?Live While You Still Can?

Irina Korzun's memoir reads like a bildungsroman set against the turbulent events of 20th century Russia, from the author's early childhood in the late 1910s to her post-WWII adulthood. Irina lived a long and remarkable life filled with both achievement and tragedy. A graduate of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute and a prize-winning markswoman, she was also one of the founders of the Soviet mountain-climbing movement. She lost friends and loved ones to Stalin's repressions, war and starvation, and was herself torn from home and sent into penal exile to spend years in remote parts of the country. Irina's family was part of the Russian nobility destroyed by the Revolution; her mother briefly taught the last Imperial princesses. Untainted by Bolshevism, the family evinced true patriotism: her father declined to emigrate, choosing to throw his lot in with his country; her mother's uncle, catapulted into Sweden by the vagaries of civil war, returned for the same purpose. Both met their death by firing squad; so, too, did Irina's brother. True to her heritage, Irina developed a nobility of character that guided her through the minefield of Soviet life without loss of integrity. In all things, she strove to eschew cowardice and moral compromise and resisted brainwashing and mass hysteria. Riveting in the breadth of its subject matter, the book describes leading universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, their athletic programs, the birth of the Soviet mountain-climbing movement, life in the big city and remote small towns, Soviet collective agriculture, the life of political exiles and refugees displaced by war. It is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand 20th century Russian history.

Author: Irina Korzun

Publisher: Independently Published

Publication Date: Aug 12, 2019

Number of Pages: 322 pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 1088730647

ISBN-13: 9781088730645