I’ve read many memoirs and biographies, and Anya does what few others do. She enables us not just to see what life was like for a sensitive, bright girl growing up in Russia, but we can feel the emotions she experienced. She gives us the details of her encounters—starting with information about what gifts are expected for doctors and nurses for bringing a child into the world. * Then, we see the Russian custom of swaddling the infant, not letting the child have any freedom of movement for several months.

We can almost taste the farm-freshness of the fruits and vegetables grown on her grandparents’ small farm and lovingly cooked by her grandmother, a former fighter pilot. We, likewise, can feel the disgust with the cafeteria food in her school, severely lacking in proteins, and her long quest for nourishment—wanting something more than potatoes.
Anya was the teacher’s pet for both her literature and her music teachers. They were seeking refuge from their own dull lives by propelling her into the spotlight, pushing her to excel, to win one more contest. These exertions collided with her teenage hormones and her growing independence—an unknown trait in Russia.

The sections about school and her efforts and emotional outburst will appeal to teenage girls who are learning who they are and fighting the establishment. Most teenage girls seek privacy and space of their own. Anya, whose parents and five children shared a two-bedroom apartment, didn’t have any of this. As a pre-teen, Anya could ride her bike and find some solitude, but her parents made her give her brother her bike, so she was restricted even here. Then, when she was practicing her piano, her brother played his Metallica records loudly, but was not punished for interfering with her music.
Anya doesn’t just generalize about things that happened, but we see the events as part of her family—one that grew unexpectedly to six children when the norm was one or two. However, coming from a large family was such a rarity that the family got special status and were allowed to butt into lines ahead of others and shop at a special-orders store where there were no shortages, the place where the top Kremlin leaders shopped.

While proclaiming the Communist ideals, the society was falling apart, with meaningless rhetoric all around them. Even the radio music was symbolic, ushering in a new national leader.

There is magic in the details Anya presents. We can empathize with her and feel the tightness of the required blue jacket of her school uniform that she had to wear even during target practice, a part of the required curriculum, preparing for the expected American attack on the Soviet Union. The memoir ends as she completes high school. I can’t wait for the next volume to learn what happened to her next.
*Appreciation for the nurses and doctors included: vodka, cognac, boxes of chocolates, black caviar, flowers, and money