Overview
This is the first English translation of Olga Adamova-Sliozberg's mesmerizing My Journey, which was not officially published in Russia until 2002. It is among the best known of Gulag memoirs and was one of the first to become widely available in underground samizdat circulation. Alexander Solzhenitsyn relied heavily upon it when writing Gulag Archipelago, and it remains the best account of the daily life of women in the Soviet prison camps. Arrested along with her husband (who, she would much later learn, was shot the next day) in the great purges of the thirties, Adamova-Sliozberg decided to record her Gulag experiences a year after her arrest, and she ""wrote them down in her head"" (paper and pencils were not available to prisoners) every night for years. When she returned to Moscow after the war in 1946, she composed the memoir on paper for the first time and then buried it in the garden of the family dacha. After her re-arrest and seven more years of banishment to Kazakhstan, she returned to the dacha to dig up the buried memoir, but could not find it. She sat down and wrote it all over again. In her later years she also added a collection of stories about her family. Concluding on a hopeful note--Adamova-Sliozberg's record is cleared, she re-marries a fellow former-prisoner, and she is reunited with her children--this story is a stunning account of perseverance in the face of injustice and unimaginable hardship. This vital primary source continues to fascinate anyone interesting in the tumultuous history of Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
Full Product Details
Author: Olga Adamova-Sliozberg ,
Katharine Gratwick Baker ,
Katharine Gratwick Baker
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Imprint: Northwestern University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 14.90cm
, Height: 1.70cm
, Length: 22.60cm
Weight: 0.429kg
ISBN: 9780810127395
ISBN 10: 0810127393
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 30 August 2011
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Author Information
OLGA ADAMOVA-SLIOZBERG (1902-1991) was arrested in Moscow in 1936 as the wife of ""an enemy of the people."" She was released ten years later, subsequently arrested again, and sent into exile for seven more years before being rehabilitated in 1956. In the 1940s, she began writing her memoir, which became well-known in underground editions and was finally officially published in Russian in its entirety in 2002. KATHARINE GRATWICK BAKER is a family systems consultant with an MA in Russian history from New York University and a PhD in social work from Catholic University.
