A Russian Requiem

Two weeks before the failed right-wing coup of August 1991, Anton Czesich, an American in his late forties who has spent a mostly disillusioning career working overseas for the U.S. government, arrives in Moscow to take charge of a volatile American food distribution program—a program administered by Julie Stirvin, the love of his youth. She and Czesich have their own history, their own protracted cold war. Many miles away, in the mining center of Vostok, Soviet bureaucrat Serghei Propenko,...