Traces the author's childhood in the Soviet Union, describing such formative influences as her father's work as a ranking member of the Communist party, her uncle's arrest for telling a joke to a foreigner, and her sister's performance in a Western play.

"Doba-Mera Medvedeva belongs to a vanishingly small group of memoirists who are neither elite nor highly literate, but whose observations from the ground cast a vivid light on a lost world. The book reveals the quarrelsome underside of shtetl life at a time of scarce resources, and describes how Doba-Mera survives two pogroms and two world wars. Around 1905, barely a teenager but already earning a living, she joins Marxist circles and takes part in...