One exceptional witness, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, a 78-year-old Russian author, has looked deep into her childhood memories to write The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, translated by Anna Summers. It’s a sharply written account, rich in detail, of a child paying dearly for having the bad luck to be raised under communism. Ludmilla was not yet born when the whole weight of Soviet rage and paranoia fell on her family. Her relatives being party officials, they lived in the Metropol Hotel, in the core of Moscow, happy to be part of the Soviet bureaucracy. It’s a sharply written account, rich in detail, of a child paying dearly for having the bad luck to be raised under communismLudmilla, along with the rest of her offending family, was placed at the bottom of the bottom of Soviet life.

Source: National Post February 27, 2017 18:16 UTC