Why I decided to create a literary site

My profession is design engineer of automotive units and mechanisms — a field where the truth is concrete. You can praise and advertise your design all you like, but once it’s mounted on the accelerated-test stand and it turns out to perform poorly, unable to meet its specified service life, that’s that. Having worked for 53 years at the ZIS-ZIL automobile plant in Moscow and 10 years at the PACCAR automobile company in America, I retired and began writing memoirs about the life I’ve lived — the one I know from the inside. The site, in Russian and in English translation, includes published articles along with reviews of them, correspondence with friends and colleagues from work, greetings and congratulatory letters, photographs I find most interesting, with captions, and individual chapters from the novel “Three Lives.” The site does not include scientific and technical publications, conference presentations, or the Author’s Certificates and patents I received in Russia and America.

The name Vladimir Gor is a pseudonym. I became Vladimir at the age of 12, when I entered the vocational school of the ZIS automobile plant. Later, I returned to my biblical name, Solomon — Solomon Izrailovich Gorfinkel, as it appears in documents, letters, and correspondence in both Russia and America.