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 a happier time, I have the sense that much of what I saw is showing through like the outlines of an old picture that has been superficially painted over. Here then is how it all looked fifteen years ago.

Black and white checkerboard

When the Marquis de Custine visited Russia in 1839, he said, with respect to the Russian seasons, that there are night and day and two twilights. I had been to Russia three times