"Sofia Petrovna" is Lydia Chukovskaya's fictional account of the Great Purge. Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for good news. Confronted with a world that makes no moral sense, Sofia goes mad, a madness which manifests itself in delusions little different from the lies those around her tell every day to protect themselves.

This is a fictional account of one woman's experience following the arrest of her son during the Yezhov purges. Drawing on the author's own experience, this novella paints an almost documentary-style picture of life in Leningrad during this period. The story of the publication of the book, written in 1939-40 but not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, is treated in the introduction, which also contains a brief biography of the author, a vocabulary and notes.