Medvedev deserves a shout out just for endurance. He was born in 1925 and survived even with the epithet of “dissident historian.” His father was not so fortunate and was caught up in Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. Medvedev was born in Georgia, but is not a Georgian. He is Jewish and his father was a professor in Tbilisi when ROy was born. Medvedev is the consummate outsider;yet, he attended Leningrad State University.
The Medvedev book we consulted for Jewish Luck was Let History Judge, a book published in 1969 that earned Medvedev expulsion from the Communist Party. In Russian the book is entitled, К суду истории, which translates as Before the Court of History. We also consulted an interview of Medvedev in 1977 on dissidents. His definition aligned well with the feelings of Alisa and Vera that they were not dissidents even though they felt imprisoned and spoke to each...



