The Way It Was
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Historians can tell us everything about the Soviet Union, except how it looked and felt to a child who grew up there without knowing much beyond her own experience, until, as an adult, she "escaped from home" to America. The Way It Was gives what no historian can, a feeling knowledge of life under the regime, as suffered year after year by one who survived.Bill Spengemann, Hanover, NH
The Way it Was by Heli-Kristy Kultas-Ilinsky should be read and shared with everyone you know. It's a story that we in the United States have very little knowledge of and can hardly imagine and for that reason alone it's an important book to read. The experience of Kristy and her family was a common one for the people of Estonia during the reign of the Soviet Union and her book reveals an experience that is dark and cruel and amazing. People who lived a happy and productive life one day were exiled to Siberia the next day and the way families survived, if they did, is a story we should all be aware of. Kristy tells her story with no sentimentality, it's just the way it was for her. She assigns no blame for the terrible circumstances she and her family found themselves in and describes the events clearly. She learned how to survive under Communism without letting it destroy her and she figured out how to get along without succumbing to the evil of Communism and maintained her dignity along the way. We must know the stories of Kristy and others so that what happened in Eastern Europe after WWII never again occurs there or somewhere else.Evelyn Whelan Rudolph, Appleton, Wisconsin
… I'm totally engrossed in the story. It is at once a history lesson, a geography lesson and above all a story of human endurance. What extraordinary fortitude your parents and you have displayed. Your voice is authentic; I hear your speech rhythms and word patterns, which give it such a personal tone in spite the objective manner in which you write. Never describing or bathing in the emotional life what we imagine makes it even more powerful. Blanche Salant, Artisitic Director Atelier Blanche Salant Paul Weaver, L'Atelier International de Théâtre, Paris, France
… I went with the writer and experienced her world, and had quite a journey. It was fabulous, with all the suffering and joy she experienced, and it was indeed a trip. I can only say thank you for the book and sharing your world with me. I am certain that many will feel equally about it.Micky Dansereau, St. Adele, Canada
…This is an enjoyable memoir to read despite the sadness of the Estonian story. Kristy Kultas-Ilinsky’s memory supplies many “stories within the story” of suspense and human relationships in a part of the world where lives were turned upside down – for no reason. Rosemary Lunardini, Hanover, New Hampshire
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About the Book
The story of a woman, who feels obliged to write down and make an account complete, standing outside of things, she disregards totally the usual sentiment of times gone by. Exiled at four years of age to Siberia by Soviet authorities after the occupation of Estonia during the World War II in their process of what is now called ethnic cleansing, she finds herself in the bitter harshness of the barren and frigid region, where she and her mother, along with many others, was destined to extermination. Witness to the suffering and death of helpless women and children, including her younger brother, nearly loosing her mother to encephalitis, and herself going through hunger and disease, she miraculously survives. Her life unfolds in the remote parts of the vast Soviet Union, continues in postwar Estonia, follows in post-Stalinist Moscow during the period of the ‘thaw’, where she manages to obtain an excellent education and launches a successful scientific carrier in academia while she cares for tragically ill mother, and then starts again from scratch in America. The book provides a fascinating eyewitness account of the cruelties and absurdities of daily life under a totalitarian regime where terror and fear is a way of life and ‘food for soul’ – arts and literature – substitute for real nourishment and other real life necessities. It’s a story of a tragedy, endurance, and luck with a happy ending.
About the Author
Heli-Kristy Kultas-Ilinsky was born in Tallinn Estonia in 1937, received Master of Science degree from Moscow State University in 1959, and Ph.D. degree in 1965 from the Brain Research Institute in Moscow. From 1965 to 1974 she was faculty member at the Institute of Biophysics of the Academy of Science of the USSR. In 1974 she emigrated to the United States, and in 1975 was appointed as Assistant Professor at St. Louis University School of Medicine, then in 1982 transferred to the University of Iowa where she served as an Associate and then Full Professor in the Department of Anatomy College of Medicine until 2001, teaching and doing research in neuroscience. Currently she is retired and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with her husband, Igor Ilinsky, also a neuroscientist. She has published more than 90 research articles in scientific journals, as well as several book chapters, and has been an editor of books on neuroscience topics. After retirement, she and her husband continue their scientific pursuits in collaboration with colleagues in France and Italy.