"Surviving Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace"

Earlier this week, I finished Ester and Ruzya, Masha Gessen's account of the strong women who survived war, anti-Semitism, and other upheaval in the Soviet 20th century to become best friends and give birth to the son and daughter that would become her parents. The native Pole Ester and Muscovite Ruzya are opposites in many ways: their views on their religion and the Jewish state, their political histories (though both are silently opposed to the Soviet regime), and their personalities. But both face the challenges of retaining a moral sense of self while struggling to survive. And both lose their life loves at a young age (although they remain sexually and romantically active) - their true soul mates during their adulthoods are one another.

Gessen is, unsurprisingly, sympathetic to her grandmothers; she forgives them moral compromises that they still question. While they didn't keep their pasts secret as she was growing up, as a child she couldn't comprehend the full meaning of their stories, and as a teenager her family emigrated to the US. Not until Perestroika was she reunited with her grandmothers; the fall of the Soviet Union brought her back to them for good.

This is a lovely book for Soviet history buffs like myself, and a fascinating look at Jewish life behind the Iron Curtain, in all its contradictions. But it's also a rich memoir and tale of family - and deserves to find a wider audience than it likely will.