I left Soviet Kiev with my parents in 1976, when I was five. I have virtually no memories of myself before age eight or nine, which I attribute to frequent relocation during the exhausting immigration process. I don’t remember my sojourn in Vienna, or the eight months in Ostia, a suburb of Rome. I can vaguely recall my first years in Elementary school where I learned to speak a language I now consider my mother tongue, even though I spoke only Russian until the age of six.

But I do remember the constant talk of ‘that’ country; and the regime from which we escaped - one which did not end with Stalin’s death in 1953. It had left an indelible stain on my parents’ psyches and by transference, on me. There were surreal stories of bugged apartments and the necessity for ‘coded’ conversations. There were recollections of pervasive propaganda that denigrated life in the West. With the exception of our immediate family, our departure was a guarded secret - for we were traitors to our homeland. Not until we were on a train - with busted-out windows in the middle of December and heading towards the Czech border - did my parents tell me the truth, in fear that in my childish naiveté, I would betray us.

Compared to the stories of my parents’ lives, the stories of my grandparents’ lives were far worse. My parents had been born into a period of relative stability, industrialization and progress, by Soviet standards. My grandmother, who coincidentally was born around the same time as the two main female characters, lived through the purges in dire poverty and constant hunger. She died, like so many others, too young.

While writing this novel, I tried my best not to swallow the reader up in a sea of tragedy. This novel is as much about hope and perseverance as it is about the realities of life in that era. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

InterFEARence: A Novel About Life, Love and Stalin

L.H. Ostrovsky