ISBN: 978-0-975961-91-9

Author: Marrianna Vehovan: Natalia Klukovkina (Translator) 

The following review was contributed by: Kathryn Atwood: Click Here To View More Of Kathryn's Reviews

A good memoir brings a single life sharply into focus; when that life
illuminates a turbulent historical context, the results can be enthralling. 
Marianna Vekhova's memoir, Paper Poppies, is such a book.   Orphaned and
hospitalized with spinal tuberculosis during the second world war, four
year-old Marianna experiences first-hand the question that swirls through
the Soviet hospitals and sanitariums where she spends her childhood: "men
fight, but why should children suffer?"  Her book, while not exactly
answering that difficult question, painfully illustrates it in breathtaking
prose.

The memoir is generally linear, but flashbacks weave in and out, giving the
sense that young Marianna, strapped to a hospital bed, has little to do but
ruminate on the confusing and difficult events of her young life.  These
memories are always rendered by the author in stunning detail: during her
evacuation from Moscow, she had passed a "bombed train looking like a long
animal with a broken spine.  Its red sharp tongues of fire ran under the
lifeless black cars and the heavy darkness of the sky, the sky that might
hide our death as well."

Her recollection of a youthful victory celebration is equally compelling.
 The girls in Marianna's ward craft paper poppies, hold them adoringly
before a portrait of Stalin, then hand them to a weeping veteran commander,
while repeatedly singing the following words:

for our dear Stalin, she plucked a flower bouquet;
thanks to the great Stalin for our happy childhood!


After she is cured and released into the care of her grandmother, Marianna
gains painful insight into her parents' tragic lives.  Like the writings of
Solzhenitszyn, this section of the book bitterly  illustrates the cruelty
of the Soviet system.  In the last few chapters, Marianna finds solace for
her emotional pain in Russian Orthodox Christianity.

Paper Poppies is not only a daunting portrayal of the great Soviet Bear
through the eyes of a child,  it is also a poignant testament to the
resilience and possibilities within the human spirit.