Leonid Sinelnikov was born in Moscow on November 3, 1939. In 1941 he was evacuated with his mother and grandmother to Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). The war-time childhood continued in Moscow, where in 1943 the family of the Soviet Army major Yakov Sinelnikov returned to with their four-year-old son Leonid. Leonid Sinelnikov's childhood was typical of the post-war generation of most Soviet children: while parents worked very hard, children were left to their own devices, considering street life and friends as their true family. Nevertheless, he successfully graduated from high school and entered the Moscow Technological Institute of the Food Industry, which, despite its modest name, was "packed" with distinguished professors. The proposed book is the result of the author's thoughts and life experience. He considers himself lucky to have witnessed and even, as the manager of a big tobacco enterprise, taking part in transforming his country within a historically short period of time from the Soviet planned economy to the free market.
