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“... In Vladimir Sorokin’s novel The Queue, one of the protagonists is struggling with a crossword: ‘1 Across – Russian Soviet writer.’ Suggestions come from people next to him in the long line that is the book’s setting and subject – Sholokhov, Mayakovsky? – but are rejected, because neither fits both adjectives at the same time ...”

“... public statement which would have been expected from the other novel. Stichomythia run wild, Vladimir Sorokin’s The Queue consists solely of one-line exchanges between members of a queue – the longest in Moscow – which, some two thousand strong, winds its way up and down the alleys and streets of a suburban district in pursuit of some ...”

“... without standing out from a family resemblance to Tarkovsky and Zvyagantsev. The screenplay by Vladimir Sorokin, however, is a dark pleasure: surreal, satirical and embedded in the specifics of Russian history and culture. Sorokin, whose portrayal of a near-future Moscow as a modern version of Ivan the Terrible’s ...”

“... of employment, designed in part to cut the huge cost of the theatrical army. The business manager, Vladimir Kokonin, defeated him in a fashion unthinkable in Soviet times. ‘People are going to have to start justifying their salaries,’ Kokonin announced. ‘We don’t want time-serving civil service types.’ Grigorovich has gone with dignity: not so Oleg ...”

“... how is one to compare the loss to Russia of, say, Stravinsky with that of the electronics engineer Vladimir Zvorykin or the aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky? As the book proceeds, figures who left Russia by other routes before and sometimes after the 1922 expulsions are considered: they include Isaiah Berlin, Roman Jakobson and Pitirim ...”

“... major assets in a racket – so-called loans for shares – devised by one of its beneficiaries, Vladimir Potanin, and imposed by Chubais, operating as the neo-liberal Rasputin at Yeltsin’s court. The president and his extended ‘Family’ (relatives, aides, hangers-on) naturally took their own share of the loot. It is doubtful whether the upshot had any ...”

“... Vernadsky, Postan; in economics, Leontief and Domar; in anthropology, Shirokogorov; in sociology, Sorokin; in philosophy, Koyré and Kojève. Other names could be added. Once Stalin was gone, dissidents within Russia revived the 19th-century tradition of the intelligent as outspoken critic of the established order. Solzhenitsyn, Bukovsky and others attacked ...”