“Vassily Aksyonov, one of many former Soviet citizens to take up residence in the Washington area since the 1970s, lived among us for 24 years. … You’ve probably never heard of him. Yet his death Monday in Moscow at 76 will set off days of mourning in Russia, where our former neighbor was a superstar. Literarily, he played the role of a Russian Kurt Vonnegut, but Vonnegut would have envied Aksyonov’s stature in his homeland — closer to Tiger Woods’s or even Michael Jackson’s.”