Three autobiographical books by three Soviet dissidents who are as unlike one another in character, background and way of life as it is possible to be. The first of the authors is a solemn, Jewish lady-lawyer; the second an irascible Red Army general; the third (until his death recently in a car crash) was a contumacious bohemian of vagrant habits and wide-ranging intellectual interests. One of the many things that make their books so depressing to read, however, is that the same incidents and people recur in all three of them: indeed, each of the authors appears in the others' books, though not always by name. Thus, quite unintentionally and inadvertently, they reveal just how small was the society of dissidents, and how limited in number were the protests they managed to mount, even in the great days of the 'Movement', in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

LRB 15 September 1983 | PDF Download