I met Vladimir at M.I.T. in 1990 and we were married in 1995. I called him “Vova” but most of our American friends called him “Vlad.” He was a private person, very cautious about sharing information from his past. But in the summer of 2006 he asked me to write down some of his memories and thoughts. We worked on this project in our free time until 2013. He would talk–stream of consciousness–and I would type as fast as I could. The blog posts filed under “Life Stories” are from those sessions.