Long ago, I took a class called Soviet Society and Culture. One of the many readings was a book called Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya:
The novel opens with Sofia Petrovna, a mother who has recently discovered the joys of a paying job as a typist. Sharing her apartment with several other families or attending mandatory meetings at work - all are simply parts of her daily life as a Soviet citizen, as unquestioned and necessary as brushing one's teeth or washing dishes. When the purges begin and the director of her office is taken away, even after her own son is arrested, she tries to believe in both the government and in the innocence of people she loves. But as Sofia Petrovna stands in line after line - attempting to gain information, pass along money, plead for her son - she slowly loses her innocence and her sanity. Sofia Petrovna is not Lydia Chukovskaya, but the emotion and experience for the book came from the author's life, including the arrest and murder of her husband. In this slim novel Lydia Chukovskaya was determined to describe, through the life of an ordinary woman, "an educated society driven to loss of consciousness by lies."
Flash forward to today. Here's what the American iteration of this looks like so far:
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