Diary of a Soviet Airwoman at War: The Front Closes In
In which a highly cussed young Anna shoots up a comrade’s truck tires to “convince” him to help her start her U-2 and fly out of danger.
Back in the (Former) USSR
I never thought I’d see Moscow again, although I dreamed of it for fourteen years. I boarded a teeming Aeroflot flight in late summer 2005, as Katrina’s receding waters revealed, inch by inch, the erasure of New Orleans as I once knew it. Mourning for that blighted, intoxicating city, I rushed towards another place I…
Diary of a Soviet Airwoman at War- Summer 1941
Excerpts from a young Russian airwoman’s memoir of WWII
Diary of a Soviet Airwoman at War: June 1941
A Soviet combat airwoman recalls the first weeks of WWII
Russian Coup – 20 Years Ago
Twenty years ago today, tanks rumbled through the streets of Moscow. Do you remember where you were? Every generation has its historic “where were you when” moments. For ours, there’s the Challenger disaster (1/86), the fall of the Berlin Wall (11/89), and most vivid of all for me, the three-day Soviet coup in late summer…
С женским днём! (Happy Women’s Day)
“Don’t forget to call Lidia Yakovlyevna tomorrow,” my émigré friend Inna reminded me yesterday at our weekly Russian lesson. “For the holiday.” I searched my mind frantically. I always feel so proud when Inna and her husband Victor tell me I’m “practically Russian”–usually when I’m happily scarfing down a plate of smoked herring or beef…
The Greenery 