“Collapse”
“As always, on that frosty morning there were a lot of people near the Petrogradskaya metro station. A well-dressed, fine man stood near the window of a bookstore and looked into the reflection of the glass. Hundreds of people walked past him. No, they weren’t what interested him. He looked out to see if he was being followed. Not seeing anything suspicious, he calmed down and, slowly, began to descend into the underground passage. It was here that he was politely asked to go to the police picket. He immediately went limp and soon watched indifferently as dollars, Finnish marks, and gold were taken out of his voluminous briefcase. Gotcha!
Vladimir Gureev was admired and envied. “Brainy,” they said about him respectfully. And he himself did not complain about fate. Quite early he received the title of master of sports and graduated from the Institute of Physical Education. I wanted to study more and entered the First Medical School. Having two diplomas, he worked in one of the boarding schools in our city, combining the duties of a doctor and a swimming teacher.
“With his direct participation as a teacher and doctor,” the school’s leaders would later write to the people’s court, “the swimming department became the leading in the country in training international-class swimmers.”
Unfortunately, all this turned out to be only one side of the young specialist’s personality. As the investigation showed, V. Gureev was involved in illegal currency transactions for several years.
An erudite doctor and teacher, a person who does not need funds, and a currency broker? Somehow it all doesn’t fit in my mind… After all, he gradually became a criminal. Gureev took the first step on the slippery path of fraud, still timid and unconscious, as a medical student. In the summer I worked at an international sports camp. It is quite understandable that among my acquaintances there were many foreigners. One of them once asked to borrow a large sum of Soviet money. And in return he promised to bring a Japanese tape recorder. The old dream seemed to be becoming a reality. And Gureev, after hesitating, made a deal. He took dollars as collateral.
The foreign student never returned to Leningrad. I didn’t bring a tape recorder. The dollars burned my palms at first, and then, apparently, the feeling of awkwardness disappeared. Gureev began to purchase foreign currency wherever he could…
Such a person became dangerous to society. He, like a bacillus, begins to infect those around him with the spirit of acquisitiveness. He looks for people like himself, makes suspicious acquaintances…
At the beginning of the investigation, Gureev denied many of the facts brought against him by the prosecution. But an experienced lawyer, senior investigator Yu.A. Gulyaev presented the court with irrefutable evidence…
I wanted to see Gureev, who is now serving his sentence, and to find out what conclusions he drew from his experience. We met. He was an offended, depressed man who did not understand in his heart why he was punished. Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
– How did this happen? – I asked the first question. And I expected to hear anything, but not.
– It’s the love of good music that’s to blame. Well, ignorance of the laws.
– But excuse me, having lived to forty years, you still don’t know the basic rules of behavior?
– Of course, I knew, I read it, I saw it in the movies. But all this happened as if on the sidelines. I never thought that something like this would happen to me.
As if he had come to his senses, he added:
– Of course, I will never engage in illegal currency transactions in my life again.
It seems that Gureev will never really be drawn to currency again; he will understand that his moral collapse is natural.”
“Evening Leningrad”, January 17, 1976
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
