Exiled Russian journalist colorfully narrates his passage into dissent and his work on behalf of persecuted Christians in 1970s USSR.

In this memoir, replete with Jewish humor and sardonic Russian irony, exiled Russian journalist and human rights advocate Arkady Polishchuk (b. 1930) colorfully narrates his evolution as a dissenter and his work on behalf of persecuted Christians in 1970s Soviet Russia.

Told primarily through dialog, this thrilling account puts the reader in the middle of a critical time in history, when thousands of people who had been denied emigration drew international attention while suffering human rights abuses, staged show trials, forced labor, and constant surveillance.

From 1950-1973, Polishchuk worked as a journalist for Russian state-run media and atAsia and Africa Today, where all of the foreign correspondents were KGB operatives using their cover jobs to meddle in international affairs. His close understanding of Russian propaganda, the use of "kompromat" against enemies and his knowledge of "pripiski" (defined as "positive distortions of achieved results and fake reports") makes this memoir especially eye-opening for American readers in today's political climate.

Through the course of the narrative, we are along with Polishchuk as he covers an anti-Semitic show trial, writessamizdat (underground political self-publications), is arrested, followed and surveilled, collaborates with refuseniks and smuggles eyewitness testimony to the west. The absurdity of his experiences is reflected in his humor, which belies the anxieties of the life he lived.

Prologue: A Prison for Hedonists 11
The Cliff Edge Where It All Began 36
The Life of the Blind 46
How to Become an Expert on Africa 67
What to Do If You Know Many Russian Spies 81
My Good Friends in the KGB 89
The Struggle for Purity in the Party Ranks 98
On the Horns of a Dilemma 108
The Unpredictable World of Dissent 118
The First Trial, December 1974 134
Different Courts Without a Difference 164
The Sweet Taste of Freedom 173
More Dangerous Than Jews 194
A Jewish Invasion of the Communist Sanctum 204
How to Catch an American Spy 214
The Assault on the American Embassy 222
In the Cultist’s Lair 232
Send-offs of Various Kinds 262
New Life, Old Stars 270
Russian Jews, a Russian Tiger, and Some Other Russians 281
Phantoms of the Past in the Shadow of Skyscrapers 289
A Jew Who Spoke in Tongues 306
My Russian Habitat in California 317
Photographs and Documents 329
Index 343
Acknowledgments 351