We have just published the short novel Sofia Petrovna, one of the few surviving contemporaneous accounts of the Great Purge, and thus a rare and important book. So this week on the Post we look at aspects of everyday life in Leningrad in the 1930s for someone like Sofia Petrovna. This is the grand, bustling Nevsky Prospect (as with the Leningrad, its name has changed several times) which, outwardly at least, resembles many other important European boulevards and avenues.