In order to understand, and not meekly accept, what is happening, it is necessary and possible to put it into context. History is not a warehouse of analogies, but a museum of them. Gathered together, they teach a lesson to the future, revealing the present. The book by Alexander Genis, the author of intellectual bestsellers (Dovlatov and Environs, The Bookman's Kama Sutra, Personalities: Among Contemporaries) is a collection of sketches. Nine chapters with a montage of quotes, lyrical and memoir insertions describe totalitarian regimes in different countries - from Austria and Germany to Italy, Spain, Japan and the GDR. The book ends with an essay on the Aesopian language of Russian culture, where war has become a universal metaphor.