Why read My Life in Stalinist Russia?

Book cover of My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back

Book description

"The thoughtful memoirs of a disillusioned daughter of the Russian Revolution. . . . A sometimes astonishing, worm's-eye view of life under totalitarianism, and a valuable contribution to Soviet and Jewish studies." -Kirkus Reviews

"In this engrossing memoir, Leder recounts the 34 years she lived in the U.S.S.R. . .…

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Why read it?

1 author picked My Life in Stalinist Russia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Wendy Z. Goldman

Author

Mary Leder was an American teenager in the 1930s when her Jewish socialist immigrant parents, poverty-stricken by the Great Depression, decided to return to Russia to build a Jewish homeland in Birobidzhan. After a brief period of difficulty, they left the Soviet Union and returned to the United States, but Leder was detained due to passport difficulties.

In this moving memoir, she discusses her life in Moscow as a student, a factory worker, an editor, and a young wife and mother. She provides a tragic and compelling account of the repressions of the 1930s, the chaotic evacuation of Moscow in…

From Wendy's list on The best books on the Soviet Union in World War II.