The works of Yuz Aleshkovsky for a long time, up to the middle of the 90s, were published in small editions only abroad. And this is dramatic and funny, as well as his prose itself, because it (as well as the works of Zoshchenko and Ven .) It is intended for "internal use" .. Where a Russian person will laugh or almost cry, an American or a European will only again note his inability to understand “this mysterious people”. The heroes of Aleshkovsky hard workers, sages and natural philosophers, are constantly in a state of local war with the absurdity of “sovkov’s” life and always come out of it as winners. Their fanciful stories, fused with the author’s Rabelaisian irony, are parts of a single monologue confession. This is the language of the street and the zone, communal kitchens and co-offices, the language and voice, according to Brodsky, “of the Russian consciousness, criminalized by national experience ... mocking itself and, therefore, not completely destroyed” ..