Excerpt from Yashka: My Life as Peasant, Exile and Soldier At our first session Botchkareva made it clear that what she was going to tell me would be very different from the yarns credited to her in the press. She would reveal her innermost self and break open for the first time the sealed book of her past. This she did, and in doing so ruined completely several widely circulated tales about her. Per haps the chief of these 13 the statement...