What Went Wrong With Russia?

Twenty-three year-old Katia Popova squinted at the bright light in the doorway. Her eyes were more used to the candlelight in her dim, four-square-meter kitchen, where she has spent most of the past nine years. That was where municipal workers discovered her—the Russian equivalent of Kaspar Hauser—a few weeks ago. The discovery was made “accidently,” Katia said later, with a shy smile. Cursing loudly, as they made their way between mountains of garbage cluttering the tiny apartment from the floor to the ceiling, the district plumbers noticed a young, untidy woman with oily hair popping out from behind the dirty fridge. Cats, rats, books, and a radio had been Katia Popova’s only friends since the day her mother, Anna Popova, decided that the outside world was too threatening for Katia to visit, and had locked her up.