First, thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A sweeping story taking us from The Great Depression’s Brooklyn, to Soviet Moscow, Siberia and 1980’s New York.  One woman’s choice to follow a dream (and a man) to Soviet Russia changes her entire life.  Too stubborn to go back, she joins the collective and gets to work.  Later, when she feels endangered and misses home it is too late.  Passports are “lost” and there is not help at the Embassy.  This is the story of Florence, a headstrong dreamer that went to Russia for the better life, only to be met with hard work conditions and mistrust.
Falling for another expatriate, Leon, the two make a life together translating stories from magazines.  When it is decided that these magazines were dangerous to the collective, the two have to think fast to save themselves and their young son Julian.  Unfortunately these are dangerous times…
After seven years in a work camp Florence is reunited with her son.  The war, and the camp has changed her, though.  She can’t talk to Julian about this, even when he is older.  It is something he will never understand, along with her ingrained desire to not “raise a fuss”.  Living through the orphanage, and never knowing what really happened to his father, has had a real impact on how he relates to everyone.  His son, Lenny, feels the brunt of it and leaves home for Russia to make something of himself.  You see the three generations and how their surroundings change them.  The secrets that are kept for a lifetime-regrets and betrayals.
I really enjoyed this book! The characters were well developed, and I learned a lot about this point in time.  The story moved a bit slowly for most of the book due to the large amount of information.  The world building was, to me, perfection.
I did have some pacing issues, and there were a few instances where the author fell out of third person POV and went into first person (I never did learn who “I” was).  Hopefully this will be taken care of in the finished copy.
Even with these minor lapses, though it was a five star book for me.  
As far as the Adult Content Scale goes, there is sexual content (some rather explicit), language and violence.  I give it a seven.  I would let an older teen read it, but I would be wary of any reader under the age of seventeen.

The Patriots is historical fiction at its best. The story is told from three perspectives: Florence, her son Julian, and his son Lenny. They each have lived part of their lives in Russia, and part in the U.S. Florence moved to Russia from Brooklyn in the 1930s and got trapped under Stalin and Lenin's regimes. Julian (whose Russian given name is Yulik) was born in Soviet Russia, emigrated to America later, and still works in Russia sometimes. These two characters tell the bulk of the story. 

It's 500 pages of complex, in-depth, well-edited language and verbal pictures. Krasikov doesn't use florid language, but builds layers of description. I felt as if I was inside the tiny rooms in the communal apartments. Or struggling with the conflict between freedom and political principals. 

The themes are relevant today, despite much of the action taking place in the mid-twentieth century. How far are you willing to go to defend your family when you have no weapons? When you're well and truly trapped, is there any way to ease the burden?

I learned a lot about this time and place in history, and came to know all the main characters well. Krasikov is a master of this genre.

Thanks to Random House, Spiegel & Grau, and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for my honest review!

This story is very sad but the author is able to convey hope in her writing.  This book contains a lot of information that is not often spoken about in history classes about the Soviet Union and the relationship between the United States and Russia at that time.  So much of this book shines a light on the injustices that many in Soviet citizens suffered.  Readers will easily see the hypocrisy that Flora, and later Lenny, refuse to see and will see parallels in both the Soviet and American political systems.  I really enjoyed reading the novel but I was a bit frustrated when the book ended and I was still left with unanswered questions.  That being said, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a great historical novel.

Florence lives in Cleveland, but has some great ideas for the future. She is Jewish, but believes in some socialistic ideas that would make the future better. She meets a man from Russia while translating for a company that she works at, and has an affair with him, when he goes back to Russia she get a letter from him and takes a part of his letter to mean that she should come and be with him. She loves the idea of being with him and the Russian way, so soon she is off on the adventure of her life to Russia. She leaves behind her family and is off to Russia, along the way she meets a woman named Essie, who is to become a life-long friend. 

