Description: "This book introduces the autobiographical chronicle of prominent Russian scholar Olga Freidenberg (1890-1955). At times an autobiography or memoir, at times diary, Freidenberg's "notes" move among several modes, fusing them together: a harrowing account of physical, social, and moral suffering under Stalin, an attempt to make the traumatic experience meaningful, and development of a political theory of Stalinism on the basis of a meticulous description of daily life"-- Provided by publisher.
Review Quotes:
If the distinguished Soviet literary scholar Olga Freidenberg is known at all in the West, it is for her 45-year correspondence with her beloved first cousin, the novelist and poet Boris Pasternak. To this day, her [voluminous diaries] remain unpublished, but in Always Under Siege Irina Paperno, a Leningrad-born scholar who became one of the most original American specialists of Russian literature, makes a strong case for their importance.
-- "The Wall Street Journal"