Popov’s short stories move from the village prose genre into the territory of the grotesque via the stark reality of late Soviet life. The Russia of Merry-making in Old Russia and Other Stories is variously the Russia of Siberia, of a peasant hut, or of a decaying Moscow factory workshop. In a landscape peopled by sympathetic yet stunned characters caught between the harsh routine of everyday existence and the trappings of the modern world, these men and women resort to vodka and to tall tales, and to physical and verbal abuse, to dull the pain of the dehumanizing Soviet regime that is their lot. Freely mixing the fantastic with the concrete, Popov’s stories offer a darkly comic glimpse into the soul of a population debased by a regime.