Popular Mechanics South Africa

How a Soviet social experiment became a game for liars

IT’S 1987 in Soviet Moscow. On this snowy November evening, Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow State University, exits his train off of Red Square. He cuts behind the looming Intourist Hotel, climbs to the third floor of his university’s psychology department, and meets the club of high-school students he’s tutoring.

Tonight, he’s brought something unusual for his pupils. To get the club members talking and thinking, Davidoff is going to make them play

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