This is the diary of a young Russian woman who was killed during a partisan action in World War II. The editor/translator gave the bare details of Nina Kosterina's life in the preface, but didn't explain why she was important enough for her diary to be published. I'm still not really clear on that.

Nina's diary covers 1936 to 1941, age fifteen to twenty, but it's not really that long because she didn't write entries very often and sometimes weeks or months separate one entry from another. You learn about her relationships with girlfriends and with boys, her activity in Communist organizations, her relationship with her family, and her studies. She was a very good student who got a scholarship to a university in Moscow to study geology.

It might be worth comparing this book to Nina Lugovskaya's Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl, which was written during the same period. The girls have a lot in common. They had the same first name, they were about the same age, both lived with their mother and sisters, both had their fathers accused of subversive activity and arrested, both lived in Moscow, and both apparently suffered from depression. Lugovskaya was very critical of Stalin's government, however, whereas Kosterina was a loyal Communist and a leader in the local Communist youth group.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding out about ordinary life in Stalin's Russia during the prewar years. ( )