Summer 1978. I lived then for the long line to the phone booth marked by the word LENINGRAD (separate phone booths for different cities) to hear my father's voice crackle dimly against every technological problem the country was experiencing, from a failed nuclear test in the Kazakh desert to a sick braying billy goat in nearby Belorussia. We were all connected by failure back then. The whole Soviet Union was just fading out.