Ivan Petrov was born in 1934 in the industrial town of Chapaevsk. HIs father was shot by Stalin as an 'enemy of the people', and Ivan was brought up by his mother and violent stepfather -- both alcoholics, along with most of the rest of the town. By his early twenties, Ivan had also succumbed to the lure of the bottle. For forty years he careered, stumbled, staggered and rampaged all over the vast Soviet empire. Homeless (an illegal condition in the communist utopia), in and out of prison camps, almost always drunk (whether 'in' or 'out' ? though he did spend a year drying out as a bee-keeper in the vast forests of Central Asia) and with a gift for hilariously sending up the tragic absurdities of Soviet life, Ivan was a real-life Svejk. Written in collaboration with English author Caroline Walton towards the end of Ivan's life (when he found asylum in Britain), Smashed In The USSR is his eye-opening, frequently eye-watering story. At once touching and hilarious, always honest, this memoir offers a unique perspective on Soviet life and a marvellously vivid portrait of an extraordinary man. AUTHOR: Ivan Petrov was born in the one-factory town of Chapaevsk in the Urals in 1934. His father was shot by Stalin and he was brought up by his mother and stepfather. He became an alcoholic in the 1950s, and drank his way around the USSR until the 1990s, when he moved to the United Kingdom. Caroline Walton is an English author and journalist with a particular interest in Russia. Her most recent book is The Besieged: Forgotten Voices of the Siege of Leningrad.
