True Stories: The Memories of Lev Razgon

This remarkable book is a testament to the epochal transformation of the former Soviet Union and the obligation to remember its Stalinist past. Razgon (b. 1908), a journalist married to the daughter of a high-ranking Soviet official, was arrested during the Stalinist terror in 1938 and lived in labor camps or internal exile until 1956, when he was rehabilitated. With the onset of perestroika, he began to publish the memoirs he had been secretly writing for two decades. If Razgon's work lacks the sweep of Solzhenitsyn's gulag accounts, it is full of wisdom and vivid character sketches of victims and perpetrators alike, such as camp boss Tarasyuk, who ""resembled in some ways the slaveowners of classical times."" In relating these episodes, Razgon reminds us of the insanity of Stalinist legality, which imprisoned the wives of top officials such as President Kalinin and Foreign Minister Molotov while their husbands kept their posts. A one-time Communist Party member, Razgon ultimately resigned and became a founder of Memorial, a group that reexamines the country's history. A wrenching epilogue describes his encounter with his own recently opened KGB file. Crowfoot's translation makes this substantial set of stories accessible. Photos not seen by PW. (June)