In Studio City (top), the conversion of the part of a commercial building at 12229 Ventura Blvd. into a second floor Russian restaurant is evidence that Tolstoy’s people have come home to the Valley. The twin onion domes are an ancestor of a style that first appeared at Novgorod on the Cathedral of Sancta Sophia (bottom), in the 11th century. The bulb forms were not merely decorative in the old country, but meant to shed the vast snow falls that used to plague certain regions of this planet.