The plot of Dmitry Bykov’s new novel “Ostromov, or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is based on the now half-forgotten “Case of the Leningrad Masons” of 1925–1926. But, as often happens in the books of this writer (remember the novels “Spelling” and “Justification”, with which “Ostromov” forms a kind of trilogy), it became only the background for a multifaceted story about human destinies in a turning point era, about the rapidly changing criteria of goodness and evil, about resilience, seeming bravado, and conformism, acquiring the status of virtue. And wondering if we might have to experience something similar.