Lenin House, Kazan. Lenin lived here with his family in 1888 after returning from exile for participating in student anti-government activity.
In an Irish pub in Kazan a song by the Cranberries played and I was transported back to San Francisco years ago, where I regularly played the Cranberries for a dear friend from Ohio. I repeatedly have this experience of listening to western music in Russia while knowing that American friends who have traveled little outside the lower 48 fear the brutish Russian Other bent on conquest of refined and wonderful western Europe.
