Sašenjka

Raised in luxury but lonely, under the influence of her uncle Mendel, a Bolshevik conspirator, Sashenka joins the communist underground. While her mother enjoys decadent parties with Rasputin, Sashenka risks everything for the ideals of justice, drawn into a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Arrested outside the Smolny Institute is just the beginning of her turbulent journey.

Twenty years later, in Stalin's Russia in 1939, Sashenka is a magazine editor, the wife of a high-ranking party official, and the mother of two children, Roza and Karl. Loyal to the party, she believes herself untouchable. But her heart betrays her: she embarks on a passionate, forbidden love affair with the writer Benya. The consequences are immediate - in a world of terror, where the KGB hunts down the slightest suspicion, Sashenka and her family are plunged into a vortex of betrayal and terror. Faced with an impossible choice - save herself or her children - Sashenka makes a devastating decision.

In 1993, a young historian, Katinka, hired by a Russian oligarch, digs through secret archives to uncover Sashenka's fate. She uncovers a harrowing tale of love, sacrifice, and Stalinist terror, where the truth only comes to light on the very last page. Montefiore, a master of historical detail, weaves an epic saga of 20th-century Russia, where idealism crumbles under the weight of political cruelty, and love becomes a tragic victim of history.