The Ukrainian born author, Oles Smolansky, relates his memories of individuals and events that profoundly influenced him during the formative years of his childhood and adolescence. It was during this period, encompassing the decades of the 1930s and '40s, that he developed and honed patterns of thinking and behavior that have remained an integral part of his persona to his current age of ninety-three.
What the author offers readers is not a chronologically constructed memoir. Rather he has employed a thematic approach, based on his recollections of his grandparents, parents and relatives, who lived and died in a faraway land during his childhood and adolescence, i.e. during the decades of the 1930s and '40s.
To reach this objective, the author included a brief sketch of Ukrainian history and of the society in which these individuals lived, including reflections on the psychological as well as behavioral norms prevalent in this society and observations on citizens' efforts to survive and function in the new environment created by the 1917 revolution in Russia and the ultimate seizing of power by the Russian Communist Party, which abolished the monarchy and destroyed the Russian socioeconomic system. The bulk of this narrative is devoted to the various adjustments that the new Soviet citizens were forced to make in order to survive and function in their new and putatively "classless" society and its impact on those who lived in Ukraine and beyond.