The story “Baku—Voronezh: You Can’t Catch Up” could be called a tale of memories, if in the first lines its author hadn’t warned the reader that the most important thing for him is to express his admiration for his native Baku and for that astonishing community called not “Bakuites,” but the Baku people.
And with each page, we see more clearly, we come to know it better—both the great city and its people: oil workers, scientists, craftsmen, poets, musicians, doctors, teachers—those about whom, following the wise commandment of Vasily Zhukovsky, we with gratitude say: “They were!”