Hero of the on-time completion of Moscow's new subway was until last week Chief Hard-Soil Excavation Engineer Mikhail Ifremov.
"I am a very cheerful manthat's why I am always fortunate!" Engineer Ifremov explained to a Soviet Court before which he was accused of wholesale embezzlement.
Witnesses testified that Cheerful Ifremov squandered 4,200 embezzled rubles no great sum (see col. 3)on taxi rides to and from a farm on which he kept pigeons.
"Frequently he would put aside his blueprints," testified another witness. "Then he would take all the telephone receivers off their hooks...