Sofia Petrovna - Persephone Number 149

Sofia Petrovna, a typist in the soviet union in 1937 is proud of the achievements of her son Nikolai (Kolya). Kolya, an engineering student and strong Communist, is at the beginning of a promising career, with his picture featured on the cover of Pravda. Before long, however, the Great Purge begins and Sofia's coworkers begin vanishing, amid accusations of treachery. Soon, Kolya's best friend Alik reports that Kolya has been arrested. Sofia and her friend and fellow typist Natasha try to find out more but are drowned in a sea of bureaucrats and long lines. More people vanish, and Sofia spends ever more time in lines at government buildings. Natasha makes a typographical error that is mistaken for a criticism of the Red Army and she is fired. When Sofia defends her, she is criticized and soon forced out as well. Alik is questioned, and when he does not renounce Kolya, he, too, is arrested and vanishes. Natasha and Sofia both lose their will to live. Natasha commits suicide via poison, and Sofia immerses herself in a fantasy of Kolya's return. When she finally gets a letter from Kolya, in which he reaffirms his innocence and tells more of his own story, Sofia tries to fight for his freedom again, but realizes that, in this bizarre, chaotic place, she will likely only place more suspicion on herself and Kolya. Out of desperation, she burns the letter. (taken from Wikepdia see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Petrovna 

About the Author

Lydia Chukovskaya, (1907-96), the daughter of the well-known critic and children’s author Kornei Chukovsky, was brought up in a literary milieu in St Petersburg (then Leningrad). When she was 20 she started working at a publishing house for the editor Samuil Marshak. She married and had a daughter, Elena, then remarried. But after Stalin’s Purges began her husband Matvei Bronstein, a physicist, disappeared. Sofia Petrovna was written in secret in 1939-40. It was first published in Russian, in Paris, in 1965 and in English (with a different title) in the UK in 1967. After WWII Lydia Chukovskaya again worked in publishing. In the 1970s she was very supportive to writers like Solzhenitsyn and became a respected figure in the Russian dissident movement. She published another novel, several volumes about her conversations with the poet Anna Akhmatova over three decades, literary criticism, poetry, and essays on children’s literature.