I think everyone will agree: it’s absolutely time for us to hammer out the basics of the very first, bestial truths, to return to half a century ago anthologies for reminders about “what is good and what is bad,” to the fairy tale “Turnip” for the rehabilitation of the concept of collectivism, to “The Tale of fisherman and fish” for a memento about the inevitability of a broken trough if you lust beyond your rank and eat at three throats. Twenty years of timelessness and moral relativism shook and loosened and ultimately knocked down the national moral aim: if not direct sympathy, then non-condemnation, an obsequious readiness to justify betrayal out of selfishness became firmly established in everyday life ("oh, maybe Judas needed, vitally needed these thirty pieces of silver for the kids for milk, for the mother for medicine?”) or resentment (“Shvabrin took revenge on the tyrant Catherine for his youth ruined in the wilderness, and for the family of Captain Mironov for his desecrated love!”). Social Darwinist Professor Preobrazhensky received applause, a tear was squeezed out by Regis Warnier's jerk from a scoop for sausage swimming across the Black Sea, noble indignation was fueled by the unbearable torment of an academician from physics, who was forced to take risks, but did not risk it for the sake of graduate school for a talented student black caviar on your own sandwich (“what the bastard system has brought people to, but in the West it would never, never for anything!”) Personal well-being somehow sideways, imperceptibly, stewing, climbed to the very top of the scale of not just life, but moral values ​​and there freely, legs dangling, settled down; the phrase “life as a human being”, having lost all ethical content, finally merged with savoir-vivre, and the motto “love yourself, sneeze on everyone, and success awaits you in life” began to be perceived without almost any literally.

Since then, conscious artistic attempts to reverse the trend have invariably suffered, if not a creative, then a didactic fiasco: the fasters, the humble, the righteous, the passion-bearers and the heroes offered by post-reform cinema sometimes triumphed morally, but never in everyday terms, the most important for the new viewer, and therefore were never seen by the same viewer as role models. A kind of apotheosis of the new Russian vision of righteousness was the Teacher’s film “The Edge”: leaving its premiere screening, one of the “night witches”, a pilot, twice a hero of the Soviet Union, called the director a bastard for the fact that he, bypassing the Russian, was kind, sacrificial, incredible morally strong woman, in the story he gave to a German woman, an enemy, the main, most valuable post-war resource - a good, competent, sweaty muscle man sparkling from the screen. Because if anyone kept their ethical focus on the dashing and the obese in a more or less combat-ready state, it was those people, and they unmistakably sensed the creeping immorality of the scenario scenarios, depriving their own and the right in favor of strangers and cunning.

The turning point, oddly enough, was brought about by Liliya Kim, a screenwriter now working in Hollywood. For almost the first time in a quarter of a century, an organ worker turned out to be not only the most crystalline, the most decent, the most intelligent and the most professional figure in its history, but also the most attractive relatively modern system coordinates, the most successful in everyday life, having received the final rank, order, car, dacha, and prestigious, solid, stone-walled marriage for honestly, steadfastly, uncompromisingly performed work. At the same time, Goznak investigator Filatova is by no means a speculative moralizing ideal. The sophistication of Dykhovichnaya as an actress, already, it seems, is comparable to the sophistication of her brilliant countrywoman Irina Metlitskaya, also a Minsk resident, who also came to cinema from math school, her stylish, brittle thinness, the boiling coldness of her acting, the professional, on the verge of a foul, toughness and intransigence of her character , which does not accept any verbal fog, any penumbra, knowing perfectly well that it is in the penumbra that every creature stumbles, evoke in the viewer, if you believe public discussions, sometimes envious hostility, sometimes the despondency of consciousness of one’s own inadequacy, sometimes rejection mixed with admiration. And always an unequivocal “I believe!” This is perhaps the first time in post-reform cinema that I “believe” in a titanic character, much larger in scale than the environment.

