ABSTRACT
While this 'diagnosis' is, by and large, correct, it is greatly exaggerated. I, for one, did not feel unfortunate or especially deprived of anything. True, I was extraordinarily lucky personally. But how many people were not in those bitter Soviet times! M Bronshtein, S Shubin, L Shubnikov, and many many other very talented physicists were shot by a firing squad or murdered in Stalinist penal camps for no known reason. Not to mention the repression of the survivors, or those young men and women who were unable to find employment and had to invoke and demand their right to emigrate. Today, as my life comes to an end, all the tragedy of our Soviet past is especially clear to me. There was only a short period of time following the break with the bolshevist system when we were filled with hopes. Well, today, it seems the hope ebbs away. Today life is hard for Russian physicists, as indeed for their fellow scientists in other fields. Still, it is my conviction that it would be incorrect and indeed mean to belittle the significance of the changes that have taken place. Most important, we have become free people. It is a great pity that illness prevented David Abramovich from availing himself fully of this freedom.
