The Young Wife

The film “The Young Wife,” made based on Irina Velembovskaya’s story “Behind a Stone Wall,” became the best film of 1980 according to a poll by the magazine “Soviet Screen.” Of course, Soviet cinema stars acted in it—Anna Kamenkova, Vladlen Biryukov, Galina Makarova, Sergey Prokhanov. The director was Leonid Menaker, the author of many popular and beloved films. But it’s unlikely the film would have been successful if the story on which the script is based hadn’t been written so brilliantly. The main heroine, Manya, doesn’t marry out of love, but out of hopelessness and despair. She will be “like behind a stone wall” with her husband—a widower, a solid and sturdy master. But this wall is exactly what she wants to move aside, to see the sun, the sky, freedom. Postwar life—both rural and urban—Velembovskaya paints masterfully. And her characters are invariably alive, real, not cinematic and not bookish. This applies to all stories and novellas included in this collection.