PURGA A TRUE STORY

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Freedom and danger often wear the same face.

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A purga is not an ordinary snowstorm. Born from the Arctic winds, it arrives without warning — blinding, disorientating, changing the landscape overnight. You do not conquer a purga. You endure it. You adapt. You learn to walk through it.

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Some storms happen outside. Others become part of who you are.

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From Olga Pavlova, bestselling author of Ice, Lies and Old Advice, comes an unforgettable memoir of childhood, survival and the final years of a vanished world.

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Born in Leningrad in 1983 and raised above the Arctic Circle in Murmansk, Olga belonged to the last generation of Soviet children — born into a superpower that vanished before they were old enough to understand what was disappearing.

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Her childhood existed between extremes: Arctic winters and endless summer light, frozen lakes and wild forests, Soviet courtyards where neighbours became family and an entire building helped raise a child. It was chaotic. It was dangerous. And it was freedom.

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But beyond the courtyard, history was moving. The Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the rules that had governed millions of lives. Collective security gave way to uncertainty. Trust gave way to fear. Childhood games unfolded beside crime, poverty and a society rebuilding itself from the ruins of an empire.

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From Murmansk to St Petersburg, from innocence to teenage survival, Olga's journey captures a lost world seen not through presidents or politics, but through the eyes of a girl growing up inside the storm.

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This is the story of a mother and daughter who lost almost everything except their determination to continue. Of finding beauty among hardship. Of discovering that home is not always somewhere you can return to — sometimes it is something you carry.

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Eventually, Olga's journey would take her to London and a new life. But the Arctic never truly leaves those who grow up inside it.

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The purga remains.

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PURGA

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