Stepchildren of Mother Russia: The Story of a Jewish Family

Draznin, who teaches medicine at the University of Colorado, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1977, as did many Jewish intellectuals and professionals, to escape anti-Semitism. In this fascinating family memoir, he reconstructs the experiences of his and his wife's families under Soviet rule. It's a dramatic, event-filled history that exemplifies many of the experiences of Soviet Jews throughout the 20th century. Draznin's paternal grandfather, Moshe, was a Communist Party aide--but that didn't save him from eventual arrest on the charge of being a spy for the West. The horrors of growing up Soviet are exemplified by Draznin's father, Nahum, who saw a schoolmate praised for turning in his father as an enemy of the state. And during WWII, Nahum was sent to a military penal colony as a deserter. For anyone whose family, like Draznin's, survived life in the U.S.S.R., or anyone interested in how Jews lived there for seven decades, this is an enlightening and moving personal history.