The Working-Class People of Russia Give Putin the Finger in New Documentary
(WorldNews Entertainment)

The Foundation Pit, a dystopian novel by the Soviet satirist Andrei Platonov (written in 1930, but not published in the Soviet Union until 1987) is oddly pertinent to the struggles of post-Soviet Russians. A fanciful narrative that captured the absurdities of living in the Stalinist era, the plot concerns a group of workers who become drained of all energy when they´re sucked into a foundation pit of a gigantic house meant to house the entire country´s working class. The absurdist premise is a metaphor for the gap between idealistic rhetoric and authoritarian reality that inspired black humor during those dark times. A similar...