Lisnaholic

The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is a humourous novel written by Vladmir Voinovich in 1969, but is set in an earlier era. Not some great Russian classic, but it's amusing in parts, and sheds light on rural life under the collectivised system introduced by Stalin. Anyone who gets the same US translation as me will find this on page 92:-

"Evening had come. The first small stars had appeared in the sky. A radio attached to a post near the kolkhoz office was playing Dunayevsky's songs with lyrics by Lebedev-Kumach."

I found a song by that same song-writing team, who were active in the 1930s. So imagine the rural scene again, but now with this inescapable musical backdrop:-



My verdict: I have a strong aversion to enforced jollity of any kind. If I was a character in the story of Ivan Chonkin, I'd be sabotaging that radio the first night they turned it on.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953