The book ‘A soda machine with syrup and without’ by Uladzimir Nyaklyaev is a social novel that, through microstories of Minsk bohemia, tells us about History with a capital letter. In this History, there are many faces standing together in line for soda: Lee Harvey Oswald and Kim Khadeyev, dissidents and G.E.B.s, survivors of World War II and cold front fighters, the one who reported and who was reported, and, of course, the one who is big, Soviet and concrete. The city in the novel is destroyed, gathered and shuffles place names. Minsk, to which history from the center of the red empire reaches late, lets through the youthful love and poetry of its participants.