This book does not pretend to be a political-economic analysis of the post-socialist transformation, a detailed study of reform strategies applied in various countries, and their results. Here I wanted to tell how a young scientist from an intelligent Moscow family saw everything that happened, drawn by the will of fate into the whirlwind of modern Russian history. I hope that this will help to better understand what I and my like-minded colleagues were thinking about, what we feared and what we hoped for when we developed and implemented the strategy and tactics of market reforms in Russia.