Readers waited months to be allowed to borrow a copy from a library.[6] The laws of supply and demand took over in the Soviet Union, and copies could be obtained on the secondary market for five times the cover price.[7] At a time when intense reaction to a literary work would last not more than a couple of months, Novy Mir received hundreds of letters, the flood continuing as late as 1960.[8] One enthusiastic response came from a KGB office in Latvia.[9] One schoolteacher from Belarus wrote to the author: