mkhnreznik

The film is excellent. It invoked my personal associations of living in the USSR at the time shown in the film.At that time I was a so-called "refusenick', i.e. a person whose application for emigration was denied. One of my close friend, a lady whose name was Nadezhda (Nadya) Fradkova, was imprisoned for the same reason as Oktyabrina from the movie was: a so-called "parasitic" way of life. She was sentenced to two years in labor camps. It happened in December 1984 - 10 years after the film was released. At that time I was fighting the Soviets in the courtrooms and was able to acquire significant judicial knowledge. That knowledge helped me to fight for Nadya and to prove her innocence. In my own archive I keep original documents from the Soviets illustrating my fight for Nadya, the fight that occurred to be successful. Another association with the main character of the film, a very painful association, was a loss of my dear friend. She was allowed to emigrate, and I was doomed to fight for my freedom for the next 10 years. My best wishes to Goldie Hawn whose performance was above any praise. If I could only tell her my admiration with her performance along with my own history, the history which resembles so much the one of the film. I sorry only for seeing that film so late and only by accident. Mark Reznik. mkhnreznik@comcast.net.