Character: Felix Dzerzhinsky

In 1902, one of my comrades and I fled from hard labor in a boat along the Lena. Neither he nor I had ever held an oar before. Well, Lena is not the Moscow River. We turned to an old-timer for advice. And he says: "Science is simple, you have to row." We didn’t hold the oars in our hands for him. And he his: "Until you drown, you have to row."