It is my real pleasure and honor to add a few more wishes to the birthday greetings of a very special person – Mr. Jack Mc Gurgan. He is the one who stands behind everything which has been happening in the journal from its very beginnings, the one who is extremely helpful and supportive, the one who is caring enough not just to ask but to do, the one who loves and respects the Russian culture and the people so much that he independently studied Russian and learned it well enough to do beautiful translations.

Dear Vladimir Mikhailovich, I could hardly ever imagine that I would be once so lucky to send my greetings to two great men (without whom this journal would never exist) with the same jubilee in the same journal issue. Since your birthday has already been celebrated and I’m sure many wonderful words have been pronounced and written to you, I feel really discouraged to say something new and original.

The worst danger in creating birthday greetings is to repeat something that has already been written and said many times before. To create original words for such a humorous and creative person as you are is a very complicated task. What if while reading these words you would suddenly hear “our thoughts running away” —thoughts that do not go together and are not good enough?! But we really want to look unique in your eyes! With that said, we still won’t break with tradition.

I am happy to introduce to you this fifth issue which due to a Russian tradition can be considered a jubilee one. Since “five” as a number reminds us more of a child than of a mature adult, we have picked a corresponding theme for the special section of the journal, that of early childhood education. This is just a joke, of course, though every joke has a hint of truth in it. Besides, we have a triple jubilee since both of my colleagues who stood behind the creation of this journal are celebrating their 70th birthday this summer (I wonder if they knew each other before and agreed on these dates earlier)