Young Heroes of the Soviet Union

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Can trauma be inherited? This question drives Alex Halberstadt on a quest to confront a legacy of family trauma and break a century-old cycle of estrangement. His journey takes him through the complex landscape of his birthplace, Ukraine, where he seeks out his paternal grandfather, likely the last living bodyguard of Joseph Stalin, to understand how decades of Soviet totalitarianism impacted three generations of his family. In Lithuania, he examines his Jewish mother's legacy, confronting the Holocaust and lingering anti-Semitism. Returning to Moscow, he reflects on his glamorous grandmother, who designed couture for Soviet ministers' wives, his mother, who consoled dissidents in a psychiatric hospital, and his father, who navigated the black market for American records. Throughout this exploration, Halberstadt blurs the lines between history and biography. He also shares his own immigrant story, arriving in America as a ten-year-old boy in a Queens housing project, grappling with identity and rootlessness, and becoming yet another son separated from his father by the currents of politics and history. Revisiting his family's traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational legacy of fear, suspicion, melancholy, and rage, ultimately recognizing that nations, like individuals, carry formative traumas that deeply affect their citizens' lives.