Because the environment“Money” seems to have been copied from the stories of Leonid Bezhin, who in turn copied the copybook of everyday life, of which he was the same age. This is a life where, having received diplomas, “they begin to “receive them on time, bring them before the holidays and wave them at demonstrations”, where they truly live only on “non-president” days, and the rest are torn off, crumpled in their fists and thrown into trash cans, like calendar leaves . In general, the classic Losev “it was like a world, and I seemed to live in it with a bag of Chaldean flour; The burnt fat in my nostrils, the unwashed armpits of the Komsomol.” A small, but significant for perception, difference in Anashkin’s view of this world is, however, that he does not look from the outside, painfully sniffing the vile armpits along with the fragrant lyrical hero raised above the intolerable everyday life, but from the inside, taking responsibility for the smell from armpits, and because the fat was burnt. The irrational, grotesque materialism that gripped the late Union with mass psychosis almost for the first time in the entire post-reform period evokes in the authors disinterested empathy, but mixed bewilderment with disgusting pity.

After all, according to the scenario, it turns out that Alexei Barannikov was pushed onto a slippery slope not so much by the system that expelled him from the capitals, which did not need his inventions. A loner, a genius, he, in general, is quite philosophical about the futility of butting heads with a clumsy Leviathan who does not distinguish any individuality, and lives for himself, since the system supplies the most necessary, without particularly straining, leaving free many intellectual and spiritual valences to create for himself , as all true artists create. It is precisely the late Soviet material rapacity that awakens in him the itch, the rush, the gnawing; under its pressure, he exchanged the last penny of his soul for counterfeit, masterfully executed counterfeit quarters.

Counterfeiting is one of the oldest criminal professions - as soon as money appeared, people immediately appeared who began to counterfeit it. Every year in Russia the number of detected fakes grows by 20-30%.

This man is still rightly considered unsurpassed master for the production of counterfeit banknotes. At one time, his criminal talent literally shocked Goznak specialists, party and police chiefs of the USSR. Today, Viktor Baranov huddles in a room in an ordinary dorm and continues to bring his unexpected inventions into reality, but now only law-abiding ones.

The Adyghe salesman had just told the police how a few minutes ago a buyer had approached him with a request to exchange twenty-five-ruble notes. Traders were asked to pay attention if someone offered quarter or fifty dollars on the market? So he converted. Yes, of course, he will show the buyer. This is the one with the briefcase.

The suspicious buyer's documents turned out to be in order: Viktor Ivanovich Baranov, a resident of Stavropol. Viktor Ivanovich had 1,925 rubles in quarter notes in his briefcase.
- So who are you? - the investigator asked him when the police brought the owner of the suspicious money to the police station.
“I am a counterfeiter,” answered the king of counterfeiters.

From the point of view of law enforcement agencies, this story began in the mid-70s. By 1977, in 76 regions of the USSR, from Vilnius to Tashkent, 46 counterfeit banknotes of the fifty-ruble denomination and 415 of the twenty-five-ruble denomination were identified, which, according to experts, had a single source of origin. The exceptionally high quality of the counterfeits made counterintelligence suspect the CIA, which, of course, could easily print rubles in a factory way in the USA and then distribute them through agents to the USSR. Along with the spy version, the traditional version was also checked - it was assumed that the counterfeiters received technology directly from Goznak. More than five hundred employees of the enterprise were under round-the-clock surveillance by the KGB for almost a year, until a repeated examination established that Goznak had nothing to do with it - just someone in the country was too well versed in the process of printing money.

Counterintelligence regretfully abandoned the idea of ​​finding American sowers scattering banknotes in the USSR, and the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs focused on searching for a group of counterfeiters within the country.
Gradually, it was possible to determine that in the south of Russia, high-quality counterfeits appear more often than in other regions. Then the circle of searches narrowed to the Stavropol region, where in three months of 1977 86 counterfeit twenty-five-ruble bills were immediately identified. And finally, thanks to the vigilance of the Adyghe seller, the first, as the security forces believed, member of the criminal group was captured.

