Paper Landscape

Vasily Aksyonov is a world-renowned writer, winner of the Russian Booker Prize and a knight of the French Order of Arts and Literature. The novella "Paper Landscape" (1982) was written in the early years of emigration and first published in the USA. The main character, Igor Velosipedov, arrives in America from Soviet reality, which is depicted with bitter irony.
Yesterday's Soviet engineer, convinced that the "paper world of bureaucracy" is to blame for everything, is surprised to find the same paperwork and bureaucracy in America - everything he tried to escape from. Will this be a collapse of illusions? Is there hope for a new life and love?

I am for a revolution of 465 degrees Fahrenheit, and let me disagree with you, dear comrade Ray Bradbury: the destruction of paper will not lead to totalitarianism, but rather, on the contrary - true communism, the dream of Friedrich Engels. After all, in the sacred fire of the anti-paper revolution, all our disgusting paperwork, applications, references, orders and extracts from orders, resolutions, protocols, receipts, warrants, schedules, diagrams, denunciations... will be burned. I will be told that artistic values, particularly literature, will suffer. Well, as sad as it may be, it will have to be sacrificed. Let us sing more, play musical instruments more.
Vasily Aksyonov