Sofia Petrovna

by Lydia Chukovskaya

Book Overview

This is a fictional account of one woman's experience following the arrest of her son during the Yezhov purges. Drawing on the author's own experience, this novella paints an almost documentary-style... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810111500
• ISBN13: 9780810111509
• Release Date: June 1994
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Book Review

Sofia Petrovna is a widow with a bright son. He becomes one of the top engineers at one of the best engineering schools. Ever since the death of her husband, Sofia Petrovna has been working at an office where she is in charge of all the typist. She becomes best friends with the best typist, Natasha, and spends a lot of time with her during ovevrtime and outside of work. People soon begin to be arrested for mysterious reasons. Kolya's, Sofia Petrovna's son, best friend Alek come and informs Sofia Petrovna that Kolya was arrested. Sofia Petrovna takes time off of work and begins to spend most of her time in like at the prosecutor's office. She and all of the other women there want nothing but to know the location of their husband or son. Some of the woman who have been there longer and have already gotten the information they needed, began to take control and get everything in order. When Sofia Petrovna finally gets to see the prosecutor he tells her there isn't anything he can do because, Kolya had confessed to the being a terrorist. By this time Sofia Petrovna had already left her job, and Natasha had already been fired. One day when Sofia went to see Natasha she goes to her apartment and finds out that Natasha had committed suicide. Sofia Petrovna soon receives information that Alek has also been arrested for not saying anything about Kolya to the police. After a couple of days Sofia Petrovna finally receives a letter from Kolya telling her that an old friend from back in high school had told the police that Kolya had joined a terrorist group with him. Kolya couldn't do anything but confess, but he told his mother that he didn't join a terrorist group. Sofia Petrovna wanted to write him back, but a friend of hers told her that she shouldn't so the government wouldn't make her move and lose contact with her son. The ending was not what I expected. I was expecting for Sofia Petrovna to die, since everything else in her life was going bad. Sofia Petrovna is a book that puts you in the moment of what is happening. While reading, I felt what Sofia Petrovna felt, which is why I expected a different ending. This book is a book that lets people know what was going on in the government in Russia during 1937 without actually putting out that it was all the government's fault. This book is a must read, especially for those who want to understand what was going on in Russia in 1937.

Brief Summary

Sofia Petrovna is a novella written about the Great Purge of 1938. It follows the life of a common woman named Sofia Petrovna who is devoted to her son Kolya and to the work that she has just recently begun at a typing office. While working, Sofia Petrovna makes friends with a woman named Natasha Frolenko, Kolya goes off to college with his best friend Alik Finkelstein and everything is going very nicely. However, soon Kolya is arrested and thus begins the true plot of the novella: the waiting of mothers, sisters and wives in long lines trying to discover the fate of their loved ones who have been taken away and the climax as each woman is told whether her parcel for said party will be accepted or not. Sofia Petrovna represents the average woman who believes that there is no way that her family member could be involved in anything illegal; everyone else is probably guilty, but never anyone belonging to her. Sofia Petrovna feels so sorry for the other women, sympathizing with them as to how difficult it must be to be related to a saboteur, but the possibility that the others might be just as innocent as her Kolya never enters her mind. In the end Sofia Petrovna still has had no word from her son and begins making up stories, saying that he has been released and is coming home soon. She repeats it so much that she almost starts to believe it herself and she makes up even more details. For instance that Kolya is getting married and that he has been named assistant of the factory that he is working in. Finally though, Sofia Petrovna receives a real letter in which Kolya asks her to write an appeal to let him out; however, on the advice of a friend, she does not. To write an appeal to anyone would remind them of Sofia Petrovna's existence and she would most likely be deported as well and with that, she burns the letter and the book ends.

Dangerous Times, Simple Writing

This book was assigned to me in a Russian literature course, and it is one of the best Russian books that I have read so far. As already mentioned in other reviews, it was very dangerous for Lydia Chukovskaya to have written this book, and is an excellent example of subversive writing at the time. It clearly captures the feelings at the time, as well as the reactions of the people. The sad descent of Sofia Petrovna and her son into despair and madness is well-written in this great novel, which, while very simply and plainly written, is extremely expressive and emotional, while never being a cliche.

Chilling Account

How friends turned away when a family member was "taken away" and left those remaining alone to starve since no one could employ them. This reads like a true account of the Stalinist Purge times but is under the label of fiction. Even as fiction, the author was in peril writting it. It is a short effective story written in a compelling manner.

Chukovskaya's vision of an unmentionable time

Madame Chukovskaya's Sofia Petrovna is one of the best examples of Soviet protest literature available to English readers. Her prose style, spare and direct, is marvelously fitting for this story of a Soviet everywoman's loss of faith. Because there is little introspection, the reader is forced to look deeply into why the events in the heroine's life are causing her to go mad. The reflection on the Soviet system which this creates is one of the best ways to study the period about which Chukovskaya wrote. What is particularly moving about this book is the voice Chukovskaya uses to tell her story. It is the most feminine of voices, that of a mother, whose compassion and faith in her son, while conflicting with her identity as a good Soviet citizen, are emotions with which any female reader can relate, or any parent. This short novel is often grouped with A. Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The relation between the two books is compelling. One presents the story of those who were senselessly condemned to the gulags; the other recounts the impact of this condemnation on the families and friends left behind. Although this book is not widely read by the American public, I think it one of the most moving stories of Soviet life in the Stalinist era. For this reason, I believe it will continue to be a classic of Soviet literature for many years to come