English Summary
Editor’s Letter
By Igor Garanin
Pardon me. It would seem we’ve survived half the winter. How much is left? O heavenly and earthly gods: why oh why did our distant ancestors choose to live in these wind-exposed lands? There isn’t a single rundown ridge or mountain pass to block the northern air. I often wonder what our forebears were thinking: perhaps they were conflict-averse, and so they crawled further and further in whichever direction would not require getting into wars or feuds. Or they wanted to prove, to themselves and the world, that nobody is tougher than Slavs and we are the only ones who can make it through the storms and thunderstorms, blizzards and windfalls. And we continue to prove it. You can’t get us: not with sanctions, not with chemicals, not with the massive Moscow reconstruction project. As I write this letter, snow storms have kicked up three times outside my window. I skipped lunch, just so as to avoid getting caught up in that hostile whirlwind. How well I now understand those who travel to far-off southern countries in these cold parts of the year. I won’t be able to all winter.
However, I have succeeded in my feeble attempts to warm up. I spent several days in November on the Côte d’Azur. It was 22 degrees out. Just saying — these are notes in the margin. Naturally, we all know how much the Russian aristocracy loved Nice, how many houses and manors they had there. But — attention — I discovered evidence that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had also been there. I remember he stayed in Shushenskoe, I remember Zurich, but the Côte d’Azur? Well, excuse me. I decided to study the question and encountered research done by the magazine “Motherland,” on the subject of the proletariat leader’s life between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. And what do you know — over the course of twelve years, Ilyich spent only 199 days in the motherland. What’s more, for the last ten years,