Before we published Jewish Luck, a memoir about two Soviet born Jewish women and their struggle to break free of the Soviet system, we read as many memoirs as we could find written by Soviet Jews. We arrived at two conclusions.
#1. There was no memoir we could find that was similar to the one we were writing about Vera and Alla.
#2 Memoirs by Soviet Jews and others from the USSR are compelling.
For your May perusal, we’re listing six of the memoirs we read during our research along with a brief summary of our impressions. Each of these memoirists writes with honesty and in his or her unique style. For each of these writers, English is not their first language but you will forget that fact as you read their works.
Azbel, Mark Ya. Refusenik: Trapped in the Soviet Union. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981.
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Elena Gorokhova: A Mountain of Crumbs
Why you might be interested:
Leslie and I became voracious readers of Russian emigrants’ memoirs before we wrote Jewish Luck. We wanted to make sure that Vera and Alisa’s memoir added something new to the body of literature and we were interested in seeing how Russian authors presented their culture to a non-Russian audience.
One of the most gripping memoirs we read was A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova. Like Alla and Vera, Elena is Leningrad born. Although she is older than Alla, she attended the same English language school, #238. Elena, however, is not Jewish but she shares a disdain for the vranya (deception) of Soviet life with Alla and Vera.
Gorokhova’s language is lyrical, and it’s clear from her voice that she has mastered the nuances of the English language. We were hooked as soon as we read... 
