Sofia Petrovna (European Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Chilling Account
Review: How friends turned away when a family member was "taken away" and left those remaining alone to starve since no one could employ them. This reads like a true account of the Stalinist Purge times but is under the label of fiction. Even as fiction, the author was in peril writting it. It is a short effective story written in a compelling manner.

Rating:
Summary: Chukovskaya's vision of an unmentionable time
Review: Madame Chukovskaya's Sofia Petrovna is one of the best examples of Soviet protest literature available to English readers. Her prose style, spare and direct, is marvelously fitting for this story of a Soviet everywoman's loss of faith. Because there is little introspection, the reader is forced to look deeply into why the events in the heroine's life are causing her to go mad. The reflection on the Soviet system which this creates is one of the best ways to study the period about which Chukovskaya wrote.What is particularly moving about this book is the voice Chukovskaya uses to tell her story. It is the most feminine of voices, that of a mother, whose compassion and faith in her son, while conflicting with her identity as a good Soviet citizen, are emotions with which any female reader can relate, or any parent.This short novel is often grouped with A. Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The relation between the two books is compelling. One presents the story of those who were senselessly condemned to the gulags; the other recounts the impact of this condemnation on the families and friends left behind.Although this book is not widely read by the American public, I think it one of the most moving stories of Soviet life in the Stalinist era. For this reason, I believe it will continue to be a classic of Soviet literature for many years to come