This 364 page work records Igort's visits to the Ukraine and Russia towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, but the bulk of the work is devoted to retelling the tales of those he meets of their experiences in these countires during the 20th.  More than one octogenarian is able to recall the horrifying days of the Stalin's enforced starvations during the 1930s as well as the equally barbaric incursions and depredations of the Nazis during the Second World War.  Hearing these stories, one has to marvel that their tellers were able to survive that which they recount..  There is much more on hand here than this, of course, but it is those tales which are so outside of the experience of those who lived their lives here in the New World of the Americas that burn themselves strongest into the mind's eye.  Igort, who will be known to many a Copacetic customer for his masterful work in Baobab, which was a part of the Ignatz line of graphic albums that he himself presided over, stretches out here and employs a wide range of expressive drawing, portraiture, illustration, and, of course, comics in recounting these many tales.  We highly recommend this work to anyone ready, willing and able to learn more of how life was lived in the Old World on the other side of the Iron Curtain, even before the curtain had been drawn as well as after it had been taken down.