Doba-Mera Medvedeva belongs to a vanishing group of memoirists who are neither elite nor highly literate, but whose observations from the ground cast a vivid light on a lost world. A born story-teller whose first language was Yiddish, Medvedeva kept Russian-language notebooks to preserve her past for her Russian-speaking grandchildren. We see in the book the quarrelsome underside of shtetl life-family divisions in a time of scarce resources-and also her attempts to break free, through work, revolution, and, eventually, marriage. She lived through pogroms and two world wars, but she endured, remembered, and wrote.

About the Author

Alice Nakhimovsky is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Colgate University. She is best known for her book Russian Jewish Literature and Identity (Johns Hopkins, 1991). Her latest book, Dear Mendel, Dear Reyzel: Yiddish Letter Manuals in Russia and America (Indiana University Press, 2015), written with Roberta Newman, won a National Jewish Book Award.

Historian Michael Beizer of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, is the author of numerous books and articles on Russian Jewry. His Jews of St. Petersburg, out in three languages, was a groundbreaking study of a group whose existence, at the time, was barely acknowledged. His latest book is Relief in a time of Need: Russian Jewry and the Joint, 1919-1924 (Slavica, 2015).

Book Information
ISBN 9781618114365
Author Doba-Mera Medvedeva
Format Paperback
Page Count 158
Imprint Academic Studies Press
Publisher Academic Studies Press