The Soviets brought far from home
"It’s best not to talk politics with patients, but if a woman has an unusual mitral valve, it’s tempting to think that she herself must be interesting,” sighs the Russian doctor, essayist and short-story writer Maxim Osipov towards the end of his 2017 essay “The Children of Dzhankoy.” The temptation does not, alas, live up to expectations for Osipov. His mitral valve patient is “a thirty-six-year-old journalist and amateur pilot who misses the USSR.” “Now, that was strength” she claims. Osipov, with typical economy, comments, “nothing interesting.
