Aksenov’s The Burn: Searing the Hearts of Men

VASILII AKSENOV knew his uncensored novelThe Burn(Ozhog), written between 1969 and 1975, would be far more incendiary than anything else he had written to that point. Aksenov kept the manuscript close, knowing how dangerous it was, but a couple of years after he finished it, officers of the KGB came to him to warn him about it, saying they would overlook other publications abroad and even the uncensored compilationMetropolif onlyOzhogwould not appear in print. This novel about the disillusionment of Soviet intelligentsia following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 combined fictionalized episodes based