The Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl

"Recently unearthed in the archives of the NKVD, Nina Lugovskaya's diary provides a rare window into the life of a Moscow family during the 1930s when fear of arrest was a fact of life. Like Anne Frank, 13-year-old Nina Lugovskaya is conscious of the extraordinary dangers all around her yet preoccupied by adolescent concerns. The diary ends two days before the NKVD conducted a thorough search of her family's apartment. Nina's diary was seized and carefully studied, the "incriminating" passages were underlined (these markings have been preserved in the book) and used to convict her as a "counterrevolutionary" who was "preparing to kill Stalin." She was sentenced to five years of hard labor and subsequent internal exile. This plainspoken diary is an unprecedented document of Soviet totalitarian rule."--BOOK JACKET.