One Man in His Time: A Memoir

In this engrossing memoir, first published in 1955, late Russian microbiologist Borodin details his life up until he defected to the West in 1948. Born in 1905 in the south of Russia, Borodin absorbed the brutalities of the country’s civil war as a young student. His description of living through “mass famine, lice and typhus, with no fuel in the freezing cold winter” in the following years sets the stage for his struggles as a scientist under Soviet rule. After serving in the Red Army, Borodin turned to microbiology, and eventually rose to become head of a laboratory by the 1930s. He survived Stalinist purges and earned the Order of Lenin for training state snipers and engineering meat substitutes but eventually grew conflicted over his collaborations with Stalin’s government. “You are also responsible for all these denunciations, violence and executions you calmly witnessed, because if there were no people like you, the very structure would never exist,” he thinks to himself. His disillusionment culminated in his renouncement of Soviet citizenship, which he justified in a pointed letter to a Soviet ambassador that closes the book. Borodin’s raw account captures the tension between his love of science and hatred of tyranny. It’s a unique perspective on the first decades of the Soviet Union. (Aug.)