The plot of Vasily Aksyonov’s best novel, The Island of Crimea, is based on a fantastic assumption what would have happened, if… That island doesn’t join the Soviet Russia in 1920 and takes the path of capitalistic development. However, in 1980s, the population of Crimea realizes that it should, nonetheless, join the “mainland” and that joining is carried out in a disorganized and untalented manner characteristic of the Soviet Union. There immediately emerge fuss, disrupted order, lines etc. So, an American woman, the wife of the main character of the novel, standing orderly in a line outside a gas station wants to fill up her car, but the locals cut in line aggressively explaining to the woman the one who is strong fills his/her car up the first. Moreover, those locals had lived in a civilized country for a few decades, they had abided by the laws. But the system, which their genetic memory is accustomed to, has come back and people are in their element again. Our element, as well as the element of other peoples of the former empire, is the Russian mess, where one can live only by the laws of the taiga – steal from each other and from the state, lie, deceive, cut in line, cross at a red light, be proud of your own unlawful nimbleness, envy others’ nimbleness exceeding yours and add to all that, continuously complain about the universal mess.