In the canteen she had a bowl of buckwheat kasha with sour cream, then she went to the features department, where she worked. Although she was a star, she did not yet merit an office of her own. She greeted her colleagues, then sat at a desk, put paper and carbons into a typewriter, and began to write.

The flight had been too bumpy even to make notes, but she had planned her articles in her head, and now she was able to write fluently, referring occasionally to her notebook for details. Her brief was to encourage young Soviet families to migrate to Siberia to work in the boom industries of mining and drilling: not an easy task. The prison camps provided plenty of unskilled labor, but the region needed geologists, engineers, surveyors, architects, chemists, and managers. However, Tanya in her article ignored the men and wrote about their wives. She began with an attractive young mother called Klara who had talked with enthusiasm and humor about coping with life at sub-zero temperatures.

Halfway through the morning Tanya’s editor, Daniil Antonov, picked up the sheets of paper from her tray and began to read. He was a small man with a gentle manner that was unusual in the world of journalism. “This is great,” he said after a while. “When can I have the rest?”

“I’m typing as fast as I can.”

He lingered. “While you were in Siberia, did you hear anything about Ustin Bodian?” Bodian was an opera singer who had been caught smuggling in two copies of Doctor Zhivago he had obtained while singing in Italy. He was now in a labor camp.

Tanya’s heart raced guiltily. Did Daniil suspect her? He was unusually intuitive for a man. “No,” she lied. “Why do you ask? Have you heard something?”

“Nothing.” Daniil returned to his desk.

Tanya had almost finished the third article when Pyotr Opotkin stopped beside her desk and began to read her copy with a cigarette dangling from his lips. A stout man with bad skin, Opotkin was editor in chief for features. Unlike Daniil he was not a trained journalist but a commissar, a political appointee. His job was to make sure features did not violate Kremlin guidelines, and his only qualification for the job was rigid orthodoxy.

He read Tanya’s first few pages and said: “I told you not to write about the weather.” He came from a village north of Moscow and still had the north-Russian accent.

Tanya sighed. “Pyotr, the series is about Siberia. People already know it’s cold there. Nobody would be fooled.”

“But this is all about the weather.”

“It’s about how a resourceful young woman from Moscow is raising her family in challenging conditions—and having a great adventure.”

Daniil joined the conversation. “She’s right, Pyotr,” he said. “If we avoid all mention of the cold, people will know the article is shit, and they won’t believe a word of it.”

“I don’t like it,” Opotkin said stubbornly.

“You have to admit,” Daniil persisted, “Tanya makes it sound exciting.”