By way of introduction, see ‘Sad Stories Always Make Me Blue‘.

Galya was a typical Russian woman of simple likes and dislikes. What she liked was money. And what she didn’t like were those who had more than she. One might say that, among the anthill apartments of this run-down factory town, the haves were not [...]

The train to the Black Sea is packed with holidaymakers. Pasty faces of city Russians look expectantly out of every window. Soon they will acquire some summer colour. Maybe they’ve caught a little sun already. It’s a fine day.
You can tell it’s a holiday train because everyone is getting up, sitting down, getting [...]

By way of introduction, see ‘Sad Stories Always Make Me Blue‘.

Galina Nikolaevna speaks faultless French. She is one of those truly gifted linguists, a simultaneous interpreter. If she lived in New York, Galina would be pulling down a heavy salary at the United Nations. But living in Naberezhnye Chelny, only the odd job from the [...]

Over the Christmas period, I’m going to post some short stories I wrote while in Tatarstan. They come under the category of ‘True Lies’ - or what writers prefer to call ’semi-documentary’. I wrote them about real people - but sourced largely from local gossip.
The Story Of Sveta and Andrei
Perestroika opened the floodgates of [...]