THE SOVIET PREDICAMENT

An old, clattering bus wound through a rural landscape of barley and wheat fields and blooming green meadows. The now-crumbling walls of former Soviet collective farms poked out through the otherwise lush, green landscape, testifying to the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the bus, passengers clutched their few belongings as the ruins and meadows, barley and wheat, passed by. I got up to ask the driver to stop at a crossroad on a gravel road. “There will be a man with a big dog waiting for me,” I said, and moved to a front seat so as not to