It must be said that at the time of his arrest Baranov was... a freelance employee of the Stavropol OBKhSS. As a driver, Viktor Ivanovich took two security officers on raids to all sorts of “grain places” - senior lieutenant Alexander Nikolchenko and major Yuri Baranov (namesake - Author). And it had to happen that at the time of the arrest the senior leader was in Pyatigorsk, where he was just catching the notorious elusive counterfeiter! I found out that he was caught in Cherkessk, and received an order to deliver the captured man to Stavropol. Imagine the opera’s amazement when he saw his partner in front of him!..

“I knew that Yura and Sasha were looking for me, but I never asked them a question... I would never use our friendly relations to my advantage,” admits Baranov.

“I decided for myself a long time ago,” says Baranov, “if they catch me, I won’t twist and turn. I never lied to the police." The police did not know about this then, however, and considered Viktor Ivanovich a courier for counterfeiters, who decided to take all the blame on himself in order to shield his accomplices. Because one person cannot produce counterfeit money of such impeccable quality!

“I was taken to Stavropol as a general,” recalls Baranov. “There were two traffic police cars with flashing lights ahead.”

There he immediately led the police to his barn, where a search revealed a compact printing press, stacks of printed money and five notebooks describing many years of research. On the same day, a report was placed on the desk of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, and the very next morning a group of Moscow experts flew to Stavropol.

During the investigative experiment, Viktor Ivanovich, in front of distinguished guests, created watermarks on paper, rolled letterpress and intaglio seals, cut the sheet and applied the treasury number with a numberer. By the end of the performance, there were no longer any skeptics left in the room. Everyone believed in a miracle and that the wizard needed to serve a decent amount of time.

After which, by decision of the Main Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, a hundred more similar cases were added to criminal case No. 193 on the discovery of counterfeit banknotes of twenty-five rubles in denomination, where it all began. In the USSR people were also sentenced to death for lesser crimes.

Vitya Baranov developed an interest in money as a child, when he began collecting a collection of old banknotes. But he came to the conclusion that he could make money himself much later... In Stavropol, where the future criminal genius studied at a regular school, he was always in good standing with the teachers. Until the fifth grade, Vitya Baranov was an excellent student, and his behavior was always exemplary. Among his favorite school subjects was drawing... The guy went to art school, painted beautiful sunsets... And the best thing he made were copies of famous paintings - “Alyonushka” by Vasnetsov, “Morning in a Pine Forest” by Shishkin and others.

After seventh grade, Vitya Baranov went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school. Within a year, he mastered the specialty of a parquet carpenter. He also really wanted to become a pilot. My friend and I gathered a large group of the same guys at the flying club and started parachuting. Victor made several jumps. At the draft board, he was told that he needed to commit two more, and he would be drafted into the airborne troops. But, heeding his mother’s lamentations, Baranov completed a driver’s course at DOSAAF and went to serve in a motor battalion. Moreover, he was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of his unit.

After the army, Victor worked at one time as a freight forwarder in the Stavropol regional party committee. And twice he even drove Mikhail Gorbachev home from work at night - at that time the third secretary of the Komsomol committee.

When I started making money, I was one hundred percent sure that nothing would work out. But it was interesting to test my capabilities,” recalls Stavropol “Kulibin”.

He worked on the banknotes for 12 years. During this time, I thoroughly studied as many as 12 printing specialties - from engraver to printer. For three years he “invented” the watermark himself, and for two years he “invented” intaglio printing ink. He studied textbooks for printing students, even went to Moscow, studied rare books “in his specialty” at Leninka... He had to do a lot by trial and error.

The inventor locked himself in his barn on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street in Stavropol and worked literally day and night. The fruits of this work can be seen today in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A whole room is occupied by Baranov’s “exhibition”, which was transported to Moscow in no less than two KamAZ trucks!

The forgery genius is especially proud of the solution he invented for removing copper oxides during etching. All printers in the world have been struggling with this problem for a long time. Terribly labor-intensive and painstaking work! And Baranov built a reagent from four components - two poison copper, two remove its oxides. Everything about everything takes a minute or two... Goznak worked for 14 years on this etching agent, which received an unspoken name - “Baranovsky”.

