Vladimir Voinovich

In 1982, a Russian emigre writer living in Stockdorf, West Germany, bought an expensive airline ticket and flew back to the Soviet Union via Lufthansa. The writer, Vitaly Kartsev, bore a striking resemblance to Vladimir Voinovich, a Russian emigre writer living in Stockdorf, West Germany. Kartsev's ticket was more expensive than an ordinary flight from Germany to the Soviet Union because it involved traveling 60 years into the future as well as the miles from Munich to Moscow.

Writer Vladimir Voinovich has spent decades skewering Russia's bureaucracy and power structure — and in some cases predicting the future with uncanny accuracy. Soviet officials punished him by stripping him of his citizenship in 1980 and expelling him. Six years later, writing from exile, he published the novel "Moscow 2042. " It described a shrunken, post-Soviet Russia run by a former KGB spy who had been stationed in Germany. That was years before Vladimir Putin, a former spy based in Germany, actually did rise to power.

With an ironic smile, Vladimir N. Voinovich stepped to the microphone to offer apologies to his audience. Outside the House of Writers theater on Herzen Street, traffic was frozen solid. The flashing blue lights of militia patrols could be spotted in the jam, and rumors spread from car to car of fights and gun battles breaking out in town. Two days earlier, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin had dissolved Parliament and blockaded its headquarters, known as the White House.

In the final pages of his new novel, satirist Vladimir Voinovich likens Russia to a zoo. After years of yearning, the animals have been released and enjoy "the pleasure of running around on the grass." But the carnivores are gobbling prey with abandon, so the herbivores decide freedom isn't worth the constant fear of being eaten. They want the zookeeper back.

In the final pages of his new novel, satirist Vladimir Voinovich likens Russia to a zoo. After years of yearning, the animals have been released and enjoy "the pleasure of running around on the grass." But the carnivores are gobbling prey with abandon, so the herbivores decide freedom isn't worth the constant fear of being eaten. They want the zookeeper back.

She stands like a steel reed on the stage of the Bolshoi Conservatory, her tiny figure encased in gold lame, her mouth marked by a single streak of scarlet. Only her hands move, now flaying a violent chord, now lulling the violin almost to sleep. At intermission, the audience is ecstatic; fans rush the stage, shower her with flowers, even kneel at her feet and kiss her hand. At performance's end, after three encores, she is flooded with roses, tulips and carnations--more than 50 bouquets in all.

A funny thing happened to Vladimir Voinovich on his way to becoming a writer. "I wanted to be a normal realist, to depict life as it is," the genial, white-haired author said during a recent visit to New York. "But real life in the Soviet Union is so absurd, it forced me to become a satirist."

Writer Vladimir Voinovich has spent decades skewering Russia's bureaucracy and power structure — and in some cases predicting the future with uncanny accuracy. Soviet officials punished him by stripping him of his citizenship in 1980 and expelling him. Six years later, writing from exile, he published the novel "Moscow 2042. " It described a shrunken, post-Soviet Russia run by a former KGB spy who had been stationed in Germany. That was years before Vladimir Putin, a former spy based in Germany, actually did rise to power.

Russia's most feared counterintelligence service took on even wider powers under a law approved Friday in parliament, and critics warned that the country was sliding back toward Soviet-era repressions. The FSB, a modern-day successor to the Soviet KGB, will now have the authority to issue warnings to people who have broken no laws but are viewed as potential criminals. Rights monitors have criticized the law as a throwback to the times when Russians lived in fear of state persecution for appearing ideologically objectionable.

With an ironic smile, Vladimir N. Voinovich stepped to the microphone to offer apologies to his audience. Outside the House of Writers theater on Herzen Street, traffic was frozen solid. The flashing blue lights of militia patrols could be spotted in the jam, and rumors spread from car to car of fights and gun battles breaking out in town. Two days earlier, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin had dissolved Parliament and blockaded its headquarters, known as the White House.

She stands like a steel reed on the stage of the Bolshoi Conservatory, her tiny figure encased in gold lame, her mouth marked by a single streak of scarlet. Only her hands move, now flaying a violent chord, now lulling the violin almost to sleep. At intermission, the audience is ecstatic; fans rush the stage, shower her with flowers, even kneel at her feet and kiss her hand. At performance's end, after three encores, she is flooded with roses, tulips and carnations--more than 50 bouquets in all.

A funny thing happened to Vladimir Voinovich on his way to becoming a writer. "I wanted to be a normal realist, to depict life as it is," the genial, white-haired author said during a recent visit to New York. "But real life in the Soviet Union is so absurd, it forced me to become a satirist."

In 1982, a Russian emigre writer living in Stockdorf, West Germany, bought an expensive airline ticket and flew back to the Soviet Union via Lufthansa. The writer, Vitaly Kartsev, bore a striking resemblance to Vladimir Voinovich, a Russian emigre writer living in Stockdorf, West Germany. Kartsev's ticket was more expensive than an ordinary flight from Germany to the Soviet Union because it involved traveling 60 years into the future as well as the miles from Munich to Moscow.

In what an official described Thursday as a mass apology for past injustices, Soviet citizenship has been restored for novelist Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn and 22 others who were once reviled and punished as critics of the Soviet system.