She finds her lover eventually in Russia, but he isn't quite the same man who he was in America. And when he leaves he tells her to go back to America, but she stays. She gets used to life in Russia, and eventually marries a man called Leon Brink. She and he have a 'good life' or so she thinks. She tries to not think about abandoning her family in the U.S. And then one day she goes in to re-apply for her housing and they ask for her American passport and want to keep it. They tell her that they will give it back to her the next week, but when she goes back the next week no one knows anything about it. Russia has just officially made her a Russian citizen! She tries to go to the U.S. embassy but without papers they will not let her in! The Russian Government has spies out everywhere and they are especially watching Jewish people, so Florie and Leon must be careful. They have a son named Lenny. The rest of the book is their life story and their prosecution at the hands of the Russians. A very interesting book! A great look back at history from inside Russia, from the view of the persecuted.

This book just wasn't for me.  Good writing but I am not a political person and it just got to be too much.  I will not be posting a review anywhere as I do not like to post negative feedback just because it wasn't a type of book I personally enjoy.  Thank you for the opportunity!

This story is about a naïveté young Jewish girl from New York who imagines that she wants to go live in Communist Russia in the 1930's. She has no idea how brutal the land or its' people really are. She has a son who is deserted in an orphanage when she is sent to prison camp. When she gets older she goes back to America to live and she tries to adjust living in a free country again.
You will have to read it for yourself to see how Communist Russia really is and how blessed we are to live in America

Riveting, at first. But I couldn't make it past the abortion scene.

A great book for those who like historical fiction.  Florence leaves America for Russia in 1933. On the steamer heading east, she notices the immigrants heading back home like she was “watching an old Ellis Island film reel flipped by the Depression into reverse: masses of immigrants returning to the ship, being herded backwards through the great human warehouse as Lady Liberty waved them goodbye”.  

This is a big book, taking on three generations from Florence through her grandson.  The book isn't told in a linear fashion, but jumps forwards and backwards.  

Florence is a sympathetic character. Foolhardy, big on ideas but not practical.   Her decisions come back to haunt not only her and her son, Julian, who spends 7 years in an orphanage while his mother is sent to a work camp, but many others. Julian comes back to Russia to work for a partnership with a Russian oil company.  Born in Russia, he is the only true American in mindset, as he struggles with the graft and corruption in the oil industry.   He also struggles with the truths he learns about his mother. The only character I had no sympathy for was Leonard, her grandson.  A real jerk who thinks he's better than he is, he returns to Russia trying to make his first million before he's 35.  

Krasikov does a great job of describing each era, from the Stalin regime to 2008 with its capitalist overtones.  She's done her research and it shows. The book alternates between a sly humor and then true fear.  “Purges and politics aside, there was plenty of fun to be had in Moscow in 9134.”  But the same bureaucracy that was made fun of in the earlier years becomes scary as hell just a few years later. And it's so interesting to see that the war years were the years the Russian Jews felt safe.   

The author occasionally uses Julian to give the reader a sense of history, as with the story of Joseph Davies, the US Ambassador during the late 1930s. Some might not care for this approach, but I liked it.  It gave you an unbiased sense of what Florence and Leon were dealing with.   I learned a lot about The Soviet Union, especially the Stalin years.   Extremely well written.  

As an interesting little side note, the chapters are labeled with passport stamps, giving you the city and year.  It’s a neat touch.  

My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Loved it this book. Tough read because of the idealism the propels the main character to go to the Soviet Union in 1934 for freedom and the future. The first fourth of the book I was not particularly hooked. The strands of each generation of Florence Fein's family and their relationship with Russia and the USA (and where do they belong?) seemed disparate and the narrative choppy. The story does come together, and by the end of the book, the relationships between the three generations and the impact of personal decisions they made in political contexts were very moving.

The characters were well written, I felt like I knew them and could feel what they felt.  It gives a very good insight into life in what was a communist country, and the difficulties that went with it.

The Patriots by Sana Krasikov is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in early January.

Krasikov crafts witty, yet vulnerable characters who question their world in an inquisitive, pursuant manner during the 1930s and early 2000s.