Beginning with glasnost in the late 1980s and continuing into the present, scores of personal accounts of life under Soviet rule, written throughout its history, have been published in Russia, marking the end of an epoch. In a major new work on private life and personal writings, Irina Paperno explores this massive outpouring of human documents to uncover common themes, cultural trends, and literary forms. The book argues that, diverse as they are, these narratives memoirs, diaries, notes, blogs assert the historical significance of intimate lives shaped by catastrophic political forces,...

Beginning with glasnost in the late 1980s and continuing into the present, scores of personal accounts of life under Soviet rule, written throughout its history, have been published in Russia, marking the end of an epoch. In a major new work on private life and personal writings, Irina Paperno explores this massive outpouring of human documents to uncover common themes, cultural trends, and literary forms. The book argues that, diverse as they are, these narratives memoirs, diaries, notes, blogs assert the historical significance of intimate lives shaped by catastrophic political forces,...

"God only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions . . . pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do. . ." Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopia turning the totality of his life into a book would remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. "Who, What Am I?" is an account of Tolstoy's lifelong attempt to find adequate ways to represent the self,...