The first banknote that Baranov made was a fifty-ruble note. One to one with the original in the smallest details. The only thing, out of respect for Lenin, the counterfeiter made the leader twenty years younger. And this was not noticed in any bank!

He released only a few fifty kopecks - 70 pieces. Caucasians in the markets grabbed them with their hands and asked for more. But the Stavropol resident decided to make the “quarter” - the most secure of Soviet banknotes. “If the ruble were the most difficult thing, I would do it... I wasn’t interested in money as such,” laughs Viktor Ivanovich.

Even the police admit that Baranov used his money machine very modestly. The only serious acquisition in all these years was a car. And then, according to Viktor Ivanovich, the entire amount was paid to him from honest labor savings. “I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have girls. And there was no TV, there was only a small refrigerator. I didn’t need to - I was doing work.” All the money was spent on the production of new equipment. He did not give counterfeit bills to his family. “My wife once asked where the money came from,” Baranov recalls. - I said that I offer my inventions to factories. I didn’t give my wife a lot of money - 25, 30, 50 rubles.”

In parallel with his study of coinage, Baranov observed the behavior of sellers in the markets in order to understand how money “moves.” For example, fishmongers always take banknotes with wet hands, and meatmongers often have blood on their hands. Caucasians willingly accept new crisp banknotes. As a result, Baranov added 70 fifty dollars, after which he decided to give up on them. Tired of candy wrappers.

However, Baranov immediately lost interest in the money he made. He was not interested in wealth - he simply needed funds to implement other bold projects. He calculated that this would require about 30 thousand rubles. No sooner said than done!

But the trouble is, when Baranov took him to Crimea to change his money, bought two kilograms of tomatoes from one granny, walked away and only a few minutes later realized that he didn’t have a suitcase with him. He returned, and the old woman was like that, taking with her money for a good house...

The bungling inventor had to turn on the printing press again, which he was about to disassemble and scatter in parts into different ponds.

Baranov did not even think about counterfeiting the currency. But during one of his trips to the capital, he bought a dollar from a dealer - for his collection. Having looked at it more closely, I realized how easy it is to make money...

Baranov had no friends, because friends like to visit without knocking. He regularly organized “open days” for suspicious neighbors. Curious old women who looked into the workshop had a view of the metalworking machine, the enlarger and the developing tanks - Baranov hid all the most interesting things in disassembled form under the shelves. Only a suspicious neighbor-hunter continued to believe that Baranov was pouring shot in the barn at night.

It was when creating a new batch of quarter notes that the maestro made a fatal mistake. While securing the cliche to create a protective net, Baranov did not pay attention to the fact that the cliche was upside down. As a result, after printing the money, he discovered that in the place where the wave should have risen, there was a descent. Considering that no one would notice this, he decided not to reject the batch. However, in one of the banks where such a bill eventually ended up, an eagle-eyed cashier noticed the difference and raised the alarm. From that moment on, as they say in thrillers, Baranov had only a few months left to live in freedom.

“By the time of my arrest, all my equipment had been dismantled,” he says. - I was going to drive through ponds and lakes and scatter it there in parts. I didn’t throw it away only because it’s April and it’s muddy and you can’t get through it. And thank God. Otherwise, divers would have to look for these parts at the bottom of reservoirs.”

From the Stavropol pre-trial detention center, Baranov was transported to Moscow, to Butyrka. Every day he was visited by specialists, to whom, over the course of twelve investigative experiments, he demonstrated the victory of the human mind over Goznak.

The Goznak technologist wrote in his conclusion: “The counterfeit banknotes of 25 and 50 rubles produced by V. I. Baranov are externally close to genuine banknotes and are difficult to identify in circulation. That is why this counterfeit was very dangerous and could cause mistrust of the population in genuine banknotes.”

