Anatoly Gladilin. Rehearsal on Friday.

Has Stalinism been vanquished forever, or has it never disappeared, but lain dormant, and could a chain of random events lead to its rebirth? Anatoly Gladilin's "Rehearsal on Friday," written way back in 1977 (when it had no chance of seeing the light of day), recounts incredible events that only at first glance seem phantasmagoric. And "The Gospel According to Robespierre," a cult Soviet-era book dedicated to the final years of the great French revolutionary, has lost none of its relevance.