It happened somewhere circa 1983 (I was 10-11 years old). [My grandmother died in 1984.] The scene: Angren, Tashkent region, UzSSR (2 hours drive from Tashkent); it is an unknown small town (population 100 thousand people), of which there were many in the USSR.

It was summer. I was riding a scooter on the street – near our four-story brick house, where we had a 4-room apartment, but not in the yard, where the entrances were, but behind the house. These were the backyards, where no one really went... Suddenly, two aunts stopped me. One of them yelled something at me and took the scooter away. She started to leave and take the scooter with her. I didn't know what to do or how to react to what was happening: I had never been attacked before as a child, and I couldn't even understand what was happening and why.

I ran home, where my grandmother (Evgenia Ivanovna Golubko) was, and told her that my scooter had been stolen. My grandmother was born in 1916, i.e. she was about 70 years old. She went with me outside to the scene of the crime. Oddly enough, those ladies were standing there, for some reason they hadn't run away!.. Seeing them from afar, I started shouting: "Aha, I caught you!" The woman who had stolen the scooter looked back at us and laughed – or rather, she was neighing, with some kind of demonic laugh. Then they almost ran away – along with the scooter – back home.

We didn't get the scooter back, and we didn't catch the thieves. Then my grandmother “analyzed” what had happened, telling me: “First you have to catch it, and not shout that you ‘caught it’”. I remembered this lesson for the rest of my life: first you have to DO it, and then “bragging”, and not the other way around… (But this is a lyrical digression.)

Of course, over the years I forgot about this incident, but not completely; it remained in my memory quite clearly. In my opinion, that woman was even drunk. And her laugh was somehow mad, wild, depraved…

More than 20 years later, I suddenly found out WHO it was. These women were about 10-8 years older than me (i.e. born c. 1962-65). They were Julia MENSHOVA (Vera Alentova's daughter, for those who don't understand) - she was the one who stole the scooter, and Elena YAKOVLEVA (a famous actress from "Intergirl", who has many conflicts – including with Nikita Mikhalkov, Viktor Moskvin, Dmitry Pevtsov...) For the sake of fairness, I will emphasize: during the theft, only Menshova acted and spoke; Yakovleva was a silent witness, she stood almost behind Menshova. (Although, as I learned, Elena Yakovleva committed another burglary in our apartment during the same era, entering it with the keys to our apartment stolen somewhere. She stole 600 Soviet rubles; my mother received a salary of about 250-300 rubles/month at the newspaper. If Dmitry Pevtsov punched Yakovleva in the face, it was not in vain. She still deserves it, and even a prison term.)

I also learned the motives for this crime – very psychiatric. Somehow, for several years in a row, these future actresses from Moscow came to Angren in the summer (to visit Shevyakov and Prokhorov??). It turns out that Menshova was “developing” my cousin, who is about 10 years older than me (i.e. he was born c. 1961-62). In other words, she SEDUCED him (sexually, if it is unclear to anyone), wanted to live in his apartment (also a 4-room one; he only had his mother, my aunt, there) “as a wife”... She wanted to live there – and she did... My aunt fed her dinners – she knew how to cook Georgian cuisine; she told her some stories about her life. Menshova even claims that she had “love” with my cousin – imagine what kind of relative I had!

I don’t know the whole story, but it lasted from year to year. I haven't seen my cousin since 1990, I don't even know if he's alive (but Menshova and Alentova, like other ‘friends’ of my brother like Dima Malikov, Maxim Galkin, Viktor Moskvin, Tatyana Korolkova, etc. KNOW). My brother told me that Alentova WAS in Angren. Of course she was. She doesn't hide it – moreover, in the conditions of the pretrial detention center she will tell me everything about Angren and our family, which is what I need...

One way or another, Menshova was kicked out of that aunt's apartment, not even by us, not by my aunt or grandmother. Her accomplices, who climbed into that apartment to live, spend the night, eat hearty food, "our Georgian (Khachovsky) bread" (although we are all Russian; I will explain the humor later).

One way or another, Menshova hated our family. She decided to attack me too... That's why she laughed at my grandmother – she knew her, as well as her daughters, the "widow's children". Menshova bragged that she even hit my mother back then, in the 1980s, in the face, when she came to her office at the city newspaper (Angrenskaya Pravda). In general, there have been many different attacks on members of my family over 30 years, more than a dozen, including FIVE attempts on my life (including with a pistol shot – Menshova and Malikov know WHO did the shooting).

My brother was beaten up more than once later. He was not the first and not the last in Angren, whom the prostitute Menshova seduced and who was then beaten. My aunt's apartment was also robbed later. And this was a rule for Menshova's friends from the Shevyakov-Prokhorov gang.

Menshova also rummaged through my aunt's things. In particular, she tried on her artificial fur coat (white, which she brought from Moscow; it cost like 700 rubles); rummaged through gold jewelry. My aunt worked in the planning department of the defense enterprise "Rezinotekhnika", was a supplier, often went to Moscow on business trips to the ministry, "to knock out funds". Of course, she was not rich by Soviet standards, she earned her money with her labor. She furnished the apartment as tastefully as she could, and the apartment gave the impression of a provincial ‘raspberry’, as was only possible in Soviet conditions somewhere on the outskirts of the empire. (Galina Leonidovna and the Shchelokovs had real ‘raspberries’, of course.)

***

Here's another curious thing. Menshova "got so close" to our family that she knows its history. In particular, she knows that my cousin and my mother were born in Sukhumi, this is Abkhazia / Georgian SSR. My grandmother lived there from the 1920-30s to the 1960s; she lived there for a long time. In Sukhumi there was one of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin's dachas (others were, as all historians of communism know, in Pitsunda, Ritsa, Sochi... it's nearby).

Menshova knows that my aunt met and talked (this was after the war) with Stalin's daughter Svetlana (Alliluyeva); they were young girls then. Those were Soviet times, my aunt was proud of her acquaintance with the "leader"; she went to his museums in Gori and Poti (that's what I joke about: Menshova, Malikov, Moskvin, his lover Shevyakov, and the oligarch Prokhorov wanted our gore/ grief and poti/ sweat for half their lives).

Menshova knows that my grandfather, a war veteran, a communications officer (he served in the Tiflis Military District before the war), had the Order of the Red Banner (awarded for bravery and courage in battle) and a medal for the capture of Bucharest; there were also bars. Both were stolen from the widow, my grandmother. Menshova knows that the medal was for Bucharest – what deep knowledge she has! Menshova knows WHO the thief is. I will even say: the same person robbed Patriarch Alexy II, Raisa Gorbacheva, Rimma Markova, Catherine Deneuve, A. Nebolsin, I. Glazunov, the Duke of Braganza, V. Tereshkova, N. Ryzhkov... This is A. Shevyakov – he took these VIPs with accomplices. And all those mentioned here – except for the foreigners – knew about my existence and about the attacks on my grandmother, aunt “and the bug”.