In the Web of History: Old Russia and Soviet Union

In the Web of History is an engaging odyssey of a family caught in the whirlwind of catastrophic historical events and wars sweeping across the 20th century Russia and Soviet Union. It brings to life the not-so-distant past how history, people and events influenced and shaped the family fate.

It is a rich source for memoir readers who value an authentic voice of real people sharing their thoughts, aspirations and struggles to overcome adversities in their lives.

It is a storehouse for inquisitive readers who choose to immerse themselves into the world of historical memoirs to discover details of daily life, customs and traditions that have been lost with time and vanished from the memory of new generations.

And there is a rare bonus for the curious readers, history buffs and historians – the unique insight of Nikita Khrushchev’s teacher into his politically formative years as a communist politician and a rising Party Leader.

In the Web of History is the first book of a monumental work of Historical Family Memoirs where readers are introduced to the beginning of a tumultuous odyssey of a family—one of the millions of families—relentlessly hounded from place to place in their native Ukraine by the State watchdogs. The Gladkys: Orest—pursued by Bolshevik state police as “the enemy of the people” owing to his age 16 Civil War service in the White Army; Antonina, his teacher wife, who had Nikita Khrushchev as a student; their engineering student daughter, Olga, who at the end of the family odyssey became author memoirist.

In the Web of History is a treasure of up-close, intensely personal accounts of Russian and Soviet Union history as lived, documented, and remembered in detail by the Gladky family—whose name is Legion. It is a saga of a family—of the new intelligentsia—who, from the Russian Revolution, the savage bitterness of Civil War, the Communist, Bolshevik dictatorship, and Stalin’s persecutions, became pawns of history.

The events, written and narrated as remembered by mother, father and daughter add the authentic voice to their stories that are personal in detail and historical in scope. It is a compelling narrative consistently fascinating, frequently riveting, that speaks with verifiable historical accuracy and evokes novel-like response in the reader.