Gennady S. Bashkov, 58, was born in Uzbekistan and spent the first four years of his life there. Then his family moved to Moldavia where they lived for seven years. At the age of 10 Gennady spoke fluent Moldavian (Roumanian), but later he lost all links with that language. His grandmother, who learned her German and French at the turn of the century, taught him some poems like "Le sigal ayant chanté tout l'été..." but he started learning French only in fifth grade at school. As a navy cadet in Leningrad, he studied English for four years. During that period he received a prize for the best translation (Doris Lessing's book No Witchcraft for Sale). After having worked as a carpenter at a construction of a bridge over the Ural River in the city of Uralsk (in Kazakhstan) for three years and served as a radio operator in the army for three years (in Riga, Latvia), in 1965 Mr. Bashkov entered the prestigious Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. He studied for two years at the teacher training department and graduated from the translation department, majoring in English with French as a minor. His first interpreting assignment was at the International Standardization Congress that took place in Moscow in 1966. Subsequently, each summer he worked either with air pilots, teaching foreigners (mostly Arabs) to fly Soviet aircraft or with youth organizations coming to the USSR at the invitation of the Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization). He worked for a year with the military in Egypt and with a dam construction company on the Euphrates River in Syria. In 1974-1975 he attended the UN Language course at his Alma Mater and in 1975-1980 he worked as a conference interpreter with the UN Secretariat in New York City. During those years he attended several international conferences in Canada, India, Argentina, the Fillipines, and Yugoslavia. On the way to those countries he also visited Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, Japan, France, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands and Finland. In 1977 Mr. Bashkov was promoted to P-4 level (senior interpreter). His superior at the UN at the time was Mr. Udovenko, who later on became the Ukranian Foreign Minister and is now running for the Presidency.
   In 1980 Mr. Bashkow returned to the USSR. Since it was impossible to obtain a permit for residence in Moscow or Leningrad, he had to settle in the city of Novgorod. For nine years he worked as a translator at the Novgorod Polytechnic Institute doing mostly patents and other technical papers in electronics and then for eight years he was employed by a TV manufacturing plant as an engineer of the Foreign Economic Relations Department. As translation work was scarce, Mr. Bashkov doubled as a customs and supply agent, while in his spare time he translated some fiction and did nine books into Russian and one into English. It is very difficult to publish them in Russia, but one can read them on the Internet at the site http://vladivostok.com/Speaking_In_Tongues. The English-language part of this site is a collection of short stories by local author Mark Kostrov, who describes his travels around Novgorod on foot and in a boat. (That part is entitled Scribbling in Voices).
   Currently Mr. Bashkow is doing odd jobs and trying to survive on unemployment benefits (about $20 a month). He is married—his wife is a retired newspaper reporter, and his son, 38, is a policeman. He has two grandsons, 14 and 11.
   Mr. Bashkov is looking for a publisher of his translations; in particular he'd like to receive the mail address of "Outdoors Unlimited". He would like to establish contact with those who translate fiction from Russian and is willing to help them in any way he can.
   
Gennady Bashkov can be reached at:
bash@bug.novgorod.net.