Tree Friends of CIS

July 1995, noon. The sun is at its zenith over a forest town. The air is trembling, saturated with the smells of hay and heated wood from wooden-paneled high-rise buildings. In a local store, between bread (half a million rubles per loaf) and a single bottle of campari (hopelessly inaccessible to the pockets of local residents), there is a radio receiver that reports through white noise about the extreme heat that has set in this afternoon.