Stalin's Children Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The History of Russia & The Soviet Union during the first half of the 20th Century and our BookBrowse Review of Stalin's Children.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group's conversation about Stalin's Children, a riveting family history of romance, politics, and extreme hardship in Russia, from Stalin's Soviet Union to today's Moscow.


About this book
Owen Matthews made a wonderful discovery in his parents' attic: a collection of their love letters from the 1960s, during a six-year separation between this reserved Englishman, Mervyn Matthews, and his lively Russian fiancée, Mila Bibikova. Matthews barely recognized his parents in these passionate letters: How did they meet, how did their love grow so strong, and how did it wither when they reunited?

Mila lived through the darkest period in Russian history. Her father was tortured and executed during Josef Stalin's purges. Her mother was sentenced to hard labor, and Mila, three, and her elder sister Lenina, nine, were shuttled between orphanages, nearly starving to death during World War II. Mila, permanently disabled from her childhood neglect, was determined not just to survive, but to thrive in her rapidly changing homeland.

Mervyn Matthews met Mila in Moscow, and he was just as infatuated with Mila as he was with Russia itself. But after the KGB tried and failed to recruit Mervyn as a double agent, he was expelled from the country. The couple spent the next six years exchanging letters between Russia and England, pouring their love onto the page. But once reunited, Mervyn and Mila's marriage could never match the bittersweet ardor of their letters.

Owen Matthews, by discovering his parents' past, comes to terms with his own complicated attachment to Russia. Stalin's Children is a portrait of an evolving country, through the eyes of one captivating family.


For discussion

1. Owen Matthews writes about his mother, "the idea that the individual could overcome seemingly impossible obstacles shaped her life" (9). What are some of the obstacles that Mila was able to overcome in her lifetime? What challenges was she unable to surmount?
2. Matthews never had the opportunity to meet his grandfather, Boris Bibikov. How does he manage to trace his grandfather's history? What sense does Matthews have of his grandfather's personality?
3. When Boris returned from his army service, his two-year-old daughter, Lenina, didn't recognize him: "Little Lenina said no, that's not Daddy, and pointed to the tin box where Martha kept her husband's letters—that's Daddy in there" (25). Why did letters play such an important role for the Bibikov women: Martha, Lenina, and Mila? How did absence turn two of their husbands, Boris and Mervyn, into a "stack of paper that equaled one human life?" (48)

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Walker & Company. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.