Life in Moscow; Communism and now
Publisher: Lulu
Published: 2011
Place of publication: USA
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 197
ISBN-13: 9781470929015
Description: Are you interested to know more about Russia and understand the reason behind  puzzling and unpredictable politics of the Kremlin? It is simple: it is all about personal wealth, it has always been starting from 1917 and it will always be. In a way we still see the same old communist society with the same ideas... These is no politics, no democracy, no culture, no business and even no crime - it's just personal wealth. 

In this book I show how it was really like to live in Moscow, USSR in the mid-1980s (current political elite grow from the 1980s just like the author). The focus is on different aspects of everyday life, such as shopping, reading books and newspapers, going to work, church, cinema, watching movies and TV etc, shedding light on some of the frequently bizarre problems we faced. This book is written from a first person perspective, with me being the main character. The first part of each story is narrated in a very personal and emotional style, and there are elements that can be sad, funny, ironic, optimistic or pessimistic. The conclusion of each story is written in a scientific style by way of an update of how matters have progressed in the last 25 years, i.e. up to the present time, to find a picture quite different from the official party line as well as common Western perception. Russia is perceived to develop along the democratic pathway, which would suggest independent justice, crime prevention and investigation, civil rights and a lot of things that are absent there.

I think that the book will appeal to the broad Western public with an interest in aspects of Russia and other Communist or developing countries; anyone wishing to travel, invest, do business or in any way be exposed to Russian reality (and in fact to the entire former Soviet bloc); as well as Russian expats interested in alternative interpretations of Russian reality. In addition, the book could also be of interest to readers in the post-Soviet space and the former Soviet Republics.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: How to Fix a TV Set; title: Are THEM Russians at All?; title: The Soviet Movie Making Machine; title: Let Us Go to Church; title: Newspapers and Magazines; title: Shopping for Things; title: Shopping for Food; title: Shopping for Books; title: End of One Archipelago; title: Learning a Foreign Language; title: Everyday Marxism-Leninism; title: Getting a Flat; title: You Buy Vodka, But You Drink Vodochka!; title: No Tea – No Communism!; title: To a Lght Steam!; title: Flowers in the Swamp; title: A Minute of Silence; title: Fear; title: Cold; title: Career Pyramid; title: Is the KGB Omnipresent?; title: It’s off to Work We Go; title: It Was All About Money, Wasn’t It?; title: A Cossack Village; title: Shabashka Friends; title: Going West; title: Life-String; title: Trajectory and Epilogue