Breaking Stalin's Nose

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

Author Eugene Yelchin was born to Jewish parents in Leningrad in 1956. He was educated in the Soviet school system and lived in a communal unit that was the inspiration for Sasha Zaichik’s apartment in Breaking Stalin’s Nose. Yelchin worked in the theater after leaving school, creating sets, and later focusing on children’s theatre. He emigrated to California, where he studied film and then worked in advertising. Yelchin began illustrating children’s books in 2007 and writing and illustrating his own books shortly thereafter. Breaking Stalin’s Nose was his first novel (“About.” Eugene Yelchin).

Growing up, Yelchin’s father was a paradox to his son: “He understood the oppressive reality of living under communism, yet he was a devout communist,” Yelchin writes (164). Yelchin admits that their relationship suffered when he emigrated to the United States and began to question communism and his family’s experiences in the USSR. The book’s dedication reads: “To my father, who survived the Great Terror.”

“Much of the novel is autobiographical,” Yelchin claims (166). Despite attending school in a more relaxed environment than his