Daytime Stars A Poet's Memoir of the Revolution, the Siege of Leningrad, and the Thaw
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Description
For 872 days during World War II, the city of Leningrad endured a crushing blockade at the hands of German forces. Close to one million civilians died, most from starvation. Amid the devastation, Olga Berggolts broadcast her poems on the one remaining radio station, urging listeners not to lose hope. When the siege had begun, the country had already endured decades of revolution, civil war, economic collapse, and Stalin's purges. Berggolts herself survived the deaths of two husbands and both of her children, her own arrest, and a stillborn birth after being beaten under interrogation. Berggolts wrote her memoir Daytime Stars in the spirit of the thaw after Stalin's death. In it, she celebrated the ideals of the revolution and the heroism of the Soviet people while also criticizing censorship of writers and recording her doubts and despair. This English translation by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum makes available a unique autobiographical work by an important author of the Soviet era. In her foreword, Katharine Hodgson comments on experiences of the Terror about which Berggolts was unable or unwilling to write.
ISBN
978-0-299-31600-6
Publication Date
8-2018
Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
City
Madison, WI
Disciplines
European History
Recommended Citation
Berggolts, Olga; Kirschenbaum, Lisa; and Hodgson, Katharine, "Daytime Stars A Poet's Memoir of the Revolution, the Siege of Leningrad, and the Thaw" (2018). College of Arts & Humanities Faculty Books. 2.
https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cahfaculty_books/2
Comments
Translated and edited by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum; Foreword by Katharine Hodgson