My Memories

This is a memoir of a turbulent, persecuted and disturbed Russian life under the Soviet regime and after, by Yuli Nikolayevich Ternovsky. Yuli is a relative of P.A. Stolypin, the last Tsar's reforming Prime Minister, who was shot in a Kiev Opera House. His memoir testifies to the Bolshevik persecution of relatives of Tsarist survivors, the hardships of the Russian Civil War and Second World War, the siege of Leningrad, student and work life in the 1950s and later decades under Khrushchev and then Brezhnev, a life-changing love affair with a Frenchwoman that brings Yuli serious trouble with the authorities. It contains a first-hand account of the Russian psychiatric gulag, as well as of the jarring changes to Russian life and the position of pensioners brought about by the collapse of Soviet communism and the advent of the oligarchs. Throughout a life of suffering, the author has maintained a clear moral vision and compassion for those - such as psychiatric inmates and the Chechens - who suffered and still suffer the cruelty of the Russian state, in its Soviet and post-Soviet guises. It is a powerful testament to one man's indomitable will to survive a system bent on his marginalisation, the overwhelming power of love, and the support given to him by his mother, a woman of steely determination to nurture and protect her child come what may.