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Beatles. I learned many of their songs by heart. Many of my friends also liked The Beatles. 

When I was at my school, the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, The Beatles were—well, 

all of us were The Beatles‘ fans.  

Q — What did it do for your English? 

A — For my English—well, it did something, but I think that my school, the Moscow Institute 

of Foreign Languages, and the school I went to before that, a secondary school, where we had 

very good teachers; to some extent, my mother; also, later my work at the UN did probably a lot 

more for my English than The Beatles. But I‘m still very grateful to The Beatles. 

Q — What people in your life have you interpreted for? 

A — Oh, I have interpreted for many people. I have interpreted for, of course, Gorbachev and 

Shevardnadze, the principal characters of this book. I have interpreted for American presidents. I 

have interpreted for people like Rajiv Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, John Major. Also, when I was 

working at the UN, I interpreted speeches into Russian by people like Kissinger, Anwar Sadat, 

Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus and a number of other people. It was a fascinating career, I 

would say. 

Q — At what moment is it the hardest? 

A — The hardest moment, I think, is when you just begin that, when you really have to 

understand, become aware that you can do it. And I think that I didn‘t have any jitters, but 

suddenly—it takes a little time to really become confident that you can do it. It‘s not rocket 

science, but it‘s a difficult job, and not everyone can do it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to become 

a professional interpreter, translator. So I think that confidence came to me rather early, but still, 

it takes a little time to become really confident and to see that people are also confident that you 

can do it, that people trust you. 

Q — Was there ever a time when you had a word wrong that left a meeting in some kind of a—

not turmoil or something, but it changed the nature of a meeting?  

A — No. We all make mistakes. Obviously, there are some errors in very good translations and 

translations done in writing. Even there, th—there are errors and mistakes. Certainly, in 

interpretation, this is work that you do without preparation—well, with some preparation, but—

but actually, you have to interpret, so to say, in real time. So, certainly, in interpretation, you do 

make mistakes. The question is: What kind of a mistake do you make? Do you make a mistake 

which just, you know, is easily corrected afterwards when you become aware of that mistake or 

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you make a mistake which just makes the whole thing go askew? And that never happened, so 

far as I know. And I think that the fact that I continued working for quite a few years at that level 

of responsibility shows that, no, I did not make that kind of mistakes. Communication always 

continued without disruption when I was interpreting. 

Q — What were the ground rules on your book at—which is put out by Penn State Press? In