Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (2002) By Mara Moustafine
 
From secret police files retrieved from the archives in post-Soviet Russia to the horror of Stalin's purges, Secrets and Spies unravels the complex historical forces which shaped a family's destiny.

Harbin in northern China was once the heart of a vibrant Russian community of diverse cultural and political origins. But by the mid-1930s, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria drove many Russians to seek refuge elsewhere. For the thousands who returned to their motherland in the Soviet Union, it was a bitter homecoming. At the height of Stalin's purges, they were arrested as Japanese spies. Some were shot, others sent to labour camps, few survived. Among them were members of the author's family.

Driven by curiosity and armed with chutzpah, Mara Moustafine fronted up at the headquarters of the former KGB in post-Soviet Moscow and asked for help to discover what had happened. She got more than she bargained for. The family's secret police files, retrieved from archives at opposite ends of Russia, revealed the horror of the purges as well as startling secrets about their lives in turbulent years in China and the Soviet Union. What was the fact? What was fiction?

Written with sensitivity and humour, Secrets and Spies skillfully weaves personal and political, past and present, to give an insider's perspective on the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times.
 
Soft Cover
468 Pages
In Fair Condition