Eline Mayzel life embraced almost all 70 years of existence of the Soviet Union. Every unrest in the country affected live and fate of her and her family: violent collectivization, Stalin's repressions, World War II, Holocaust, siege of Leningrad, Perestroika, collapse of the Soviet Union. She lived and survived through all there terrible events. In her memoirs she recollects those events and how they affected herself, her family, people she met and the country as a whole. Mrs. Mayzel takes us back inside everyday lives, hardships and hopes of the people of the now gone Soviet Union. This is an honest and, sometimes, heartbreaking account of laughter and tears, victories and losses, tragedies and success of a person who experienced all these calamities and lives long enough to tell us about them.