I remember my father from early childhood. Despite the fact that he was very busy in the 60s with the creation of the Institute of Cybernetics and the development of a number of new scientific directions, he found time to communicate with Sister Vera and me, enjoyed playing with us and telling us a lot of interesting things: about the Earth, animals and plants, about stars, planets and astronautics, about history and art, about computers, about the future of people, about happiness and the meaning of life. Moreover, he did it easily and in a form accessible to us, mainly during our walks in the Goloseevsky forest, which he loved very much. We lived at that time on the outskirts of Kiev near the Goloseevsky forest at the corner of the current Avenue of Science and Lysogorskaya Street. His stories were surprisingly interesting because he had deep knowledge in so many areas. He also let us solve simple math problems and puzzles, while he himself cheerfully directed the course of our thoughts in the right direction. He sang songs with us, mostly funny tourist songs, especially loved the song about the wise dwarf who goes swimming, because we often went swimming with him to the Goloseevsky ponds.
My father was an encyclopediically educated man. In elementary school, he was very fond of biology and mineralogy, read all Brem's books, knew the world of animals, plants and minerals perfectly, so during walks he could easily name any plant or stone. Later in his school years, his father independently studied astronomy, mathematics, chemistry and physics in the scope of a university course. In high school, he became interested in poetry and philosophy. Having a unique memory, he knew by heart a huge number of poems and poems in different languages. Once in Germany, on a bet, he recited poems and poems in German for several hours, primarily his favorite poet Goethe. He was interested in how life really works. It is no coincidence that his favorite literary hero was Faust, who wanted to know everything that exists in the world. My father loved music very much, he sang patriotic songs and romances very well, but he especially loved Ukrainian folk songs, of which he knew a huge amount. Some of them he learned as a child from his Ukrainian grandmother during their life in the Donbass, but most of them he learned in Kiev. I have always said that there is nothing more beautiful than Ukrainian songs in the world.
The amazing nature of talent is an eternal mystery. Why is one person given so much? How is talent born and developed? Of course, a spark of God is needed, a lot depends on the parents, on their abilities, love for the child and care for him. A lot depends on the external environment and the era. But the decisive role, it seems to me, belongs to the person himself. On the example of my father, it is especially clear that talent is primarily hard work and everyday efforts. My father was a very purposeful person, one of his principles in life was the principle of unity of distant and near goals. Every day of life should bring a person closer to his goals, then life becomes meaningful and becomes saturated.
Father always said that the main thing in a person is the spirit, and the spirit must be constantly strengthened. Therefore, it is necessary to love difficulties and constantly overcome them. When his life became smooth and calm, he would say: "There are not enough difficulties, life has become boring." Since childhood, he was constantly looking for difficulties of various kinds and trained himself to overcome them. Being a weak and sickly boy, he became a boxing athlete, an excellent long-distance swimmer and skier, and being already an academician, he regularly practiced walrus in winter.
A special task is to train the will, for this you need to perform daily feats, even if they are invisible to others. Even in the last weeks and days of his life, dying in the hospital and realizing that his life was coming to an end, he continued to perform feats. My mother and I were on shift duty at his hospital, and he dictated his memories to me until the very end, even when a special tube was inserted into his throat to maintain breathing. His suffering was terrible, but he never moaned or complained. One day he said, "Yesterday I was in so much pain that I almost groaned."
Training mental abilities is also a difficult matter. My father told me that he has several levels of thinking, in his normal state he has the usual abilities of a good mathematician, but due to internal tension he can move to higher levels of consciousness, where his abilities are significantly expanded. In the process of this transition, inspiration sometimes comes – a special state of consciousness, which the father treasured very much and considered the source of his happiness, giving meaning to his life. He believed that this is how all people work, but the vast majority do not use their gift, and many do not even suspect about it. With the help of special exercises, he developed his memory so much that he constantly surprised others. Already in adulthood, he learned English and knew it perfectly. Until recent years, he constantly continued to increase his vocabulary and carried with him cards with English words and expressions, which he replenished by reading books in this language. Training his mind, his father constantly solved some problems, mainly related to his scientific research, and as a rest he switched to playing chess, guessing crosswords, solving puzzles, and also repaired television sets, radios and other equipment in the house. Even at school, he became a high-class amateur radio operator, independently assembled radios, electronic cannon and other devices from parts.
