So last year, after a bit of pestering by a friend, I succumbed to the notion
of reading what I think will be called a modern classic of russian literature.
I am talking, of course, about Ludmila Ulitskaya's "The Big Green Tent".

The book follows a wide cast of characters through what were in the end the
last years of the soviet union.  Beginning in the fifties, still firmly in
Stalin's reign, we follow the main characters as they grow up and become
increasingly embedded in soviet counter-culture, dealing in everything from
"samizdat", and religion to increasingly abstruse sounding (at least to
non-post-soviet ears) plans to emigrate out of the country.

This, while still keeping a balanced narrative where we are lead to understand
the motivations of (some of) the faithful members of the regime as portrayed in
the novel.