Robert Mann is an admirer of Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Bely, Shukshin, Babel and other Russian writers. He has devoted years of study to the Old Russian epic that is known as the Igor Tale. He has many unorthodox theories that should be taken seriously only at your own risk. He has few friends and no admirers. Some say he doesn't even believe in Santa Claus. He is a close follower of the infamous scholar Yuri Marmeladov, discoverer of the Elijah leitmotif in the fiction of Dostoevsky. (See the satire The Master and Marmeladov.)