Viktor Shel

Oksana Viktor Shel

Young Oksana and Leonid met in far Railroad station the first year of the Great Patriotic War (2-d World War). Oksana was daughter of exiled to Bashkiria Ukrainian peasants. Leonid was from Jewish family evacuated from Odessa, Ukraine. Young people decide to start a family after the war. War has separated them for a while. After the war in 1945, they create a happy family, get an education and get a job. It seems that everything for this family had settled. The life confronts them with the problems typical of the Soviet Union. Brought up in a deep faith in the justice of the Soviet system, Oksana and Leonid slowly had loosed that faith. After the death of Leonid Oksana and her son Roland come to think about emigration from the USSR. They had achieved this task. The novel describes in detail how in spite of the propaganda the family of Oksana comes to the conclusion that the Communist Party is leading the country wrong way and will come to a standstill. The novel contains a detailed life of a whole generation of Soviet intelligentsia, and their struggle for existence and gradual change in their ideology. The events in the novel have a historical basis, and the characters were copied from real people. The novel gives detail description of the process of obtaining permission to leave the Soviet Union and the experience of those who dare to take this step. In the last part of the novel describes life Oksana family as new immigrants to the United States. The novel describes in detail hardships Oksana and Roland need to overcome to achieve success in their new homeland.