Aesopian language is a means of circumventing censorship and conveying to the recipient what cannot be said openly. Russian literature regarded Aesopian language as a sad necessity, and thus developed a vast arsenal of allegories: metaphors, allusions, anachronisms, and parodies. This dissertation by Lev Losev, a renowned poet and literary scholar, published for the first time, offers an insight into the history of the subject, a detailed classification of 'Aesopian' devices, and an analysis of numerous examples from Soviet literature. Among the book's subjects are Daniil Kharms, Yevgeny Schwartz, Arkady Belinkov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and the Strugatsky brothers. The book is preceded by an introductory article by Alexandra Arkhipova (listed by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent), who examines Aesopian language from the perspective of anthropology, folklore studies, and 20th-century history. Lev Losev (1937–2009) was one of the leading poets of the “philological school,” a literary scholar, memoirist, biographer of Joseph Brodsky, and a teacher of Russian literature at Dartmouth College (USA).