{"value"=>"<p>Jessie Lloyd O'Connor's Russian diary was written during the year 1927-1928, while she was living and working as a journalist in Moscow. There are a few incomplete entries, but the work as a whole nevertheless reads as a complete narrative. The diary documents her observations on life in the Soviet Union, the professional and social circles in which she participated, and the successes and failures of the fairly new Soviet experiment.</p> <p>The diary indicates that O'Connor frequently crossed paths with the American Socialists Scott Nearing and Albert Rhys Williams, the New York Times journalist Walter Duranty (whose Moscow New York Times beat she covered for a few months when he was away), and American Socialist and future conscientious objector Brent Allinson. She met with the American journalist Anna Louise Strong, translated memoirs into English for Madame Fania (Mrs. Mikhail) Borodin, and befriended Sofia Tolstoya, \"Sonya,\" the poet Sergei Esenin's fifth wife and granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. When O'Connor mentioned to Tolstoya that she was staying at a Quaker hostel in the city, Tolstoya insisted she come live in the spare room of their apartment.</p> <p>O'Connor also mentioned meeting Theodore Dreiser and Madame Sun Yat-Sen, and interviewing Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife and a social and educational reformer in her own right. She also excitedly mentioned sitting behind Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin at the theater, an event of which she noted that this made \"...nine great men I've been near enough to stab...in America this would be great material for a boast--but to me it's more a source of regret--why didn't I stab some of them?\"</p> <p>Other items of interest in Jessie Lloyd O'Connor's memoirs include research she conducted on the \"Bez Prizornie,\" or homeless children of the city, and her ongoing battle with customs, the telegraph office, and the censor's bureau. She provided synopses of several Socialist Realist plays she attended, and a Red Square parade she attended, in which she saw Budyenny and his cavalry. She recorded fortuitously witnessing the funeral procession for Adolph Joffe from a passing train, and seeing Leon Trotsky marching in the crowd. O'Connor also made occasional observations on the Soviet citizens' reception of American culture, and in March of 1928 mentioned herself giving a talk on \"life in America\" at the Foreign Language Institute.</p> <p>Documentation accompanying the material indicates that O'Connor sent the diary to her mother, Lola Maverick Lloyd, who forwarded it her friend Rosika Schwimmer for editing. Schwimmer's personal secretary Edith Wynner returned the work to O'Connor in 1979. The diary would eventually be reworked and included as a chapter in the semi-autobiographical book Harvey and Jessie; A Couple of Radicals. The diary is in English, with occasional transliterated Russian words.</p>"}