared kitchen and other facilities) "We had a tight living, as many people did those days, but I have only good memories of my childhood", - Sergei Mironov says.

"We used to prepare and perform some plays, played a huge number of games, and I guess the names of those games will mean nothing to present-day children. For example, we played 'rhombi', 'twelve sticks', 'Cossacks and bandits' (I believe children still play this one). All the time we played war, pioneer ball and other games. When it was raining outside we used to sit in the stairwell and play with candy wraps, and each of us had his or her own collection of those wraps".

"There were many boys in our apartment building, many of them were the same age as I was and some of them were my classmates, but there were five of us who formed a group and always played together. Soon we decided to call ourselves 'Timurovtsy' (children who set their goal to do good deeds and help everywhere their help is needed; the movement started due to children's book titled 'Timur and his team'). During summer vacation we even tried to invent some kind of uniform to wear, and we had our team song, and of course we had to build our headquarters. And we did it. And I still know how to carpenter, to make a roof and a stove and to put glass in window panes. I must say I used these skills quite often later".

When Sergei Mironov and his sister Marina were little, they used to spend summers at their grandparents' house inNovgorodregion. Sergei Mironov recalls: "My grandma, Darya Varlamova, was an amazing person. I still remember her tenderness and care. She tricked me into drinking milk this way: she'd take a glass, fill it with raspberries and then pour milk onto them. Then she'd say, 'Seryon'ka, come eat raspberries'. So I sat down and ate the raspberries with a spoon. And each time she would put less berries and more milk in my glass, and soon I didn't mind drinking milk at all. Now I have three grandchildren of my own, but I still remember my grandmother's education techniques. And I still believe that love and care is the best way to grow a child into a good person".