Once in Kiev we were taken to the Neurosurgical Research Institute, a huge and ugly building with the endless corridors that are the curse of all large hospitals. The corridors were dark and poorly lit. On the walls one could see serious displays of the triumphs of Soviet neurosurgery, with grainy black and white photographs of heroic men in the tall white chef’s hats that Soviet surgeons used to wear, interspersed with hammers and sickles, red stars, inspirational slogans and photographs of scenes from the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call the Second World War. But everything, from
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