Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others. Shteyngart describes Misha returning to Russia after 10 years in the United States and realizing that 'the cold war was won by one side and lost by another,' as he sees defeat written in the. No wonder young people talk about “going beyond the cordon” when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and passable as they’ve ever been. You Know, this happens a lot to Russians. “From the moment I bought my ticket, I had a premonition I wasn’t returning to New York anytime soon.
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