Read it! Read it!(popularity of book-buying in Russia)

Canada and the World Backgrounder, October, 1997

According to an article in the Washington Post, despite their hardships, Russians are on a book-buying spree. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, few books of interest were available. Now, the selection is vast. Every month several thousand new titles, with a total print run of five million go on sale in Moscow alone.

According to a Russian newspaper, printing books is a license to print money. People simply can't get enough of them, and they're delving into everything from detective stories to encyclopedias.