Valentin
Grigorievich Pashkov

(from the book V. Pashkova)

I was born, six months before the great Patriotic war, 17 December 1940, two peasant birth, mishinykh mother and father Pashkov, in the Kaluga province yukhnovskogo district, the village of Kurkino. Rod mishinykh before the revolution lived spravno and only the unexpectedly early death of his grandfather in 1929, saved the others, the then minor children from almost certain death, where neither be in the North or in Siberia. The cousins grandfather was first deported, and 37 in Smolensk shot.

Rhode Pashkov, in the village of Rakitno, which is six kilometers from Kurkino was numerous and poor. No cannibalization, no repression was not affected, a third of the village was our last name. But for all her masculine – war, survived only one man is me. For the deceased father, I was granted a pension of 40 rubles a Bottle of cheap vodka then cost 30 rubles. For the work on the farm not only money but paying nothing at all, but for the fact that you have 25 acres of land and your cows grazing on public land, the taxes were huge and they had to make the blocks in time – otherwise the arrears. In the twelve years I became a shepherd and is recognized by the three village artist painted the girls and the women embroidery roosters. And his first aphorism I wrote then, and as for lack of on hand paper I had burned on his stick through the lens, and therefore remembered and made this book unchanged: - "Only he can consider himself a master of his craft who will be able to perform exactly as were born in his imagination."

I dreamed of becoming an artist, so I wanted to Express myself in paint, but I knew that even if I have them, I will fail as I have planned it all to implement, without the necessary skills. Only after the army, I was able to enter the people's University of Arts, Department of painting to Tatyana Pavlovna Radimova – daughter of the last President of the society of Russian Wanderers of Paul rodimova. Don't know whether I could realize his first aphorism in the case, but what their whole lives trying – this show hundreds of paintings and thousands of sketches. Which, unfortunately, I was not allowed to show or if not give now. Thirty years ago, giving me a reproduction of his job, Tatiana wrote her these wishes – "the Young and talented artist with confidence that on the road of Art you will carry the tradition of the realist school", as much as I do.