My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back

"The thoughtful memoirs of a disillusioned daughter of the Russian Revolution.... A sometimes astonishing, worm’s-eye view of life under totalitarianism, and a valuable contribution to Soviet and Jewish studies." ―Kirkus Reviews

"In this engrossing memoir, Leder recounts the 34 years she lived in the U.S.S.R.... [She] has a marvelous memory for the details of everyday life.... This plainly written account will particularly appeal to readers with a general interest in women’s memoirs, Russian culture and history, and leftist politics." ―Publishers Weekly

In 1931, Mary M. Leder, an American teenager, was attending high school in Santa Monica, California. By year’s end, she was living in a Moscow commune and working in a factory, thousands of miles from her family, with whom she had emigrated to Birobidzhan, the area designated by the USSR as a Jewish socialist homeland. Although her parents soon returned to America, Mary, who was not permitted to leave, would spend the next 34 years in the Soviet Union. My Life in Stalinist Russia chronicles Leder’s experiences from the extraordinary perspective of both an insider and an outsider. Readers will be drawn into the life of this independent-minded young woman, coming of age in a society that she believed was on the verge of achieving justice for all but which ultimately led her to disappointment and disillusionment. Leder’s absorbing memoir presents a microcosm of Soviet history and an extraordinary window into everyday life and culture in the Stalin era.