Sophia Petrovna. Descent into the Water. Dash

Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907–1996) — prose writer, poet, publicist, literary critic, memoirist. Author of the books “Notes on Anna Akhmatova”, “In the Editor's Laboratory”, “"Bygone Days and Thoughts" by Herzen”, “In Memory of Childhood”, “On This Side of Death”, “The... Exclusion Process” and others.

The book includes three novellas, two of which are artistic — “Sophia Petrovna” and “Descent into the Water” — and a documentary one — “Dash”, dedicated to a terrible era — the end of the thirties.
“Sophia Petrovna”, written on the brink of 1939 and 1940, is the first artistic reflection of terror in world literature, created not simply without hope for publication, but at the risk of life. “Descent into the Water” is a novella from another time and a new wave of repressions — the early fifties. “Dash” is a documentary book about Lidia Korneevna's husband, the theoretical physicist Matvey Bronstein, who was arrested and shot in 1938. She supplemented and continued writing it until the last days of her life.

“I try to guess who and how will read this large volume, this high and tragic triptych. For those who are already familiar with these books and will now reread them, I am not worried; this is more than a conscious act on their part, and I believe it will be imbued with that very "bitter joy" that Anna Akhmatova wrote about. But what about those who are reading it for the first time?
After this book, a person cannot help but change; before it — they are one; after — another.”
Pavel Kryuchkov, literary critic,
employee of the Museum Center "Chukovsky House in Peredelkino"

1. Lidia Chukovskaya is known primarily as an editor and author of memoirs about her father, Kornei Chukovsky. In this collection — two of her artistic works (novellas) and the unfinished “Mitya’s Book” (“Dash”), which tells about her second husband, scientist and writer Matvey Bronstein. The works were impossible to publish in the Union; the texts touch upon the darkest pages of Soviet history — the era of the Great Terror.
2. “Sophia Petrovna” and “Descent into the Water” are artistic novellas that resonate with the documentary “Dash”. These are stories about how to preserve oneself in an era of dehumanization under the influence of numbing horror and propaganda.
3. Chukovskaya was surrounded by artists from childhood: poets, prose writers, artists, critics. The fates of most of them ended tragically, just like the fate of her second husband. “Dash” is dedicated to him and all her friends and loved ones.