Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story

Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a memoir of coming of age and struggling to leave the USSR. Shrayer chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a Soviet childhood and expresses the dreams and fears of a Jewish family that never gave up its hopes for a better life. Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy s confessional trilogy and Nabokov s autobiography, this is a searing account of the KGB s persecution of refuseniks, a poet s rebellion against totalitarian culture, and Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer s remembrances are set against a rich backdrop of politics and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire s collapse. His moving story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence. Leaving Russia is a love story in which a young Jew s love is unrequited and his heart is forever broken by his homeland.