Abram Tertz

Prologue Whenever I was at the end of my strengtih, I would climb up on the window-sill and poke my head out through the narrow window. Down below, galoshes squelched and cats cried like children. Thus, for a few moments, I hung over the city, gulping its raw, damp air; then I jumped back on the...

Introduction I n an unreal time, autobiography is necessarily fiction. And no epoch was more bizarrely unreal and all-too-brutally real than that of Joseph Stalin. His reign began sometime in the late twenties and came to an end sometime in early March 1953. Ambiguity clings to both Stalin's...