The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.
"Puss Riot and other sins" - The Putin system is taking on more and more features of the Soviet system. The big fear and paranoia returns.
The story is about how a metropolitan writer, concerned about the “fifth point of his questionnaire,” instead of the noble or, at worst, rabbit fur assigned to him by rank, was given a “medium fluffy domestic cat” at the Literary Fund, and how he, previously quiet and inconspicuous, ventured to a “mutiny on a ship” confidently cutting through the waters of “socialist realism.”