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Survivor of a Labor Camp Remembers Expendable Children of Mother Russia

Author: 
Year:
Pages:416
ISBN:0-7734-8534-1
978-0-7734-8534-1
Price:$259.95
This is a memoir which chronicles, in intimate detail, a harrowing but revivifying journey from the relative complacency of normality among friends and families in Minsk, to heroic survival--even triumph--in the endless whiteness of the Russian labor camp.

Reviews

"Leonard Kent's narrative of a life in and out of the gulag shows much more than convincing immersion in detail and historical truth. It demonstrates his rare capacity to see into the heart of our century's history and into the heart of a savage, timeless truth: we are what we survive, or we become what we are scarred by. In this grim and grotesque tale, Kent never sentimentalizes freedom. Yakov's winning of freedom shows something more terrifying than endurance and persistence, it shows the awful role of luck." - Prof. David Zucker, Quinnipiac College

"As his life unfolds before us, we also see twentieth century Mother Russia -- a land torn apart by revolution, by pogrom, by world war, by contradiction. The abyss of poverty belies the burgeoning industrial production. The grating hopelessness of political oppression belies the Soviet dream of social progress." -Prof. Mark Johnston, Quinnipiac College

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

The Knock on the Door

Welcome to the Cage

Gulag Glubokoye

The Visit

Games

The Accident

The Miracle Worker

A Nurse Named Masha

The Pardon

The Hospital

Making Penises

The Addict

Wrestling the Devil

In the Beginning

Off to School

War
"They're Coming!"

Peace

Lara

To Life and Death

Disillusionment and Hope

Exodus

Epilogue