About the book: 2005 / Fate led Pyotr Petrovich Astakhov along a truly unique and amazing route. A native of the Iranian city of Anzali, he spent his childhood and youth in the colorful and multinational Baku. Having become a reservist in the army, he experienced a real shock from the spectacle of his own, a Red Army self-inflicted shooter, being shot by his own people. Already in May 1942, near Kharkov, he was captured and experienced no less shock from the Germans’ execution of Jews and commissars and from the abuse of them that preceded the execution. In Stalag Pervomaisk, he signed up as a “specialist” and ended up in the German Eastern Ministry camps of Zietenhorst and Wustrau near Berlin, which, of course, saved his life. At the beginning of 1945, from Reichenau, on Lake Constance in southern Germany, he fled to Switzerland and became an internee. After the end of the war, he worked as a translator in the Soviet repatriation mission in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. In November 1945, he repatriated himself, and in December 1945 he was arrested and about a year later, after passing through filtration, he was sentenced under Article 58.1b to 5 years in forced labor camps, and then, in 1948, again - to 15 years. In February 1955, after Stalin's death and his sentence was reduced, he was released early from the special settlement. He returned to Baku, and after perestroika he was forced to move to Central Russia - to Pereslavl-Zalessky. The memories of Pyotr Astakhov are of double value. They contain a lot of unique factual information and at the same time raise a number of philosophical and moral questions. His memoirist credo is to tell stories about himself sincerely and honestly..