"The New Yorker" of Oct. 13, 2003 has an excellent article by Editor David Remnick who worked in Russia for some years -- "LETTER FROM RUSSIA: Post-Imperial Blues." Remnick sets the stage by recollecting his entry into the USSR via the Helsinki-Leningrad train twenty years ago while reading Nabokov's story "Visit to a Museum." The story tells of a Russian emigre who is wandering through a provincial French museum and suddenly realizes he is back in Soviet Russia. It makes a most appropriate opening for Remnick's "then" and "now" piece. The Soviet customs officer, by the way, looks at Remnick's paperback "Spring in Fialta" collection, obviously recognizes the author's name but chooses to overlook the matter. It's not LOLITA, after all.