by Elena Gorokhova
In the 1970s, I sat in my Leningrad apartment typing pages of forbidden books through four sheets of carbon paper, while three Metro stops away, censors sat at their desks branding manuscripts unacceptable. By then, some Soviet writers had learned to use the Aesopian language, with its hints and euphemisms, to get their books into print. Others poured onto paper the undisguised torment that filled their souls, knowing that their work would never see the light of bookstores.
