Russian at Heart: Sonechka's Story

​In the early 1960s, my mother and I sailed on SS Himalaya from San Francisco to Europe. On board we met another mother and daughter similar to ourselves. We were to disembark in Southampton for London while they were destined for Le Havre and Paris.
 
Mrs Olga Balk spoke French and Russian and had links to Harbin and Shanghai so she and my mother soon discovered they had much in common. Manette was a little older than me but as we were both teenage daughters having what nowadays is called a “gap year” between high school and college we also found common ground.
 
I was sad to say goodbye to my new friend Manette when she left the ship at Le Havre, but in those days before the invention of easy catch-ups through social media we still managed to keep up a pen-friendship for another ten years until we fell out of touch. The last address I had for her was in Mexico, while I had moved numerous times in UK, Canada and Africa before settling in Australia.
 
When a cousin recommended I read this book written by the subject's grand-daughter because it was an excellent story about the White Russian experience, I was instantly alerted to the fact that there in the opening pages it says it is the story of Sophia (Sonechka) Balk. It is not a common surname and I wondered if she could have been connected to my friend?
 
After a bit of digging via Ancestry and other genealogical sites, it turns out that my friend Manette (also known as Mary Ann) was, in fact, her niece, her father being Sonechka’s brother Alexander L. Balk (known as Sasha throughout the book).
 
Having a White Russian mother I have always been aware of her family’s dramatic history and what they endured in the upheavals after the Russian Revolution. So, with the realisation I'd once had a connection to a member of the Balk family as well, this gave me extra interest in this story. Although I can no longer ask her, I am sure many of the people, places and events that crop up in these pages would have been familiar to my mother.
 
At the outset, the reader needs to be aware this is a work of “creative non-fiction” and is based on diaries and other recollections that have been embellished or enhanced to make it both informative and entertaining.

We follow Sonechka’s life from one of comparative ease on a comfortable estate in the warm Crimea, through her early experiences working for a brutal Cheka [secret police, forerunner of the KGB] boss who made her count dead bodies among other more mundane clerical duties, her romance with another Bolshevik hardliner, her escape from his clutches in Moscow to comparative safety in Harbin and then on to Shanghai.
 
Her brother, Sasha, had already managed to reach the United States and constantly encouraged his sister to follow suit but the young girl was too indecisive due to her family ties and ill-founded romantic dreams. By the time her head cleared and she saw the truth and reality of what was happening around her, the Soviet noose had tightened around its citizens and getting away seemed almost impossible. 
 
In the closing notes that detail what happened to the individuals, I was disappointed (also a little mystified) to find no mention of Sasha’s second wife, the Mrs Olga Balk whom I met, nor my pen-friend Manette who seems to have been his only child. Whether this was just an oversight or there is some other facet to this intriguing family story that the author did not wish to share makes for speculation. Russians can be very hospitable and friendly people but as a result of their tumultuous history - as so well-detailed in this story - it also means they are also good at fudging the truth or resorting to secrecy if there is the need to do so! 

Still, that does not deter from recommending this as an enthralling and gripping read and it warrants four-and-a-half stars.


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