Moscow, during the collapse of the Soviet system: In a hospital, young people awaiting heart operations and possible death, live just for today with mischief-making and even love affairs, under the stringent gaze of the old matron, Baba Nastya. Here one of the patients, a young Turkmen, meets a Greek Comsomol boy, a Russian Stalinist with a 'robotic' heart, and the lovely but tragic Mary. To whom does the future belong - to the soulless robots or the poetical souls?

A Burglar of the Better Sort offers, in the English translation of Charles S. Kraszewski, the entirety of Czyzewski's surviving literary output, from surrealistic plays like Donkey and Sun in Metamorphosis and his inimitable 'formistic poems' through the playful Christmas 'pastorals'...

Pavel Krasheninnikov (born 1964) is a prominent Russian politician, state official, and professor of law.

He studied at Sverdlovsk School of Law and then did graduate work there. He subsequently taught at the Ural State Law University. In the 1990s he served as an expert on legislation for the Supreme Soviet and worked in senior posts in various state authorities, including as head of Russia's Ministry of Justice under Boris Yeltsin. He spent a decade as rector of the Russian School of Private...