Selected Works. Volume Two

The second volume of the Selected Works includes two writings. The first, Historical Anecdotes, relates to the history of Bolshevik Russia. It is directed against the faith of a large part of humanity in socialist ideas of various kinds and presents the author’s historical anecdotes with his own notes and the commentary of Waldemar Schneiderbilt. The book also includes a preface-essay on ten myths of Soviet Russia. The second part of the volume is Moscow Bridge. The Beginning. These are the author’s recollections of the first steps of duplicate bridge in Soviet Russia (the initial decade, starting from the late 1960s). The book tells of the matches between Moscow teams and of the leading players of Moscow bridge in those years, of Moscow tournaments, and of the appearances of Muscovites at all-Union bridge competitions. It also conveys the atmosphere that surrounded bridge during the totalitarian communist regime in the country, and the romance of bridge—the most intellectual game ever invented by man, which has drawn into its orbit two hundred million players around the world.