Mary McAuley first visited Leningrad as an exchange student in the 1960s, researching labour relations in the Soviet Union for her thesis. Staying in a student hostel she struck up friendships that have lasted a lifetime. In her recently published memoir, Remembering Leningrad, The Story of a Generation she charts the evolution of the city not just through the turbulent events of Soviet and post-Soviet history but also through the individual life experiences of her friends.
Mary recalls fifty years of intimate acquaintanceship with the city and the enduring friendships she has made in Russia.
The memoir was published simultaneously in English and in Russian translation, under the title Пятьдесят лет на окне в Петербурге (Fifty Years on a Window Sill in St Petersburg) –– with the tongue-in-cheek subtitle, Воспоминания чопорной англичанки (Memoirs of a stuck-up Englishwoman), — a mischievous reference to Chekhov’s story, Daughter of Albion.
The change of title suggests an interesting difference of perspective between English and Russian readers of this memoir. The book performs a skilful balancing act for both sets of readers — it is simultaneously a warm tribute to Mary’s Russian friends and their city, and a fascinating introduction to Petersburg for any English traveller — stuck-up or otherwise — planning to visit or revisit it.
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“Better than a time-machine, McAuley takes readers on an exclusive guided tour of Leningrad in the 1960s and up to present day St. Petersburg. In this elegy for a city, the friendships she forged across fifty plus years lie at the heart of a nuanced, intimate, and serious portrait of Russians living through tumultuous times.”
— Kathleen E. Smith, Georgetown University
“As a sociologist, McAuley devotes minute attention to the details of daily life, and to how the inhabitants of Petersburg altered their habits in response to political changes… She is also interested in social problems. Describing the life of her friend Lyuba, who was bringing up a young son while working as a scientific researcher, she recounts that Lyuba’s colleagues in the lab had a protective attitude towards her as the mother of a young child. When she was offered a more senior post at another laboratory she went to talk it over with her boss. ‘Lyuba,’ said Serafim Nikolaevich, ‘I’ll really miss you if you leave our lab, but you must realise that this is a rare opportunity for you to get a post as a senior researcher … as a woman who isn’t a party member you are even more disadvantaged than a Jew’ ”.
— Maria Nesterenko on the Russian book review site ‘gorky.media’.
Mary McAuley lives in London. Her publications include Children in Custody: Anglo-Russian Perspectives, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2009), Russia's Politics of Uncertainty (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Soviet Politics 1917-1991 (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Human Rights in Russia: Citizens and the State from Perestroika to Putin (I.B.Tauris, 2015). She taught politics at the universities of Essex and Oxford, before becoming the head of the Ford Foundation’s office in Moscow, with particular responsibility for human rights and legal reform (1995 -2002).
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