Viktor Ivanovich willingly shared his work. For twelve years he hid, and finally people appeared who were able to appreciate his talent and titanic work. The king of counterfeiters happily gave out the recipe for his solution, which etched copper several times faster than it was done in Goznak (under the name “Baranovsky solvent” it was used in production for the next 15 years). For the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, Baranov outlined recommendations on ten pages for improving the protection of rubles from counterfeiting... Probably, Viktor Ivanovich told the competent authorities a lot of other useful things, considering that the execution sentence was replaced with a colony, and he was given three years less than the maximum sentence . “I printed little money,” Baranov offers his explanation of the court’s humanity. - Otherwise they would have shot you. But you know what I’ll tell you: it would be better if they shot him. I wouldn’t suffer for eleven years, with my hands shaking from hunger, snow, wet feet and ten cars with concrete that need to be shoveled. Every day". In fact, Baranov printed a lot - about 30,000 rubles, but he put only a small fraction of this money into circulation, most of it remained in the barn.

Baranov served his sentence in a special regime colony in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. Like a true passionary, he showed his talents there too: “I wrote for the newspaper. I once won a competition for the best article on all ITK. Then they sent me a bonus - 10 rubles. And I was a director - I headed amateur performances. We had more than three hundred people in the choir, and took first place for seven years in a row.” Baranov also made the scenery for his productions, be it a Maxim machine gun or the coat of arms of the USSR, blinking lights in time with the recited poems.

In the “zone” Baranov enjoyed great authority. Contrary to local regulations, the prisoners did not give him a nickname, but called him respectfully by his first name and patronymic.

Returning to Stavropol after imprisonment in 1990, Baranov again began to invent. “The meaning of a person’s life is creative work,” he believes, waving off 11 years of age. “What was given to me, I realized, even if I had to endure a lot of suffering and serve time.”

He still had no friends, his first wife divorced him in the ninth year of imprisonment, all that was left was to invent. At the Analogue plant, where he soon got a job, Baranov proposed a new method for growing nickel mesh in batteries. “They told me then: “Who are you? Experts from Germany came here, but they didn’t come up with anything new!” And I promised them that they would supply me with more cognac. And so it happened.”

Then Baranov opened the Franza company to produce perfumes. I made six barrels of perfume, 200 liters each. But a few years later the company closed, unable to withstand the competition with the wave of cheap foreign perfumes. “Their boxes were beautiful, but inside was bullshit.”

Baranov invented a method for cleaning potatoes from soil, stones and other inclusions. The ingenious solution is to pour everything into a container filled with salt water. The potatoes will float, the rest will sink to the bottom. I wanted to patent my invention, but was refused - I filled out the form incorrectly...

Then followed a series of new inventions: ceramic car paint, resistant to acids and alkalis, furniture made from paper waste, water-based furniture varnish, adhesive paste, lightweight brick, healing balm. Some of the inventions were successfully implemented, some received royalties... This is how Viktor Ivanovich lives today, modestly, but with the hope of recognition.

And at the request of a Moscow company, Viktor Ivanovich developed his own trade protection system, which is much more effective than barcodes.

Baranov never had any thoughts about going abroad. So what if they value brains more highly? He doesn't particularly value money. He needs them only to invent something new. And he also says that he will never give away the technology for making “Baranovsky” banknotes to anyone...

With the advent of money, many criminal professions arose, one of which is counterfeiting.

At one time, the criminal talent of Viktor Baranov shocked Goznak specialists and the USSR police with his skill in making counterfeit banknotes. Even now, many years later, he continues to bring his unexpected inventions into reality.

On April 12, 1977, an Adyghe seller from the collective farm market in Cherkessk turned to the police and said that a few minutes ago a buyer had asked him to change several twenty-five-ruble banknotes. Previously, traders were asked to report any cases where someone is offering quarters or fifty dollars. The seller pointed to a citizen with a briefcase.

The citizen’s documents turned out to be in order: Viktor Ivanovich Baranov, resident of Stavropol. But the contents of the briefcase aroused suspicion. It turned out to be 1925 rubles in quarter tickets.

