Rare is Still Rare in Russia

There's a nice portrait of the secondhand bookstores of Russia's capital in the Moscow Times today.

The market in antique and rare books in Russia has been tight for years. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, censorship was the cause. Today, ironically enough, capitalism is to blame. Says one Moscow bookstore employee, "There are less and less [collectible] books available now, with the oligarchs buying them up and locking them up in their castles.... Maybe their children will sell them on one day but who knows."