Vladimir Solovyov. Three Jews, or Consolation in Tears. A Novel with Epigraphs

"Sasha (Kushner) and Osya (Brodsky) are the two poles of our Leningrad life, my two pseudonyms; I slander one of them, and idolize the other. Sasha and Osya are my two alter egos, my past and my future, what I hate in myself and what I nurture and cultivate. I've provided arguments for both of them, strengthened their positions. I've imagined their motivations for them, explained their behavior. My two literary creations—Sasha and Osya. But damn it, there really were two such people, two Jews; they couldn't have just appeared in my dream of Leningrad!"—so wrote the third Jew, Vladimir Solovyov, in 1975, in the book the reader now holds in his hands.
Since then, the book's hero, Brodsky, has died, and the villain, Kushner, in response to a publisher's offer to write his own version of the events described in Solovyov's autobiographical novel, sent a text at the end of 2001, which we quote here at the insistence of the author of this book: "As for V. Solovyov's libel, to appear under the same cover with a secret KGB agent, a liar and a scoundrel, despised by decent people both in the 1970s and 80s and today, released abroad by the authorities for provocative work, who slandered A.D. Sakharov, causing great trouble to many people... I do not consider it possible for me. ... His book emits a depressing stench..."
Here's another review of Solovyov's book: "Unfortunately, it's all true." That's what Dovlatov said.