RussiaANDREI’s family lived in a block of flats near the centre of Moscow, but he did not go there on his return from England.
His parents, Natalya and Igor, were allocated a small dacha, a summer house built of wood, in the country seventy miles north of the city. It was here that Andrei spent the eight weeks of the school holidays in the summer with his mother and his father’s mother, Ludmila. Andrei called her ‘Babushka’.
Igor worked at a university institute in Moscow. He spent his week editing the texts of ancient Russian poems and stories and teaching university students. He used to come to join his family at weekends. Natalya worked there as a translator of English books.
The dacha was set in a large plot of land. The family could use it only in the short, hot Russian summer. Eac
