From the moment of its founding, the USSR was reviled and admired, demonized and idealized. Many Jews saw the new society ushered in by the Russian Revolution as their salvation from shtetl life with its deprivations and deadly pogroms. But Soviet Russia was rife with antisemitism, and a Jewish boy growing up in Leningrad learned early, harsh, and enduring lessons. Unsparing and poignant, Mikhail Iossel's twenty stories of Soviet childhood and adulthood, dissidence and subsequent immigration, are filled with wit and humor even as they describe the daily absurdities of a fickle and often perilous reality.

The night Andropov died -- Some of the world transactions my father has missed due to his death on September 14, 1999 -- Necessary evil -- Klodt's horses -- Why? Why?? Why??? -- Sentence -- A Soviet twelve days of Christmas -- The night we were told Brezhnev was dead -- Moscow windows -- Our entire nation -- Flying cranes -- April 1st, sunset hour -- First death -- The beginning of a long road -- Sad -- Blue -- Almost nine -- Life : how was it? -- Love like water, love like fire -- U.S. border, midnight.