Volume 13, Number 7 · October 23, 1969
Survivor
By Jean Stafford
Only One Year
by Svetlana Alliluyeva, translated by Paul Chavchvadze
Harper & Row, 444 pp., $7.95
'Oh, those ever-changing moods of Moscow! How swiftly they go from black to white, from one extreme to another, from friendship to accusations, from adoration to hatred, from the permissive 'da' to that annihilating 'nyet.' Those eternal swings from a thaw to a freeze, whims that disregard their own rules, norms, and regulations! Unhappy land, unhappy people, who instead of promised freedoms got nothing but whims—whims far worse than those of any emperor…' So writes Svetlana recalling the bureaucratic snarls that entangled her in Delhi when she was trying to leave the city for a countryside distant from Soviet deputies and there to consign her husband's ashes to the Ganges where it flowed beside his native ground.
Review, 1535 words
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