Do the elderly live with their families or do they live alone in nursing homes? I read that three generations of a family may share the same apartment. – Patty Edwards, Ventura, Calif.

Housing was one of the biggest problems in Soviet Russia, and is today. People must wait to get a government-owned apartment. Only the wealthy can afford to buy one, so many people must live with their parents. Nursing homes are for those who either have no relatives, or no one to take care of them. In the Soviet years, there were communal apartments where two, three, four or more families shared one apartment. You still find several generations sharing one apartment. On the floor above mine, there lives a husband and wife and two adult children in one small two-room apartment. Ours is a condominium. It’s almost the same on the floor below, only the children are small. In Moscow the percentage of communal apartments is still significant.

I’m interested in the awful terrorist bombings that happened in Moscow three years ago. – Patty Edwards, Ventura, Calif.

There were three terrorist bombings, one in the underpass on Pushkin Square, and two in apartment buildings, one of which was eight stories high. Two hundred and ninety people were killed and about the same number wounded in the apartment building bombings. In the underpass on Pushkin Square, two men left a briefcase and a shopping bag filled with explosives. Thirteen people were killed and 118 wounded, among them two American citizens. Russian and American security organizations worked together to find the perpetrators of the terrorist act. The victims received financial aid from the government. In Moscow, several Wahabi members have been arrested and accused of bombing the Moscow buildings. One of the suspected perpetrators said the bombings were done on orders from Chechen field commander Khattab. But the top authority accused of ordering them was Sheik Abu Umar, who headed the terrorist training camps.

What is your favorite Russian proverb? – Patty Edwards, Ventura, Calif.

I don’t really have a favorite proverb. There is one that is common to both English and Russian: He who laughs last, laughs best. Here are a few more: The slower you go, the further you get. Only the grave will cure a hunchback. You reap what you’ve sown. Patience and labor will overcome all. And finally: Don’t blame the mirror if your mug is crooked!

How many policemen are there in Russia? How much are they paid? – Alan Kevan, Dumfries, U.K.

There are 330,000 policemen in Russia, which means that there are 2.2 policemen for every 1,000 people. This figure is about equal to the U.S. I should add, however, that we also have a Home Service Army Force that can come to the aid of the police at any given time. Our press notes that if you call the police in the U.S. they come immediately. That is not always the case here.

Regarding their salaries, a lieutenant used to earn 2500 rubles a month, but now makes about 3500-4000 rubles or $110-$126 monthly. This salary is nothing to write home about.

Tell me about the recent book by Vladimir Voinovich, which is critical of Solzhenitsyn. – William Kerr, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

The book by Voinovich is called "A Portrait on the Background of a Myth." In his time, Voinovich was expelled from the Writers’ Union and his books were forbidden in the Soviet Union. There is nothing new in the book. When Solzhenitsyn crossed Russia from one end to the other by rail and described all his meetings along the way, people applauded. Today, this irritates people. Voinovich does not deny the merits of "Gulag Archipelago," but says it should be analyzed again. Voinovich argues that Solzhenitsyn’s books are uninteresting, that they are commonplace platitudes. In fact, they are boring. I cannot but agree with that, though some will say that his volumes are equal to Shakespeare. Some consider him a writer equal to Leo Tolstoy. I would say this is not so. William, I have read Gulag Archipelago. I give Solzhenitsyn credit for disclosing the horrors and brutality of the Gulag camps, and I am not a literary critic. But in my opinion this is not a literary work. It reads like a boring document out of the KGB archives. This is no exaggeration. I could not get further than the middle of the book. It is a statistical collection of facts, not the work of a national writer –least of all a classic.

(E-mail Joe Adamov at editor@russiajournal.com)