- So who are you?- the investigator at the department asked him.
- I'm a counterfeiter- answered the king of counterfeiters.

For the police, the story begins back in the mid-70s.

By 1977, 46 counterfeit banknotes of the fifty-ruble denomination and 415 of the twenty-five-ruble denomination were identified in the USSR, which, according to experts, had a single source of origin. The first suspicions fell on the CIA and Goznak employees. For more than a year, investigators observed the company's employees until they agreed that someone else was well versed in printing money. The version of CIA involvement disappeared by itself and efforts were concentrated on searching within the country.

Over time, it has been established that high-quality fakes appear more often in the south of the country. Gradually, the circle of searches narrowed to Stavropol, where in three months 86 counterfeit twenty-five-ruble bills were identified. And finally, thanks to the Adyghe seller, the counterfeiter was captured. The police assumed that he was a member of a criminal gang.

It is worth saying that Baranov was a freelance employee of the Stavropol OBKhSS. He was a driver by profession and took senior lieutenant Alexander Nikolchenko and major Yuri Baranov on raids. " I knew that Yura and Sasha were looking for me, but I never asked them a question... I would never use our friendly relations to my advantage"- admits Baranov.

« I decided for myself a long time ago If they catch me, I won’t twist and turn. I have never lied to the police" Until recently, the police considered Viktor Ivanovich a minor figure in the party of counterfeiters, who decided to take all the blame upon himself.

« I was taken to Stavropol as a general, IN two traffic police cars with flashing lights were driving ahead».

During the search, a compact printing press, stacks of printed money and five notebooks describing research were discovered. On the same day, a report was placed on the desk of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, and the next day a group of Moscow experts flew out.

During the investigative experiment, Viktor Ivanovich created watermarks, letterpress and intaglio printing on paper, cut the sheet and applied the treasury number with a numberer. By the end of the performance, there were no longer any skeptics left in the room.

Viktor Baranov developed an interest in money as a child, when he collected a collection of old banknotes. He was always in good standing with teachers, was an excellent student until the fifth grade, attended art school, wrote beautiful sunsets. He was best at making copies of famous paintings - “Alyonushka” by Vasnetsov, “Morning in a Pine Forest” by Shishkin and others.

After seventh grade, Victor went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school. Within a year, he mastered the specialty of a parquet carpenter and wanted to become a pilot. At the flying club I gathered a large group of guys and began to engage in parachuting, making several jumps. Having listened to his mother, Baranov abandoned the idea of ​​going into the airborne forces, completed a driver's course at DOSAAF and went to serve in an autobat.

— When I started making money, I was one hundred percent sure that nothing would work out. But it was interesting to test my capabilities,- Victor recalls.

Over 12 years of research, he mastered more than a dozen printing specialties, devoted three years to the invention of the watermark, two to intaglio printing ink. I studied textbooks for printing students for a long time. The inventor worked day and night, locked in his barn. The results of the work can be seen today in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The exhibition occupies an entire room.

The genius is especially proud of the solution he invented for removing copper oxides during etching. All printers in the world have been struggling with this problem for a long time. Baranov built a reagent from four components - two poison copper, two remove its oxides. The entire process takes less than two minutes. Subsequently, Goznak worked for 14 years on this etching agent, which received the secret name “Baranovsky”.

Baranov's first banknote was a fifty-ruble note. It had only one difference from the original - out of respect for Lenin, the counterfeiter made the leader twenty years younger. He released only a few fifty kopecks - 70 pieces. Stavropolets decided to make the “quarter” - the most secure of Soviet banknotes. " If the ruble were the most difficult thing, I would do it... I wasn’t interested in money as such».

The only serious acquisition in all these years was a car. According to Viktor Ivanovich, the entire amount was paid to him from honest labor savings. " I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have girls. And there was no TV, there was only a small refrigerator. I didn't need it - I was doing work" All the money was spent on the production of new equipment. He did not give counterfeit bills to his family. " My wife once asked where the money came from,- recalls Baranov. - I said that I offer my inventions to factories. I didn’t give my wife a lot of money - 25, 30, 50 rubles».

