In The Beginning

by Irina Ratushinskaya

Release Date: 06 March, 1991

Edition: Hardcover

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What makes a dissident?

Irina Ratushinskaya is a Russian poet/writer who became a political prisoner in the Soviet Union due to her dissident activities. I happened to come across another book of hers, "A Tale of Three Heads" and fell in love with it, and so I was interested in finding something else by her to read.

Whereas the book "Grey is the Color of Hope" is about her experiences in prison, most of this book is about Ratushinskaya's life before she was arrested. She talks about growing up in Odessa, and about the life of her husband when he was younger, how he worked to overcome difficulties walking, and how he loved making fire. Although religion, being forbidden under the Soviets, did not play a large part in their lives growing up, instilled in both of them was a thirst for the truth, and a sense of decency and justice -- things which, as they got older, they saw the Soviets try to do away with as well. (Of course Lenin was a genius in physics!)

For these reasons, they had to decide to play along with this system or to try to resist it - they chose to resist. Coming together with others of like mind, they hoped to help circulate forbidden texts, such as those of Solzhenytsin, to do anything to loosen the grip the Soviets had on the minds of the people. Ratushinskaya is a poet herself, and her poetry was also circulated; one of the reasons that she served much more time in prison as her husband.

She did survive, and after her release she and her husband were forced to flee to England.

This book, however, is a well-written chronicle of what will bring a person (or in this case two) to try to fight against a tyranny that they have almost no hope of toppling, and yet they struggle on anyway.