ABSTRACT
The year was 1971; the month, June; the place, Moscow: an elegant private apartment on Vavilov Street near October Square, where Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich had ensconced me for six weeks. At 7:00 A.M. I was roused from my sleep by a phone call from Zeldovich. ‘Come to my flat, Kip! I have a new idea about spinning black holes!’ Knowing that coffee, tea, and peryozhki (pastries with spicy ground beef inside) would be waiting, I sloshed cold water on my face, threw on my clothes, grabbed my attache case, dashed down five flights of stairs into the street, grabbed a crowded trolley, transfered to a trolley bus, and alighted at Number 2B Vorobyevskoye Shosse, in the Lenin Hills, 15 kilometers south of the Kremlin. Number 4, next door, was the residence of Alexei Kosygin, the premier of the USSR; after Brezhnev, the second most powerful person in the Soviet Union.
