> Skip to content
  • Published: 2 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141971407
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Just Send Me Word

A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag




The extraordinary story of a secret correspondence in Stalin's Russia

Almost everything we know about the terrible experience of the Gulag has been based on survivor memoirs, in many cases written decades later. For obvious reasons there is very little authentic, contemporary material.

Just Send Me Word is a uniquely powerful and moving experience. It is the story of the relationship between Lev and Sveta, two young Muscovites separated by the Second World War and then the Gulag, where the Soviet state sent Lev for ten years on absurd and arbitrary charges. Extraordinarily, during Lev's long exile in an Arctic camp they were able to smuggle letters to each other and even meet. Both sides of the entire correspondence have survived and these letters (of which there are some 1,500) form a detailed and agonizing account of life in Stalin's Soviet Union. They are a testament to human constancy under impossible circumstances - a love story like no other.

  • Published: 2 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141971407
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Orlando Figes

Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Born in London in 1959, he was previously a Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. A People’s Tragedy received the Wolfson Prize, the NCR Book Award, the W.H. Smith Literary Award, the Longman/History Today Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the author of many other books on Russian history including Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, The Whisperers: Private life in Stalin’s Russia, Crimea: the Last Crusade and Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag.

Also by Orlando Figes

See all