The Moscow sixties are an interesting cultural phenomenon that began with the Festival of Youth and Students (1957) and ended with the Bulldozer Exhibition (1974). Liberation from Stalin's tyranny led to the emergence of a brilliant generation of intelligentsia, some of whom lived their own lives, parallel to Soviet society. In Vadim Alekseev’s book, the era appears through the eyes of unofficial artists, in whose basements a new artistic language was sought, the lost connection with Europe and the forgotten avant-garde of the 1920s was restored, poets, thinkers, and foreigners gathered. “Ideally Other” features fifteen heroes, from Andrei Volkonsky to Vladimir Yankilevsky. The reader will more than once encounter stories about the legendary Anatoly Zverev in the book; the central place in it is occupied by the memories of the great artist Lydia Masterkova. From vivid memoirs, accompanied by rare photographs, a polyphony of Moscow life in the 1950s-1970s emerges, like a stained glass window from fragments.