"My friends pass away, becoming lines in Wikipedia"

President of the International Association of the Russian Press, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Vitaly Ignatenko, presented his autobiography 'With me and without me'. The book presentation was held in the news agency TASS, which was led by Vitaly Ignatenko for more than 20 years.

"It was easy to write this book. I started it in January and finished in June. It took six months to write this book. It is a pleasant work, a pleasant memory. There is no negative character in this book (although I have met them in my life), there were only those people I love. This is the main idea of ​​the book. My friends pass away, becoming lines in Wikipedia. It seemed to me that they deserve more than that. There are people who should be appreciated by our government very high. But, unfortunately, they are in a difficult situation today. This book is such a big nod from me," Ignatenko said.

"This book is a document of the era. A very bright and great era. I belong to those few people who have had the joy to  read the book. It is written in Vitaly Nikitich's light, ironic, sometimes even maybe funny style. I think that every word, every sentence, every thought in this book fully corresponds to that great time, those remarkable events in which Vitaly Nikitich was directly involved," the first deputy general director of TASS Mikhail Gusman believes.

"I would like to you not about a book, but about the author of this book, my remarkable friend Vitaly Nikitich Ignatenko. We met in the mid-1960s, and we have been friends already for 50 years, we talk and participate in each other's lives. When you're already over 70, you realize that there are very few such people. It is a great fortune that we met and managed to carry this friendly, reverent attitude to each through all our live. We do not depend on each other. I am a musician, he is a journalist, but probably it was mutual sympathy, chemistry, like they say now, which forced us to communicate with each other all this time. It was Vitaly Ignatenko who wrote "Polad Bulbuloglu" in Russian in the 'Komsomolskaya Pravda' newspaper for the first time. And one of my first performances in Moscow - an improvised short concert - was in the Blue hall of the 'Komsomolskaya Pravda'," the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu said.

"Our generation lived through two epochs. At first, we lived in the Soviet Union, in a country with its own ideology, with its tough regime, where Ignatenko held very high positions. A Lenin Prize winner worked in the Central Committee in such an important department, and there were people who dreamed of just saying hello to Vitaly Nikitich. Then there was the era change, the regime change, the ideology change, but a talented person is talented in all things. And in a new country, the new Russia, Vitaly Nikitich has taken a worthy place," Polad Bulbuloglu noted.