The Other Russia: 2the Experience of Exile

Interviewing dozens of people who have emigrated or defected from the U.S.S.R. to various countries in the West since 1917, Glenny, a British translator, and Stone, author of Europe Transformed 1878-1916 , here compile compelling oral accounts of religious and political persecution under communism. Several Jews of diverse backgrounds are among those interviewed, but most of the speakers are from the ranks of the aristocracy, the upper bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia; recreating their lives in pre- or post-revolutionary Russia, all convey their courage and ambivalence at leaving. Commentaries by the authors provide insights into the reasoning of those who fled, and although the book is not, as Glenny and Stone acknowledge, a full-scale history of Soviet emigration, it is nonetheless worth reading for its depiction of the personal turmoil of the emigre. (Jan.)