The first painting in the collection was a still life by Pavel Kuznetsov from the 1920s. I bought it in 1993 for $5,000. This was the first serious piece I wanted to buy: some close friends of mine had works by Kuznetsov in their house, and I always really liked this artist. When I started earning money, I immediately decided that I would collect paintings. I'd had this idea since my early youth. It was relatively clear to me that I would be creating a museum collection of pre-revolutionary Russian painting, from Mir Iskusstva [“World of Art”, a Russian magazine and the artistic movement inspired and embodied by it – Ed.] to the avant-garde. Now this idea seems banal, but at that time Larionov, Goncharova and Lentulov were much less known than they are now. In the USSR, they were barely spoken of.

From early childhood, of course. I always liked to collect and organise things. I was serious about collecting stamps and model cars. Nowadays I can't tell one car from another. At that time, I knew every single car model that was produced in the world. Then I collected model aeroplanes and also knew all the planes — both military and civil aircraft. After finishing school, I sold them all. I wanted something more serious. Some family friends had a collection of paintings at home. And I was sorry that we didn't have any.

One of Petr’s earliest roles after leaving Moscow State University was as a senior researcher at the Institute for Systems Analysis of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. His career at the institute lasted from 1981 to 1988 and saw him rise through the ranks from junior to senior research fellow. It was also where he would first meet the future Acting Prime Minister of Russia Yegor Gaidar, an economist by trade.

In 1989, Pyotr aven was appointed as an advisor to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During this period, he was sent under contract to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria as a research fellow. He would remain in Austria for two years.