The Year of the Former Soviet Author

By Yevgeniya Traps, The Jewish Daily Forward

In the recently published memoir “A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,” Lev Golinkin recounts the story of his family’s 1989 departure from the rapidly disintegrating Soviet Union. The Golinkins make their way to America, relying on the kindness of strangers; unsure of what they might find, they are guided largely by the sense that whatever it is, it is sure to be better than what they are leaving behind.

Theirs is not an atypical story: Alienated by tacitly sanctioned anti-Semitism, driven away by the lack of opportunity and other finer things, Soviet Jews packed up their scant belongings — people did not generally have very much to begin with, and guards were checking for valuables at the border — and headed into the great unknown. Which is to say, like many an immigrant before and after them, they took their stab at the American dream.

And, like many an immigrant before and after them, if they were at all inclined toward the written word, they wrote all about the stab and the disappointment and the compromises and the sacrifices and the semblance of a truce they finally established with the new version of their lives.

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