There was an opportunity to visit Central Asia, go to Tashkent and Samarkand. Having once again taken advantage of the Organizing Committee’s business trip to survey the work of local unions of artists, me and Porfiry Krylov are going to Tashkent… It’s the beginning of April and the weather is cold, it is either snowing, raining or hailing. We run around in the rain from dawn till dusk, trying to finish the surveying artists as soon as possible to save time for sketches… Oh, how Samarkand has changed since my last visit ten years ago, in 1930. European culture’s seeping in. Gone is that exotic variety of national robes, a whole block was demolished before the Registan, a square was set up in its place, one of the mosques is gone, and the tilted tower of Ulugh Beg, which threatened to fall down any moment, was repaired so that it fell out of the ensemble — it became absolutely vertical. Somehow it’s very sad to visit places after ten years, and see how much gets lost in the past…