Annotation
Ginzburg's memoir was published in the USSR in 1988–1989 during glasnost. She was too pessimistic by one generation — her son Aksyonov lived to see it, not just her grandson. The book became a landmark document of Gulag testimony and Soviet repression. Her hope that truth would eventually surface in her homeland proved well-founded, arriving faster than she dared predict.
What Actually Happened
Ginzburg's memoir was first published in the USSR in 1988-1989, during glasnost — in the magazine Daugava (issues 7-12 of 1988 and 1-6 of 1989), with a complete book edition following in 1989 from Kursiv in Saratov (50,000 copies). She was too pessimistic by one generation: her son, the writer Vasily Aksyonov, lived to see the Soviet publication. Ginzburg herself had died in 1977, twelve years before the book appeared in her homeland.