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Themes

Soviet Reality

• Stalinist Terror, the Secret Police, the Prison Camp System
• Housing Shortage, Heart of a Dog, Apartment Exchanges
• Foreigners, Foreign currency, Foreign currency stores
• Atheism, Bezbozhnik
• Documents

Religion

• Christological controversies (Historical/Mythological)
• Bible
• An Overview of Historical Documents from the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Apocrypha: Gospel of Nicodemus
• Renan's Life of Jesus
• Dualism/Manichaeism

Literature

• Goethe's Faust (and Gounod's)
• Pushkin

Music

• Verdi's Aida
• Gounod's Faust
• Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
• Glorious Baikal
• Hallelujah!

Timeline of the novel

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Created by Kevin Moss at Middlebury College

Please address any comments & corrections to moss@middlebury.edu!