Nina Lugovskaya

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Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

Nina Sergeyevna Lugovskaya, in Russian Нина Сергеевна Луговская (25.12.1918, Moscow -- 27.12.1993, Vladimir), was a painter and theatre designer. She studied at Serpukhov Art School and in 1973 joined the Union of Artists of the USSR.

[edit] Biography

Nina Lugovskaya was also the author of a diary, which she started in 1932 at the age of 13. The diary contained descriptions of Soviet life critical of Stalin. It also was a passage into her personal life. Nina suffered from a mental problem, known today as depression. Though she had many friends, she had very low "self-esteem," Nina suffered from an eye problem known as a lazy eye, that made her very self-conscious. In her diary, she often critized Stalin, the communist government, and the Bolsheviks. These beliefs were probally instilled by her father.

When in 1937 NKVD found the diary in 1937, Nina, as well as her mother and her older twin sisters were arrested and sentenced to five years' hard labor in a Kolyma prison camp. Her father had already been imprisoned for counterrevolutionary activities.

Nina, her mother, and her sisters survived Kolyma. In exile, Nina married a fellow political prisoner Viktor Templin, who was also an artist. When released, they lived in Vladimir.

[edit] Publication of the diary

After Nina's death, her diary was found in Soviet archives by Nina Osipova, an activist of a human rights organisation Memorial, who decided to publish it.

In 2003, the Moscow-based publisher Glas first printed an edited version of Nina's diary in English as "The Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl." In 2007, Houghton Mifflin released a new translation by Andrew Bromfield with the title "I Want to Live."