Alex Halberstadt: "Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning"

History, autobiography, travelogue—a hybrid form—"Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning", by Alex Halberstadt, considers what it means to be a gay Jewish refugee from the USSR. Halberstadt came to America at age nine and returned to Russia to meet his father, who he barely remembered, and his grandfather, one of Stalin’s personal bodyguards and a member of the KGB, who he’d never met. Halberstadt discusses the idea of recurrence: history returning to haunt him.

An excerpt from “Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning" by Alex Halberstadt.

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Excerpted from YOUNG HEROES OF THE SOVIET UNION:A Memoir and a Reckoning. Copyright © 2020 by Alex Haberstadt. Published by Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House.