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<p> Much of the literary power of Memoir of a Gulag Actress lies in Petkevich's vivid recall of the people in her life: her first husband, Erik, and their lives together in Frunze where she joined a family that failed to accept her; Aleksandr Osipovich Gavronsky, a renowned theater director, who leads the prisoner troupe and adopts her as if she were his daughter; her lover, Nikolai Danilovich--'tall, slim, handsome, elegant and professional'--an actor whose devotion sustains her; and her sister, Vera, whom she locates upon her release. Their individual destinies, in the camps or 'at liberty, ' reflect the full pathos of Stalin's miserable kingdom. --from the foreword by Joshua Rubenstein, Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA<p>

Much of the literary power of Memoir of a Gulag Actress lies in Petkevich's vivid recall of the people in her life: her first husband, Erik, and their lives together in Frunze where she joined a family that failed to accept her; Aleksandr Osipovich Gavronsky, a renowned theater director, who leads the prisoner troupe and adopts her as if she were his daughter; her lover, Nikolai Danilovich--'tall, slim, handsome, elegant and professional'--an actor whose devotion sustains her; and her sister, Vera, whom she locates upon her release. Their individual destinies, in the camps or 'at liberty, ' reflect the full pathos of Stalin's miserable kingdom. --from the foreword by Joshua Rubenstein, Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA It is a great achievement that the translators have successfully produced an accurate and satisfying prose rendition of this Gulag memoir. . . This is a valuable addition to the primary source literature on the USSR in the twentieth century. Petkevich writes movingly about her life from childhood, through marriage, to arrest and internment in the Great Patriotic War, to eventual release. The book is thus about the fate of a member of the elite in a period when the Revolution devoured its own as well as its out-and-out enemies. . . . Ultimately this memoir will be read not only for what it tells us about the Soviet Union . . . but as a fascinating human story of individuals who were unjustly persecuted. -- European History Quarterly

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Yasha Klots is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Ross Ufberg is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. Joshua Rubenstein is Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA.

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