Synopses & Reviews
Review
A remarkable document, showing an intelligent teen's rage against oppressive politics, as well as universal coming-of-age concerns--including anxieties about looks, academic pressures, and hopeful yearnings coupled with suicidal lows. . . . This will provide crucial support for high-school, and even college-level, studies of Russian history. Using boldfaced type, the editors have preserved those passages marked as counterrevolutionary by the Soviet investigators who confiscated the diary; helpful appended material includes editor's notes, a thoughtful bibliography, and several photos and family letters.
Booklist, ALA
Synopsis
Recently unearthed in the archives of Stalinand#8217;s secret police, the NKVD, Nina Lugovskayaand#8217;s diary offers rare insight into the life of a teenage girl in Stalinand#8217;s Russiaand#151;when fear of arrest was a fact of daily life. Like Anne Frank, thirteen-year-old Nina is conscious of the extraordinary dangers around her and her family, yet she is preoccupied by ordinary teenage concerns: boys, parties, her appearance, who she wants to be when she grows up. As Nina records her most personal emotions and observations, her reflections shape a diary that is as much a portrait of her intense inner world as it is the Soviet outer one.
Preserved here, these markingsand#151;the evidence used to convict Nina as a and#147;counterrevolutionaryand#8221;and#151;offer todayand#8217;s reader a fascinating perspective on the era in which she lived.