One Long Night: A Tale of Truth

Maria Joffe was born in New York City and educated in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1918, she married the prominent Bolshevik, Adolph Joffe. Adolph Joffe served as chairman of the Brest Peace Delegation and as Soviet ambassador to Germany, China, and Japan. In the twenties he was allied with Leon Trotsky in the leadership struggles following Lenin’s death. On 10 November 1927, he shot himself in protest of Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist Party.

Maria Joffe lost her newspaper employment after her husband’s suicide and was transferred to the State Publishing House. In March, 1929 she spoke out against Trotsky’s exile during a meeting of editors and directors of the Publishing House.

Subsequently arrested, Maria endured exile, prison, and the camps of the gulag from 1929 until 1957. She was rehabilitated under Khrushchev in 1957 – only then did she learn her 17-year old son, Volya, was arrested and disappeared in 1937. Her daughter, Nadezhda, survived prison and the gulag also.

Later Maria emigrated to Israel.

One Long Night: A Tale of Truth is Maria’s memoires of life in Stalin’s prisons and labor camps.

Originally in Russian, translated into English.

Text: English, Russian (translation)