Interestingly enough, the author herself left Russia and resides in the U.S. Keeping the population in a fog of fear by intimidation, ignorance and silence. The Russian people being fed lies by this regime and the proverb: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. What is happening in Ukraine are the unthinkable horrors that happened decades ago. Forbidden Love, disappointment, hopelessness- themes that are “unpatriotic” under the iron curtain. Gorokhova delivers a poetic, impactful and authentic story of Sasha, her horrific family history & the brutal world in which she lives. Characters she portrays enable her to slip into another skin rather than living her own life under the lies and corruption of the regime. But escape isn’t what we in the western world would think. But after finding her uncle’s journal, an artist forced to become a soldier, she knows she must escape. A dangerous proposition if you live under the oppressive regime. She hopes of becoming an actress in post war Russia in Moscow. But not all Russians are Putin supporters. Thinking I would do my own self imposed sanction on Russia.

As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work.

Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.

A train to moscow by elena gorokhova