SOURCE: “Ridi Si Sapis,” in National Review, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, January 25, 1980, p. 110.

In the following review, Rickenbacker explores the tone and the subject matter of In Plain Russian, highlighting its distinction between humor and chaos.

It is of course no secret that a rich and boisterous literature is circulating behind the Iron Curtain, much of it in manuscript, and I mean manu-scriptum: I know men who have copied whole books in longhand because that was the only way they could possess them in the underworld of the tyrants. Those who are acquainted with the Manesse translations (into German) of the modern Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Georgian short-story writers enjoy a particularly broad avenue of access to this literature (one thinks immediately of Francisc Munteanu, Lajos Baráth, Grigol Tschikovani). In one way or another this literature expresses the pain of sensitive men trapped in a prison run by barbarians...