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Aksënov’s novel Ostrov Krym (Island of Crimea) plays with the idea that Crimea is not a peninsula but an isolated, non-Soviet, liberal island. The narrative tension, centered on the affair of the male and the female main character, asks whether Russia should develop towards the western or the eastern world. Aksënov’s novel can be read as part of the underground pop culture in the late Soviet Union as well as a space for discussion of its nonofficial, desired, demanded or dreaded cultural vectors.