What I know of the Soviet Union is confined to the lesson plans of my Higher history class. This book offered so much more than that, and the family love which flows between the lines stops it from ever being dry. Informative, with a heart of gold. ( )

In this family memoir, journalist Masha Gessen tells the story of her two grandmothers, friends who survived the tumult of twentieth century Russia--World War II, communism, anti-Semitism--by navigating a thin line between what they knew was right and what they had to do to survive.

A passionately written memoir by a granddaughter on behalf of her two grandmothers who, being Jewish, survived Stalin's purges and the war. Both grandmothers ended up living in Moscow most of their lives, though they came from Poland and Ukraine in their 20s. I am not Jewish, but I feel extraordinary sympathy for the unfair treatment that the people of this ethnicity had to bear in the Soviet Union. I couldn't help but trace a parallel to my own parents - of the same generation, though not Jewish - from whom I couldn't elicit any memories of that stage of their lives (probably because I immigrated to the States when still in my 20s, and my parents are gone now...). This book was an eye-opener about that period (from 1920s to 1950s, time before I was born). Stalin's purges and persecution of Jews are horrible, and the author describes the lives of her two grandmothers in intimate details, having interviewed them and listened to their stories. A thought occurred to me as the author described the day Stalin died: I was about to be born in a couple of months after that...., so what was going through my mother's head as she was carrying me in at the last stages of pregnancy.... It was such a mixture of feelings for the whole nation - though not everybody at that time understood what a monster Stalin was, so the mourning was outstanding. The story goes on to the present day, and at the time of the book's publication in 2004 Masha Gessen is back in Moscow, in the company of her two grandmothers. She had returned to live there (after emigrating to US with her parents when she was 14), working as a reporter for an American magazine. It's a wonderful book. ( )

A granddaugher's account of the survival of her Jewish grandmothers in the Soviet Union from the 1920s through the 1990s. Brings to life the terror of the purges and the contstant fear and oppression of the regime, told with great sensitivity. ( )