The book you are about to read is a rather unusual project.
"What's so unusual about it?" - the reader might object. "Hundreds of books have been written about prisoners, thousands - about cops." So what's the twist, as they say these days?
The twist lies in the fact that these sketches were written by both a prisoner and a criminal investigator. You'd expect the views of two people on opposite sides of the bars to differ radically - yet, surprisingly, they don't. The reader will soon discover that there's no ideological or psychological chasm between them. And here's something important: almost everything in this book is written in the first person, and many events happened.
Our first author, the aspiring writer Vladimir Rabinovich from Minsk, ran an illegal recording studio out of his home. Naturally, he wasn't distributing Komsomol hymns, but rather the kind of music that was, to put it mildly, not approved by the Party or the government. This underground activity earned him a decent income, but it also earned him a bunk in the grim walls of "Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1," located at 2 Volodarsky Street, Building 6, in Minsk.
The clash between a young, enterprising Jewish bootlegger and the late-Soviet penal system forms the core and sting of Rabinovich's raw, painfully honest stories.
Meanwhile, two and a half thousand kilometers to the east, in the Ural city of Sverdlovsk, senior criminal investigator and stoic police captain Alexander Couprin served on the other side of the law. He saw life from an entirely different angle, yet he also tells his stories vividly and with unmistakable flair.
In 1988, Captain Couprin was awarded a trip to Italy. He landed in Rome, promptly ditched the Soviet delegation he was assigned to chaperone, and walked straight into the American embassy. Two days later, he resurfaced in New York.
Around the same time, Rabinovich completed his sentence and emigrated through the Jewish visa quota, also ending up in New York.
And here's the strangest part: these two men never met.
Couprin eventually settled in California, where he still lives, while Rabinovich remained in the Big Apple. Both became contributors to the Los Angeles weekly Panorama, where I introduced them to each other in absentia.
Readers will appreciate the unique style and perspective these two authors bring to their stories. And the journey back to the Soviet 1980s? It just might leave behind a bittersweet aftertaste of nostalgia.
