few months ago, a Sovietologist (as we used to be called) who was an exchange student in Moscow with me in the late 1960s wrote and asked if I happened to have kept a as a memento of our Moscow days. Sobachka (literally, little dog) was the metal device we used to block the keyholes to our dorm rooms in Moscow State University so that others couldn’t use their own keys to get in. Not only did I not have a sobachka, but I had also completely forgotten that such a thing existed and would not recognize one if I saw it. But that’s because I don’t notice things. Karl Schlögel, a German historian who has written extensively on the history of the Soviet Union, is the opposite, and his wonderful noticing of things and how they sit in space is on full display in the 900-plus pages of his newly translated book.
