We started there ...

To the 70th anniversary of Arseny Borisovich Roginsky

S.Yu. Neklyudov, G.A. Leskis, D.M. Segal, A.B. Roginsky, M.Ya. Bilinkis. Photo by G.S. Lebedeva

This walk took place in mid -May 1968, in the Kjaerik area, near the student sports camp of the University of Tartu. All of us, for a long time or no longer students (except, perhaps, Hall of Roginsky) and far from athletes, ended up there by the will of Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman. We arrived at a meeting of the third summer school on Semiotics (or on secondary modeling systems, as was in our texts).

We all were still very young, Seine and Misha - 22, 27 to me, Dima Segal - 30. The “old man” was considered fifty -year -old Georgy Alexandrovich Leskis, really the oldest at this school.

Tartu and Schools - how much this meant to all of us, as much as much determined in the current and future life! But, of course, of those who stayed in these photographs, most of all for Harvest Roginsky. Lotman is his teacher, Tartu University - his Alma Mater.

And then - everything was just beginning and was ahead. In the yard stood the “Prague Spring” that gave birth to hopes and from mid-May, August 68 was not yet visible. Arseniy Borisovich had a public and evening school ahead of the Almanac “Memory”, which became “past”, arrest and camp, perestroika and August 91st. And "Memorial."

In the meantime, we slowly go along the path near the lake near the hill and talk very lively, only from here we can no longer hear what. We feel good, and does not think at all about how in decades we will celebrate our anniversaries.

Happy birthday, Senya. Life, after all, if according to the Hamburg account, was a success. And thank you for her.