There is much talk these days about a "creative class." Yet what was it like to truly be a member of the creative class, in the Soviet Union, in Leningrad for that matter. Where everything you wrote, everything you thought, everything you believed, was the province of the state. This amazing collection of memoirs (and a few poems and sketches) is about people who did not give in, who were not only intelligent and gifted writers, but also conscientious,...