These are the memoirs of Mykola Rudenko, poet, founder and leader of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. His memoirs are interesting both from a historical viewpoint, as his life spans almost the entire Soviet period of Ukrainian history, and from a psychological angle, as the memoirs are a frank confession of one who became enamored of communist ideology as a youth but gradually rejected conformism and changed paths when it became apparent that reality was out of step with ideology. This led Rudenko, a former secretary of the party committee steering the Writers' Union of Ukraine, to enter the circle of dissidents and human–rights activists and eventually to suffer incarceration in Soviet concentration camps. Photo: Mykola Rudenko and US President Ronald Reagan