Mountains of books! The intelligentsia were selling off their libraries. People had grown poor, of course, but it wasn’t just for the spare cash—ultimately books had disappointed them. People were disillusioned. It became rude to ask, “What are you reading?” Too much about our lives had changed, and these weren’t things that you could read about in books. Russian novels don’t teach you how to become successful. How to get rich…Oblomov lies on his couch, Chekhov’s protagonists drink tea and complain about their lives…
