Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies

Acknowledgements

Because these stories are fiction, I should probably limit my acknowledgements of credit to the relevant Muse. But several friends have provided invaluable assistance in researching the material for these stories, and it’s the author’s prerogative to express his gratitude to them. These friends introduced me to the charms and peculiarities of Russian life, carefully read my work, and pointed out its solecisms—some of which, for my own perverse reasons, I have allowed to stand.

Alla Bourakovskaya read each of these stories with a sharp eye for its literary as well as factual qualities and gave me continued guidance on how things work, or don’t, in Russia. Valentina Markusova, Natasha Perova, Masha Lipman, Viktoria Mkrtchan, and Aleksandra Sheremeyeva also provided significant comment.

In the Jewish Autonomous Republic, I enjoyed a productive interview with David Vaiserman, whose book Kak Eto Bil proved very helpful. My example of socialist klezmer is based on a song that appeared in Ruth Rubin’s book Voices of a People.

In regards to “Anzhelika, 13,” I wish to acknowledge the precedence of Ludmilla Ulitskaya’s story “March 1953,” which appeared in Glas 6.

The story about Sergei Korolev’s journey from the gulag, recounted in “Orbit,” is drawn from James Harford’s masterful biography, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon.

My fable “Salt” is based on one collected in Russian Fairy Tales, selected by Aleksandr Afanasev. The story’s epigraph is taken from Robert Cottrell’s article “Kremlin Capitalism,” which appeared in the New York Review of Books, March 27, 1997.

No full accounting of my debts would be complete without mention of the Philadelphia Inquirer foreign desk, which named my wife, Inga Saffron, Moscow bureau chief in 1994, and thus sent our family on an extraordinary four-year adventure. The respect the Inquirer holds for the written endeavor extends beyond the perimeters of its staff, and I’m grateful for much incidental and vital support.

And I thank Inga, who was, as always, my stories’ first reader.