Hydrodynamics, elasticity, mechanics history, astronautics

The author remembers his correspondence with two emigrated Russian scientists - D.P.Riabouchinsky (1882-1962) and S.P.Timoshenko (1878-1972), academician N.I.Muskhelishvili (1891-1976), personal contacts with academician L.I.Sedov (1907-1999), author’s intensive public activities in the Institute of Mechanics of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the late fifties and early sixties, dramatic fate of his doctoral thesis in the Moscow and Leningrad universities.