Daughter of the Revolution: A Russian Girlhood Remembered

by Vera Broido

Born in St Petersburg in 1907, Vera Broido lived through the revolution and civil war in Russia. This autobiography, imbued with the hunger and cold, the excitement and exaltation, is her record of that time.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Br...

Reviews

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Véra Broïdo, exiled in Siberia, Muse of the avant-garde artists in Berlin of the Thirties, mother of Nick Cohn the great rock critic. What a life. Véra Broïdo was a child of the XX°century of which she lived the most critical moments. Her mother, Eva Broido was a revolutionist menschevik. Opposed to the war in 1914, the family will be condemned to the deportation in Siberia. Her father managed to make flee his wife and his daughter in Berlin. Her mother go back in Russia in 1927 where she will be executed by Stalin. Imagine the city for this period : cultural effervescence and political violence. You should be see "The egg of the snake" of Bergman with Keith Carradine. This film translates correctly the atmosphere there. In the egg, snake is closed but we can see its ring, the danger is soon here. In Berlin, she begins the Muse of Dada artist Raoul Haussmann. He was painter, sculptor, one of the greatest photograph, poet. She lives with Haussmann and his wife. A couple with three, it was revolutionnary at this time. It was a bohem life. The ushers came to seize their only good a carpet. They remained many time in the Stylt island where they practised naturism. Haussmann photographed there among of the most beautiful female nude of the Thirties. Particularly I like a photograph of back of Véra. We see the nape of the neck, the round domes of shoulders and the short hair. Brand of femininity, these volumes confine with abstraction. She fleed Germany because of Nazis for England. She married with the historian Norman Cohn. All her books as this one speaks about the Russian Revolution. She does not mention her turbulent Berliner stay.