Always Under Siege

Always Under Siege presents a remarkable and harrowing account of life in dark times that describes and embodies strategies of physical and moral survival. Irina Paperno brings to light the autobiographical chronicle (her "notes") of Olga Freidenberg (1890–1955), a pioneering Russian philologist and cultural theorist (and cousin of Boris Pasternak), who endured Stalin's purges, the Leningrad blockade during World War II, and the suffocating repression that followed. Using concepts of scholarship