Portuguese President Rebelo de Sousa takes Russian books on Dostoevsky and Yesenin
Nothing special, just the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the company of our ambassador Mikhail Kamynin, loading up on Russian books. What, one wonders, will Señor Rebelo de Sousa (by Portuguese standards, still a short surname) be reading tonight? Apart from my Telegram channel, naturally. I can make out two books from the "Dostoevsky" pavilion: Uncle’s Dream (for Fyodor Mikhailovich, hardly more than a flourish of the pen) and "Dostoevsky in the Recollections of His Contemporaries: The Petrashevtsy", not bad at all, good practice for his Russian. We once met on the beach at Ericeira, but one can hardly have a proper conversation there, all the more so as he was in nothing but his swimming trunks (also a format of diplomatic meeting). The third book, meanwhile, is evidently the second edition of the catalogue of the Voronezh exhibition "Yesenin: An Endless Legend", most likely from OGI; there will be no link, as I have no idea where they even found this rare book. Next time he should be given Zyama Gerdt as well, this time from me personally. That is how public diplomacy works: someone simply walks up to the president of a country and presents him with a good Russian book


