Film:

“White Tiger” (Белый тигр) (2012), directed by Karen Shakhnazarov. A mysterious German Tiger tank wreaking havoc on Soviet forces is hunted by an equally mysterious Soviet tankist who has the ability to communicate with tanks. It’s an eerie, unsettling, beautiful film. The Russian actors are superb. Watch the subtitled version, not the dubbed version, to hear their voices and really get this.

Music:

“Kukushka” (1990) by Viktor Tsoi and Kino. When I taught in Kyiv and Moscow, on weekend evenings I would see young people in parks or on street corners, someone with a guitar, and this was nearly always one they played. Pensive and haunting, it contemplates life and fate. “Will I lay like a rock or burn like a star?”

“Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43,” (1936) by Dmitri Shostakovich. Startling and beautiful, heavily indebted to Mahler. Shostakovich withdrew it because he was already in trouble with Stalin. It was first performed in 1961, well after Stalin’s death.

Book:

“The Master and Margarita” (1940) by Mikhail Bulgakov. Satan visits Soviet Moscow in the 1930s. Pontius Pilate agonizes over the crucifixion of Jesus. A novelist (the Master), suppressed by Soviet authorities, vanishes, and Margarita, his lover, desperately hunts for him. Bulgakov winds these disparate threads into a single tale. Another great work that could not be published until well after Stalin’s death.