Mary Mackler Leder

During the early decades of Soviet communism, industrial workers lived in housing that was assigned to them by their factories. Some living arrangements amounted to little more than a cot in a factory dormitory and meals in the factory cafeteria. Luckier workers, usually those who belonged to a Communist-sponsored group, were assigned space in a communal apartment building, where they could at least get away from the factory.

Mary Mackler Leder was born and raised in the United States. In 1931, at age fifteen, she moved with her Ukrainianborn Bolshevik parents to a small town in eastern Siberia. Later that year she moved to Moscow, where an aunt and uncle lived, to make a new life for herself. In this selection from her memoirs, she describes the workers' commune to which she was assigned by the Komsomol (Young Communist...