The history of any country is formed not only on the battlefields and great construction sites, but also at the dining table. The fighting spirit of a fighter at the front is determined by the quality of the diet. The same can be said of an engineer or a bulldozer who lives and works in peacetime. All these and many discoveries were made by the Russian scientist William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin.
Youth
To a wide circle of readers and generally curious people, William Pokhlebkin is known as the author of fascinating and useful books. The biography of this person can be read as an adventure story. According to the birth certificate, was born on August 20, 1923 in the family of a hereditary revolutionary. Parents of the child lived in Moscow. Pokhlebkin is not his father's real name, but his pseudonym at the time when he was engaged in revolutionary work. According to the passport, he was listed as Vasily Mikhailovich Mikhailov.
William grew up in a healthy atmosphere. He was accustomed to physical and intellectual labor. He knew how his friends and neighbors live. At an early age he showed the ability to learn foreign languages. After school, he was going to continue his education at the university, but the war began, and all plans had to be postponed until later. Having received a certificate of maturity, Pokhlebkin volunteered for the front. During the winter counterattack near Moscow, he received a heavy shell-shock. They could have “written off the commission”, but the famous culinary specialist asked him to remain in the service at the regimental headquarters - he was fluent in German.
In 1945, Pokhlebkin entered the Moscow State University at the Faculty of International Relations. His scientific career was quite successful. Already in the early 50s, William V. Pokhlebkin defended his doctoral dissertation on the history of the labor movement in Eastern Europe. Relations with colleagues in science and superiors were uneven. As a result, he was denied access to all archives and asked to quit the Institute of History, where he taught.