Baranov often observed the behavior of sellers in the markets and analyzed how money “moves.” He noticed that fishmongers always take banknotes with wet hands, and meatmongers often have blood on their hands. And Caucasians willingly take new crisp bills. As a result, Baranov added 70 fifty dollars, after which he decided to give up on them.

He was not interested in wealth - he just needed funds for other projects. He calculated that this would require about 30 thousand rubles. The required amount was printed and the inventor went to Crimea to change money. Unfortunately for him, the tomato seller stole his suitcase with money and the machine had to be turned on again.

Baranov had no friends. He organized an “open day” for suspicious neighbors. The old women had a view of the metalworking machine, the enlarger and the developing tanks - Victor hid everything interesting in disassembled form under the shelves. Only the neighbor-hunter continued to believe that the owner was pouring shot in the barn at night.

Somehow, while creating a protective net, Baranov did not pay attention to the fact that the cliche was inverted. As a result, he discovered that in the place where the wave should have risen, there was a descent. Considering that no one would notice this, it was decided not to reject the batch. But in one of the banks, a sharp-eyed cashier noticed the difference and raised the alarm.

« By the time of my arrest, all my equipment had been dismantled,- he says. - I was going to drive through ponds and lakes and scatter it there in parts. I didn’t throw it away only because it’s April and it’s muddy and you can’t get through it. And thank God. Otherwise, divers would have to look for these parts at the bottom of reservoirs».

From the Stavropol pre-trial detention center, Baranov was transported to Moscow, to Butyrka. Every day he was visited by specialists, to whom he told about his research during twelve investigative experiments.

The Goznak technologist wrote in his conclusion: “ The counterfeit banknotes in denominations of 25 and 50 rubles made by V.I. Baranov are superficially close to genuine banknotes and are difficult to identify in circulation. That is why this counterfeit was very dangerous and could cause distrust of the population in genuine banknotes».

Viktor Ivanovich willingly shared his work. For the Minister of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, Baranov outlined recommendations on ten pages to improve the protection of rubles from counterfeiting. His sentence by firing squad was replaced with a colony, and he was given three years less than the maximum sentence.

Baranov served his sentence in a special regime colony in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. He showed his talents there too: “ I wrote to the newspaper. I once won a competition for the best article on all ITK. Then they sent me a bonus - 10 rubles. And I was a director - I headed amateur performances. We had a choir of more than three hundred people, they took first place for seven years in a row».

Returning to Stavropol after imprisonment in 1990, Baranov again began to invent. " The meaning of human life is creative work. What was given to me, I realized, even if I had to endure a lot of suffering and serve».

He still had no friends; his first wife divorced him in the ninth year of imprisonment. At the Analogue plant, where he soon got a job, Baranov proposed a new method for growing nickel mesh in batteries. " They told me then: “Who are you? Experts from Germany came here, but they didn’t come up with anything new!” And I promised them that they would supply me with more cognac. And so it happened».

Then Baranov opened the Franza company to produce perfumes. I made six barrels of perfume, 200 liters each. But a few years later the company closed, unable to withstand the competition with the wave of cheap foreign perfumes. " Their boxes were beautiful, but inside was bullshit».

Baranov invented a method for cleaning potatoes from soil, stones and other inclusions. The ingenious solution is to pour everything into a container filled with salt water. The potatoes will float, the rest will sink to the bottom. I wanted to patent my invention, but was refused because I filled out the form incorrectly...

Then followed a series of new inventions: ceramic car paint, resistant to acids and alkalis, furniture made from paper waste, water-based furniture varnish, adhesive paste, lightweight brick, healing balm. Some of the inventions were successfully implemented. At the request of a Moscow company, Viktor Ivanovich developed his own trade protection system, which is much more effective than barcodes.

Baranov never had any thoughts about going abroad. He doesn't particularly value money. He needs them only to invent something new. He says that he will never give away the technology for making “Baranovsky” banknotes to anyone.