Recently unearthed in the archives of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, Nina Lugovskaya’s diary offers rare insight into the life of a teenage girl in Stalin’s Russia–when fear of arrest was a fact of daily life. Like Anne Frank, 13-year-old Nina is conscious of the extraordinary dangers around her and her family, yet she is preoccupied by ordinary teenage concerns: boys, parties, her appearance, who she wants to be when she grows up. As Nina records her most personal emotions and observations, her reflections shape a diary that is as much a portrait of her intense inner world as it is the Soviet outer one. Preserved here, these markings–the evidence used to convict Nina as a “counterrevolutionary”–offer today’s reader a fascinating perspective on the era in which she lived.

Related: Biography - Autobiography- Memoir, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Russia

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• ISBN: 9780618605750
• Authors: Bromfield, Andrew; Fine, Anne; Lugovskaya, Nina
• Published: 2007, Houghton Mifflin
• Themes: Diary, Emotions, Fear, Law Enforcement, Survival
• Descriptors: Biography - Autobiography- Memoir, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Russia
• No. of pages: 304