This is the moving story of a number of individuals who made the difficult and sometimes hazardous decision to leave their home, family, and friends and start new lives in Israel and the United States. Edith Rogovin Frankel interviews them twice: shortly after they leave the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and again, twenty-five years later, when they have long been settled in their new lives. Their experiences-from their formative years in the Soviet Union, to their decisions to leave, to their struggles to receive permission to emigrate-illuminate the complex history of Soviet Jews. The story of their emigration represents the universal tale of anyone who has ever migrated, hoping to find a new and better life elsewhere. Above all, this is the personal story of these men and women, of the desires that inspired them and of the dogged faith that kept them going.

Originally published in 1981, this book is an examination of the politics of literary publishing in the Soviet Union, and in particular during the period after Stalin's death, in the 1950s. Dr Frankel focuses on the leading literary journal of the 1950s, Novy Mir, between whose covers so much important literary work first appeared: Pomerantsev's essay on sincerity in literature, Abramov's literary criticism, and Dudintsev's Not By Bread Alone. It was Novy Mir that published Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in November, 1962. Under the editorship, first of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, then of Konstantin Simonov, the journal was strongly identified with the 'thaw', which, as Dr Drankel shows, had, paradoxically, been antcipated in the literary criticism of the last year of Stalin's life, a year known in other spheres for its repressive character. A detailed study of the journal combined with an analysis of the political and economic issues of the day enables the reader to appreciate the constant interaction of literature and politics in the Soviet Union.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 continues to be a subject of most intense controversy; and the fundamental questions which have divided observers over the last seventy years still stir fierce debate. In this volume, eighteen leading specialists from different generations, countries and schools of thought, re-examine the key issues and events of that crucial year. Some of the articles examine the unfolding crisis 'from below', describing developments in specific localities or organisations: others put the emphasis on the view as seen 'from above', on Lenin as leader of the Bolshevik party and of the emergent Soviet states. Other contributors explore the roles played by the officer corps, the industrialists, the peasants, the factory workers and the Soviets as well as the part of the Press and the different nationalities. Never before has so comprehensive a selection of original essays on 1917, written in the West, been collected in one volume.