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This is a vivid, true story of Soviet Russia during the last decades of the USSR. It provides a lesser-known insider’s view that breaks stereotypes. As a daring memoir of a young woman searching for her Jewish roots, defying society, and her family, the tale includes love, hatred, betrayal, loyalty, dissidents, Soviet prisons, Academic Town in Siberia, antisemitism, and the Jewish movement during Perestroika. It is not just history—this volume addresses many contemporary burning questions such as underpinnings of antisemitism, the psychology of trauma, and the forces that sustain or dismantle totalitarian regimes.
“The story will take you on a daredevil adventure—to virgin forests of Russia’s Far East, and an oasis of a university town amid Siberian wilderness. You will glimpse the loveliest and ugliest sides of Russian life refracted through the author’s youthful wonder, as she learns to love, trust, and be heartbroken, and to summon courage to move forward.”
—Yelena Lembersky, author of Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour
“A passionate personal reflection on Jewish life in the world of Soviet Russia, Siberian Summer embraces contradictions and controversies, where limitations of freedom imposed by authoritarian government overlap with the almost unlimited freedom of self-expression, culture, and spirituality. ”
—Rabbi Joshua Breindel
Raisa Stinson has been a journalist, a librarian, a Hebrew and English teacher, a computer programmer, and a yoga instructor. She has lived in Russia, the USA, Africa, and Thailand. Raisa also spent a year in Israel volunteering at the front lines. She is now a psychologist with a small private practice in mental health counseling.
Preface
Chapter One. Siberia
Intermission. Jews in a Multinational State
Chapter Two. Leningrad
Chapter Three. Imprisoned
Chapter Four. The Trial
Chapter Five. “Everything is for the Best in This Best of All Worlds . . .”
Chapter six. Hebrew
Chapter Seven. Perestroika
Chapter Eights. Refuseniks, 1988-1990
Chapter 9. One-Way Ticket
Epilogue
Endnotes