Do I remember the August Putsch? Yes. Vividly. Early morning Monday, 19 August 1991, I heard the news on the radio. The classical music followed. On the telly, interminable Swan Lake, just like when Brezhnev (later: Andropov) died. I can’t stand Swan Lake ever since.
I was working on my Ph.D. thesis then. Just a couple weeks before the putsch, I did a presentation at the International Conference on Cytochrome P450 hosted by my institute. Some guys were interested and there was even talk of a postdoc stint somewhere in the States or Japan. The future looked bright.
I took a suburban train to Moscow. As I was walking from Park Kultury towards my lab, I saw the tanks on the streets: not-so-gentle reminder what country I was living in. This latter circumstance was about to change in two days though. Or so we thought.
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