Tamara Life in the Soviet Union and Under Capitalism

The memoir Tamara: Life in the Soviet Union and under Capitalism is written by a Russian who lived half her life under the Soviet regime and the other half in Canada. As the work is a letter to her granddaughter, now a small girl, Tamara’s life, situations, and feelings are described as they were, without consideration for political correctness or in order to match to taste of the present time; it is the real life of an ordinary person. The work is infused with details of everyday life, joyful and sad, with short stories and life experiences under both systems. The work gives Tamara’s background; the roots of her family; the discovery of the suicide of her grandfather, a scientist-geneticist, kept secret in her family. At the end Tamara records notes from her return to Russia and Ukraine where her husband and she met people from different layers of the society to catch a glimpse of what happened after the Soviet Union collapsed. Author Tamara Bukhanov gives her opinion on both systems, her thoughts on various subjects provoke readers to examine their own opinions and views.