☆❀☆

Holy shit, M&M. You might know already because I rant about it so often, but what a fukken RIDE. Like LK says above it helps to know some Soviet history, because I kinda grew up with it - right next door you can't really not see what's going on - and like... Soviet Union was so bizarre. You won't ever understand Soviet people's capacity of surviving both horrifying and just plain weird ridiculous situations if you haven't read M&M, rest assured that the USSR reality could be even stranger than that book.

And yeah, there's plenty of political darts being thrown around, and it does help to know some literary classics, but even without them it's still a nice window to Moscow Back Then, I mean, if the literal Satan had decided to pay them a visit. He's not the worst evil you'll encounter in that book - that should say something. Best option is if you can get a book where the originally censored parts are marked, because that's another, very real time window to things you could not say in the USSR.

(One of those things is "she smiled, showing her teeth".)