Doris Lessing
"How extraordinary it is that compassion and tenderness may flourish in the cruelest conditions; how stubbornly and bravely people survive them. This is not a depressing book but an inspiriting and encouraging one."


Robert Conquest
"A moving and powerful human and historical document. The emotional and moral strength of these women who lost many years of their lives to the organized cruelties of the Gulag, and who, as they say, represent the many who did not return, is an unforgettable lesson for our time."


Adam Hochschild
"For anyone trying to comprehend the Soviet tragedy, the testimonies in this book are essential, riveting, and at times almost unbearably painful. To the statistics on the millions jailed, shot, or starved, these eloquent voices add a human face: of mothers torn from their children; of the deep, life-sustaining friendships among women in the gulag; of the talented generation whose senselessly wasted lives behind barbed wire pose once again the stark question that was scrawled on prison cell walls throughout Stalin's Russia: Why? Why?"


Book Description
" . . . a fascinating, brave and in many ways heartening book . . . " --Times Literary Supplement " . . . some of the best of the enormous, mostly untranslated Gulag memoir literature." --Anne Applebaum, Literary Review (London) " . . . probably the most gripping and detailed addtion to the famous fundamental work by Solzhenitsyn. This book should be read by everybody . . . " --The Spectator "How extraordinary it is that compassion and tenderness may flourish in the cruellest conditions; how stubbornly and bravely people survive them. This is not a depressing book but an inspiriting and encouraging one." --Doris Lessing Arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, trial and sentencing, transport, labor camps, internal exile, sometimes release, often followed by re-arrest and re-imprisonment--and, for those who outlived Stalin, eventual reprieve and rehabilitation--these are the outlines of the experiences recorded by 16 courageous Russian women whose moving testimonies, most of them written in secret and at great personal risk, are presented here.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian


About the Author
Simeon Vilensky, a former political prisoner, a writer, and a poet, is founder of Vozvrashchenie, an organization in Moscow dedicated to preserving and publishing testimonies of Stalin's victims and aiding camp survivors.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

During the Soviet era, millions of Soviet citizens were denounced, arrested, and imprisoned on fabricated charges of conducting "anti-state" activities. Till My Tale Is Told recounts the testimonies of women whose family lives and careers were brutally disrupted by the nightmare of false accusation, torture, humiliation, hunger, and unspeakable deprivation. The women in this book were fortunate: unlike many others, they survived.. "Published in Moscow in 1989 and now translated into English for the first time, the narratives collected in this volume were written illegally and for many years hidden away from public view. Although in 1956 political prisoners began to be officially rehabilitated, their writings were repressed as "slandering the Soviet system." What emerges from these moving testimonies is not only the brutality these women endured but also the extraordinary tenderness, kindness, and humanity they maintained in unimaginably barbarous conditions.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bennett - Times Literary Supplement

Till My Tale is Told is a fascinating, brave and in many ways heartening book. By letting its memoirists speak for themselves, it reveals what a sweeping overview misses: the courage, endurance and intelligent sceptisism fostered by suffering.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

How extraordinary it is that compossion and tenderness may flourish in the cruellest conditions; how stubbornly and bravely people survive them. — Doris Lessing