Me and Kolya having fun in Russia with Vika.

Me versus Kolya

Me being Lev I am typically a sweet guy and I am pretty shy. On the other hand Kolya is mean and very outgoing. He is also very loud. Me and him are very different. When I say different I mean personality wise. I treat girls with respect yet Kolya still gets all the girls so I can technically call him a ladies man. He can also sleep faster than I can. Every night I start to think a lot and this does not allow me to sleep, but Kolya can sleep so fast like a baby. One night when Me, Kolya, and other soldiers were walking around we saw a very horrible cabin. It was so cold and tired that we decided to just go inside and sleep in their no matter how bad it was. He was telling me all his stories with all the girls he has been with. I have to say I got kind of jealous, but that was not the point. I do not really have a problem with Kolya, but we are just so different. There are some aspects of his that I wish I had, but I am sure there are some or little aspects of mine that he might want.

Mission For The Colonial

Kolya and I met with the colonial.  We both saw this very pretty girl. When we tried to find out who it is the colonial said it was his daughter. The colonial said his daughter was getting married next Friday to some guy. He said the guy was a piece of meat. He said his daughter wants a very good a proper wedding even during all of this. When he said all of this he was referring to the famine and war in Leningrad. The colonial said he will have music, dancing, and a cake. The way he said cake was a little different. He looked at us as if there were something momentous about the word cake that we needed to understand. His wife said that it is a tradition to have a cake at a wedding and that you can not have a wedding without a cake. She has every ingredient to make a cake except eggs because they are hard to find. The colonial wanted us to go on a journey to find a dozen of eggs. There are no eggs in Leningrad so we had to travel a lot to find them. The colonial promised us that if we find eggs by next Thursday we will have our lives back.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov (Kolya)

I was put into a jail cell for a petty crime. I did not even get to see my cell because by the time I got to close to it the guards threw me right in. The cells were very bad. The walls were all made out of rough stone, the cell was two meters wide and four meters long, with bunk beds for four and all of them were empty. I was happy to be alone and not with some stranger that was a criminal and had tattoos. After sometime I noticed how empty and dark my cell was, it really got to me. I felt like the night was never going to end because it was quite frightening in the cell. I then finally heard a noise. The noise was footsteps of guards. I then heard a key turned in the lock. One guard was holding an oil lamp and they were escorting a new prisoner who was tall and standing very straight. He seemed like a man who can give orders even when the guards had the pistols. The guards then closed the cell door and the man looked at me. He assumed I was a Jew judging by my appearance. We then had a few different conversations in the cell. He asked for my name and I asked for his. He said his name was Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov, but people call him Kolya.

Leningrad, St. Petersburg

I remember it like it was yesterday. In the year of 1941, when I was only a teenager about the age of seventeen, German troops came to invade Leningrad. Hundreds of people evacuated the city to be far and safe from these invaders. One night I fought with my mother. The reason? She wanted me to move with my family so I can be safe, but I did not want too. I felt that I was a man that had to defend my city, which was Leningrad. To me my city was a big deal. It was the city of workers who built tanks and rifles for the Red Army. If I did not stay to defend my city, what chance would Russia have without the city of Leningrad. I was a firefighter so I did not see how it was necessary for my mother to argue with me to leave Leningrad because it was to “dangerous”. My sister Taisya and my mother both wanted me to go with them to leave the city to be safe, but I just could not leave my city. The next morning my mother and sister left Leningrad and it took them around three weeks to get to safety. My mom sent me a later telling my how horrible and tiring her journey was and it made me feel guilty, but I also knew it was better with them gone.