About the cover

Adik has long become, in a way, a marker of the Slavs. So if you search for images of the Slavic look, you will obviously get boys and girls in tracksuits with three stripes. On the one hand, this was a chance choice when the kit for the 1980 Olympic team was being settled. On the other, the trio of stripes on the trousers and the track jacket was doomed to become an icon across the whole post-Soviet space.

In the painting, the Trinity is given the iconic three stripes, which makes Rublev's figures still more familiar, immeasurably closer, one might say more native. The chalice from the original icon is replaced by a board for chess (or noughts and crosses) with a three-by-three field, since this is a trio of sportsmen, whichever way you look at it. On their feet I put not the classic Soviet blue sneakers but my much-loved Superstars; I could not resist. The figures, by the way, are at the original's size. And the painting can be bought, by the way.

Vladimir Lifanov. "Sportsmen." Acrylic on canvas, 120×80 cm.