Elena Gorokhova has strong doubts about joining the Young Communist League but she knows she can't go to college unless she is a member, and she longs to read English at Leningrad University.

She loves the romanticism of literature and yearns for a dacha with white gauzy curtains; she wishes her family discussed etiquette instead of lugging buckets of water to beds of tomatoes and dill.

And then her Aunt Mila arrives from Minsk.

Read by Sian Thomas
A Jane Marshall Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less