Covered up by the sacking inside the sleigh was a load of birch logs no thicker than the balusters of an old-fashioned country house in a nineteenth-century photograph. Antonina Alexandrovna knew their worth- birch only in name, the wood was of the poorest sort and too fresh to be suitable for burning. But as there was no choice, it was pointless to argue.
     The young peasant carried five or six armloads up to the living room and took in exchange Tonia's small mirror wardrobe. He carried it down and packed it in his sleigh to take away as a present for his bride. in discussing a future deal in potatoes, he asked the price of the piano.
     When Yurii Andreievich cam home he said nothing about his wife's purchase. It would have been more sensible to chop up the wardrobe, but they could never have brought themselves to do it.
     "There's a note for you on the table, did you see it?" she said.
     "The one sent on from the hospital? Yes, I've had the message already. It's a sick call. I'll certainly go. I'll just have a little rest first. But it's pretty far. It's somewhere near the Tiumphal Arch, I've got the address."
     "Have you seen the fee they are offering you? You'd better read it. A bottle of German cognac or a pair of stockings! What sort of people are they, do you imagine? Vulgar. They don't see mto have any idea of how we live nowadays, Nouveaux riches, I suppose."
     "Yes, that's from a supplier."
     Suppliers, concessionnaires, and authorized agents were names then given to small businessmen to whom the governement, which had abolished private trade, occasionally hame concessions at moments of economic difficulties, charging them with the procurement of various goods.
     They were not former men of substance or dismissed heads of old firms- such people did not recover from the blow they had received. They were a new category of businessmen, people without roots who had been scooped up from the bottom by the war and the revolution.
     Zhivago had a drink of hot water and saccharin whitened with milk and went off to see his patient.
     Deep snow covered the street from wall to wall, in places up to the level of the ground-floor windows. Silent half-dead shadows moved all over this expanse carrying a little food or pulling it along sleds. There was almost no other traffic.
     Old shop signs still hung here and there. They had no relation to the small new consumer shops and co-operatives, which were all empty and locked, their windows barred or boarded up.
     The reason they were locked and emptry was not only that there were no goods but that the reorganization of all aspects of life, including trade, had so far remained largely on paper and had not yet affected such trifling details as the boarded-up shops."

This section was important to me, although I am as yet unfamiliar of what the new governemnt was doing at that time. I wish I knew, so I could write that here. As it is, I recognize two significant details in this section.
     One is the sentence, "They were not former men of substance or dismissed heads of old firms- such people did not recover from the blow they had received." It reminds me of the men who lost so much money in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in America. Many, many men committed suicide or went into long depressions. The core of their security had been destoryed. Annihilated. And likewise, the goverment, which regulated everything in Russia, all commerce, transportation, law- it had suddenly and completely transformed. Who knew what to do? How did one survive? All the old rules had changed. This was the reason that an entirely new breed of men had stepped into power. People who were ready to adapt, eager for power, ready to follow the new directions, as long as they got something out of it.
     The second detail that struck me when I read this is the last paragraph, which speaks of the empty shops. During this time of re-organization, many, many people died of starvation. They did not know to stock up before all the shops were stripped. They did not have any sort of clue that they needed to conserve their supplies while the governemnt collected all the city's food in warehouses. How could they have known? In the meantime, Moscow's food supplies were prepared for re-distribution, and people scrounged the gutters and made illegal deals to trade for food. Whatever worked. Anything to survive.