Cathy Young (1)

2269 Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood, by Cathy Young (Ekaterina Jung) (read 20 Feb 1990) This is a 1989 book by a 1988 college graduate, who tells of her life in Moscow until she and her parents and grandmother came to the U.S. in 1980. I found the book extremely interesting for the different insight it gives to life in Russia. Of course, she was not there under Gorbachev, but her comments in an epilogue to her story are insightful and bring home to a person how far things have to go for Russia to have a free society. The author's home was always hostile to the regime, but one has the idea those hostile to the regime have a lonely time in Russia. But, then, those hostile to Hitler must have felt the same way in Germany before 1945--and now one can't figure out how Hitler stayed in power since everyone apparently was against him! The author of this book was 16 when she left, and now talks English without an accent--and her writing is impeccable--which may only mean that she has a good editor. But one can see good things about Russia which the author didn't--for instance, pornography doesn't get on TV in Russia, etc. There is, it seems clear, less crime, etc. This book says nothing about any difficulties the author has in the U.S., and so maybe that is being deliberately downplayed. She is an extraordinary girl--very interested in literature--the day she left Moscow she took an hour and a half to visit a bookstore and buy a book of Coleridge! A very worthwhile book!… (més)