The New Criterion

From January until May 1981, I was a Fulbright professor at Moscow State University, lecturing on contemporary American poetry and occupying with my wife, Sonja, two rooms (a so-called blok) in the university complex overlooking the city. It was an unusual time to be there: I became something of an anomaly as a poet and an American cultural representative when the United States had cut off all cultural exchange because of the Afghan War. As a result, I was treated like a rock star with large crowds lining up to attend my poetry readings in Moscow and the other cities Sonja and I visited in between my weekly lectures. I began at the time to put down these impressions of Russian life. But when I returned to Moscow in 1990 for the centenary of Pasternak, so much had changed that I put them aside. Now that Communism is making a comeback and Russians are viewing nostalgically what to many, even with its severe constraints, seems in retrospect ...

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