"The author of this account was a Russian woman of the edu-
cated and literary class. Nobility had been conferred on her
father, who was the son of a peasant, when he received his Univer-
sity degree. Her husband, too, was a Professor at the University
at Petersburg. In 1918 their son was born--the first year of the
Bolshevik rule--and from that time they suffered not only from
the famine and social distress that followed the revolution, but as
members of a class suspected by the OGPU of holding anti-
communist views. In 1930 Madam Tchernavin's husband was
arrested. In February 1931, she herself was taken away to prison,
leaving her thirteen-year-old son alone. After five months she
was released, but learned that her husband had been sent north to a
penal camp. She was allowed to visit him, and there they made
the first rough plan to escape. In the summer he was moved to the
shores of the White Sea, to do research work on marine zoology.
Here again his wife and son were allowed to visit him. From here
they set out on their dangerous journey to the Finnish border."