Yerofeyev made his living at any job he could keep. He didn’t keep them long, generally, but he did rise to the post of foreman. He commanded a small brigade of men who were laying cable, or pretending to, in the town of Sheremetyevo outside Moscow. “This is what we would do. One day we would play poker, the next day we would drink vermouth, on the third day we’d play poker, and on the fourth day it was back to vermouth.… For a while everything was perfect. We’d send off our socialist pledges once a month and we’d get our pay twice a month.
