This anthology, the fourteenth volume in the present series, brings us the work of six leading poets in what has been dubbed ‘the Gagarin Generation’. Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut, was an international celebrity and a hero of the Soviet Bloc. His space journey was subversively interpreted by some as a daring breakout towards freedom. The generation of people born into a transitional era of growing resistance to the strictures of Soviet rule, a generation that challenged entrenched conformity of thought and action, is represented here by a diverse set of voices, each of which speaks out of an experience both personal and collective, giving us a rare insight into a rich cultural and literary heritage that still awaits full discovery in English.