MARIE AVINOV: A Pilgrimage Through Hell

Based on her earlier diaries and obviously also very well remembered now many years later, this is the story of a woman whose life was for the most part spent in actively surviving thirty odd years of the Lenin-Stalin regime. An aristocrat by birth, at eighteen Marie refused to be presented at court, shortly thereafter married Nika Avinov. With the Revolution both she and Nika were under the constant surveillance of the Cheka (later the G.P.U., still later the N.K. V.D.); Nika was arrested eight times (once she secured his freedom via Vyshinsky); she was finally given ""Free Deportation"" to central Asia and was in a small village there when the Germans took over in 1941. Finally with her friend of the late years, she secured German escort to Berlin, and ultimately a visa to Paris and the U.S. where after a few years she received her husband's last message just before he was shot. . . Another authentic testament of exceptional resistance and courage, justifiably emotional and, under the circumstances not overstated. Inevitably it is a story which has been read before although partial New Yorker appearance suggests a continuing interest. Mr. Chavachavadze who transcribed this has not retouched it stylistically in any way.