quote
When you use an archive or a manuscript department in Russia, every dusty old file you use comes with a little sheet of paper in the front with rows of dates and names. This is a list of everyone—often back to the 1940s—who’s ever looked at this file before you, and, ideally, what they used it for. Adding your name to the list, as the archivists insist you do, is a little thrill: you feel like you’re joining a whole tradition of anonymous scholarly scribblers who’ve tried to puzzle out the quirks in your manuscript. (Of course, when you find a blank sheet, or one on which the last entry is from 1953, it’s an entirely different kind of satisfaction.)