V. M. Glushkov has published more than 800 printed works, of which more than 500 were written by him personally, and the rest — together with his students and other co-authors. This result of the scientist seems surprising with his colossal workload of organizational work, and in connection with his own admission that he draws up articles slowly and this is a difficult task for him. The explanation is that my father was a true ascetic in science, who possessed gigantic efficiency and diligence. He usually left for work at 9 o'clock in the morning, returned in the evening, had dinner, and then sat down at his desk and continued to work until 2 o'clock in the morning.
A person's abilities are genetically determined in him, a lot is transmitted from parents and representatives of older generations. Victor Glushkov was born in the family of a mining engineer, his father Mikhail Ivanovich came from an old Cossack family from the village of Lugansk (today this village is located on the territory of Ukraine near the border with Russia). His ancestor during the war with Napoleon was an aide-de-camp to ataman M.I. Platov, distinguished himself during the Battle of Borodino, and in 1814, already with the rank of captain, rode a white horse to Paris. For his military exploits, the Russian emperor granted him an estate and nobility, which his descendants lost because their only daughter secretly married a simple Cossack and ran away with him to the Don. There was a pedigree in the Glushkov family that was lost during the Great Patriotic War. According to my father's stories, all my ancestors were brave Cossacks, talented and strong-willed people, but, having no education, they realized their abilities within the existing conditions. The Soviet government gave my grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich Glushkov the opportunity to get a higher education in the field of mining, and he worked for a long time as a chief engineer in Shakhty, Rostov region, where Victor grew up and graduated from school.
Victor's mother, my grandmother Vera Lvovna Glushkova, was a simple accountant, she gave a lot of time and effort to her family and her only son, who loved her very much. During the Great Patriotic War, she was executed by the fascists and thrown into a mine along with other members of the anti-fascist underground, which had a huge impact on my father. All his life he revered her memory. Arriving in the city of Shakhty, of which he was an honorary citizen, his father always laid flowers at the memorial in honor of the fallen heroes. And the feat of his mother always inspired him to his own exploits in the name of science and his native country, primarily to fight for new methods of public administration in the USSR based on the introduction of a Nationwide automated system.
Victor's parents loved him very much and did a lot of his education. His father helped him to conduct chemical and physical experiments, worked with him on radio equipment, together they designed a TV with which they received broadcasts from an experimental TV studio in Kiev. His parents got different books for Victor, they had a wonderful library in their family before the war. Victor studied well at school, was a round excellent student. His parents were worried about his health, it seemed to them that he was doing a lot of mental work and could overwork himself. Unfortunately, their fears were not in vain – due to intensive reading of books in childhood, Victor's eyesight deteriorated, and for the rest of his life he had severe myopia. After the death of his wife, Mikhail Ivanovich Glushkov remarried a woman with two children and distanced himself from his son. When Victor got back on his feet, he regularly sent money to his father, but he did not find a common language with his stepmother. Therefore, I do not remember grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich very well, he rarely came to us, without his second wife and her children. He lived in Shakhty and worked at the end of his life as a director of a technical school.
They say that a talented person is talented in everything, at least in many ways. The main talent of V.M.Glushkov was the talent of a thinker, while his thought was not limited only to mathematics, cybernetics, computer science and the design of computers of new generations. He was a philosopher and a theorist of scientific knowledge, his work in this field is recognized by experts all over the world. He was obsessed with the idea of creating artificial intelligence. His work in this area, including in the field of building intelligent systems such as "eye-hand", "reading automaton", in the field of automating proofs of theorems, computer design automation and automation of other functions of human intelligence are far ahead of their time, and many of his ideas are still waiting to be implemented.