Before emigrating to the United States, Sophia Bogatyreva was a prominent literary editor and a part of Moscow and Leningrad literary circles that included Joseph Brodsky, Konstantin Bogatyrev, Korney Chukovsky, Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Lilya Brik and many other celebrities. Her memoirs, written in a brilliantly lucid and humorous style, represent several generations of Soviet literary intelligentsia. Her focus is on those segments of Soviet intelligentsia that preserved their living connections with traditions of modernism and avant-garde despite ideological control and political repressions, while at the same not retreating into the “underground” but rather being well-published and well-read. Bogatyreva’s memoirs convey the complex and multi-layered atmosphere uniting those writers who had to discover ingenious and frequently brilliant ways to use their remarkable talents in the narrow space of the permissible. Angela Brintlinger and Catherine O’Neil’s translation excellently conveys the original style, lucidity and humor of Bogatyreva’s book.

These memoirs read as a significant contribution to scholarship, full of important facts and characterizations. At the same time, they become an original intellectual novel with real-life protagonists seen from the point of view of a child, teenager and young woman. The position of the narrator creates a “defamiliarizing” effect similar to the one about which the Formalists and first and foremost Viktor Shklovsky wrote. However, this powerful effect is “hidden in plain view” – the style of Bogatyreva’s memoirs is strikingly transparent and non-pretentious, which makes her book available even for an unprepared reader.

Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University

Sofia Bogatyreva was born to the family of writer Alexander Ivich and grew up in the heart of Moscow intellectual life of the 20th century. A graduate of the Philology Department at Moscow State University, she specialized in children’s literature and, eventually, literature of the Silver Age of Russian culture. She has written several books for children and teenagers, and more than 300 articles published in Russian, European and American journals. Audiobooks of her literary reminiscences have been the basis for three documentary films. She lives in Denver, CO. >cite>The Silver Age in Our Home was first published in Russian in 2019 by ACT Publishers, Moscow.Angela Brintlinger is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Russian Literature at The Ohio State University, where she directs the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) and chairs the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. Brintlinger holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and MA degrees from Wisconsin and Middlebury College. The translator of two other important Russophone texts from the twentieth century, author of three monographs and over three dozen articles about Russian literature and culture, Brintlinger is also the editor of four volumes about Russian and Slavic cultures. She and Catherine O’Neil co-edited the Pushkin Review for five years.Catherine O’Neil is a literary scholar and Professor of Russian Language and Culture at the United States Naval Academy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and her MA from the University of Toronto. Her publications include a monograph on Pushkin and Shakespeare (With Shakespeare’s Eyes) and articles on Russian, English and Polish romanticism. She has also published several translations, including a bilingual edition with extensive commentary of Polish poet Juliusz S.owacki’s long poem Agamemnon’s Tomb. O’Neil’s most recent work is on Russophone Ukrainian literature, and her translation (with Dominique Hoffman) of Alexei Nikitin's novel The Face of Fire will be published in 2026.

Translators’ Introduction
From the Author: “Not like in other people’s homes”
Notes on Spelling, Transliteration, Use of Cyrillic, and Footnotes
Chapter 1. In Memory of the Cardboard House
Chapter 2. A Brief Life History of Professor Sergei Bernshtein, the “Smart” Linguistic. In Memoirs and Documents.
PHOTO INSERT 1
Chapter 3. A Testament
Chapter 4. Departure
PHOTO INSERT #2
Chapter 5. Tales of the Rabbit Girl
Chapter 6. Uncle Vitya, Papa’s Friend
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Appendix to Chapter 3: Contents of the Mandelshtam Archive
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES