One dusty summer day in 1935, a young writer named Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov was released from the Siberian labor camp where he had spent the past eight years of his life. From this hard-pressed beginning, Andreev-Khomiakov would eventually work his way into a series of jobs that would allow him to travel and see more of ordinary life and work in the Soviet Union of 1930s than most of his fellow Soviet citizens would ever have dreamed possible.

Later to become a successful writer and editor in the Russian emigre community in the 1950s and 1960s, Andreev-Khomiakov uses this memoir to explore many aspects of Stalinist society.

Bitter Waters may be most valuable for what it reveals about Russian society during the tumultuous 1930s. From remote provincial centers and rural areas, to the best and worst of Moscow and Leningrad, Andreev-Khomiakov's series of deftly drawn sketches of people, places, and events provide a unique window on the hard daily lives of the people who built Stalin's Soviet Union.