Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman's Life in the Soviet Union |
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Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman's Life in the Soviet Union
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by Margaret Wettlin
Sales Rank: 206260
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List Price: $19.95
$17.95
At Amazon
on 9-16-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 324 pages
Published by: Wiley February 1994
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0471028770
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471028772
Book Dimensions:
8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 14.1 ounces
From Library Journal
As an idealistic young college graduate, Wettlin set off in 1932 to see the new Soviet state for herself. She stayed to marry a theater director, raise two children, pursue a career as an English teacher and translator, and spent a lifetime in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Although she counted Moscow as home, she lived with her family in cities stretching from Mongolia to Latvia and has recorded all the personal joys and pains of Soviet life from revolutionary hope and faith through repression, purges, famine, and war. Wettlin's autobiography is remarkable for its scope, both for the geography and the human experience described. Her tale is the more effective and touching for its honesty and simplicity. Fifty Russian Winters is written for a general audience. Recommended for collections of all sizes.
- Rena Fowler, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
In this unflinching account of betrayed ideals, Wettlin, an American who went to Russia in 1932 for one year but fell in love and stayed another 50, gives a stunning and moving portrait of a long-suffering people ``essentially unpragmatic, uncompetitive, and acutely sensitive to the mystery of life.'' A native of Philadelphia, Wettlin went to the Soviet Union eager to contribute her skills as a high-school teacher to this nation that promised so much. She found a job teaching English, but, more significantly, she met and fell in love with Andrei Efremoff, a director and prot‚g‚ of Stanislavsky. The two married and went to Mongolia--a place still relatively unchanged by the Communist regime--where Andrei established a regional theater. Back in Moscow, a son and daughter were born; Andrei worked in the theater; and Wettlin taught English--but the times were changing as the great purges began. Though friends and colleagues were arrested, Wettlin, who still believed in the all-knowing benevolent state (and here she makes no excuses for her behavior), began working for the KGB. The Second World War exacted even harsher privations as the author and her husband fled with their children and thousands of other refugees into the Crimea. Her disillusionment began with the lack of change after the war and culminated in a moment of agonized mea culpa. Again working for the KGB, she realized at last ``that between bright moments of seeing the light I had traveled down tunnels of self-deception.'' Wettlin, now widowed, left the Soviet Union in the 1980's, followed a few years later by her family. Indeed a witness to an age, Wettlin has seamlessly interwoven her experiences of seminal events, searing hardships, and remarkable friendships into an eloquent personal record of ``hope abandoned.'' (Sixteen pages of photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman's Life in the Soviet Union (Hardcover)
An idealistic American woman comes to Russia in the 1930s, intending to stay for one year, and ends up living there for almost half a century. One of the best looks into average life during the heart of the Soviet days as well as a story of faith and disillusionment. Recommended.
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Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman's Life in the Soviet Union
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Price: $17.95
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