I'm amazed this blog still generates hits as I haven't posted anything of substance in years. The last post was simply a meander on my thoughts on the current state of affairs in Russia. I sorted through my Russian books as I cleaned my attic space in an effort to make more room for my ever growing vinyl collection. I kept my favorites upstairs, stuffing them into a narrow cabinet in one corner. Trying to fit everything into this small place made me think of a short story by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, in which he stumbles upon a magic paint that makes his tiny room grow bigger and bigger until he eventually gets lost in it. He was a forgotten writer until resurrected not so long ago by the New York Review of Books, which has since translated his short stories and novellas into five volumes . Well worth reading. There are so many of these writers who wrote during the Soviet era and whose works were essentially buried. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita didn't c