A very good, tiny bookstore near us - Falanster - got burned down yesterday night. The guys who ran it believe it was arson - there are witnesses who saw someone throwing something into the bookstore's window (gasoline?); there are witnesses who heard an explosion (a hand grenade?); and two bottles with gasoline were found in the archway near the bookstore's entrance.

The guys who ran the bookstore looked like they didn't like Putin at all; they were also selling a little of what looked like anarchist and National Bolshevik books and leaflets, which potentially could've been a problem with some people. But - what made this bookstore real good was a very diverse selection of fiction and non-fiction, some of it not available in bigger, mainstream stores. I bought two really good non-fiction books about Yugoslavia there, for example (I did mention one earlier - here).

This is the second non-mainstream bookstore that has burned down within a month or so. The first one was Bilingua - I've never been inside but it looked really nice from the street - and many of the really outspoken anti-Putin folks used to frequent it.

Tomorrow, there'll be a little rally near Falanster at 1 pm: fundraising, moral support - but no politics.