I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Two people affected by the horrors of WWII must return to a post-Soviet Union Russia and see if they can find peace from the past in author Marina Osipova’s “The Drau River Flows To Siberia: The Victims of Victory”.

The Synopsis

February 4–11, 1945. Yalta, a resort town on the Crimean Peninsula, Soviet Union. The Big Three are posing for a camera. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. All smiling. Stalin, his head is half a turn away from the other two. A shrewd smirk is hiding behind his walrus mustache. He seems to be pleased. Why wouldn’t he be? The Big Three signed the agreement that will shape the fate of Europe and . . .

In 1941, Anna is sixteen, almost an adult yet still a child, craving independence and keen to become an operetta actress. Her rosy aspirations are disrupted by the war. When Krasnodar is taken by the Wehrmacht, she is one of the populace who are ordered to repair roads for the occupants’ trucks and cars and, in fall, to toil in the fields for the sake of sending the harvest to the enemy’s land. A dire event coerces her to go to Germany where she is auctioned as a slave worker.

Born in Berlin into an émigré Cossack family, young Zakhary is more interested in books and archeology than in the war that is raging through Europe, even less in the cause of his parents and their friends, which is to overthrow the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union and revert to Imperial Russia. He just doesn’t want to be a part of it. That is, until he finds himself among the Cossacks fighting alongside the Germans against the Allies.

In Italy, he meets Marishka, a young woman of Cossack heritage who fled the Soviet Union with other anti-Soviet Cossacks and departing German troops under the push of the Red Army. They fall in love and marry. And then, on June 1, 1945, Lienz happened.

After the war, a ghastly fate propels each of them to the merciless land where skies are leaden gray, frosts plunge below -60°C in winter, and the woods are impenetrable and so vast, there is no escape from there.

Anna and Zakhary carry with them their personal wounds, at the same time haunted by unbearable guilt, which they can’t undo or fix. In 1955, fate brings them together on an isolated peninsula of the Ob River, connected to one another in inextricably entangled ways they do not yet realize. More than a decade later, can they bury the cruel past and build a future for themselves in the country without Stalin but sealed behind the Iron Curtain?

This is their story, relived in one day.

The Review

This was such a compelling and heartfelt read. The author did an incredible job of drawing attention to a crucial yet rarely discussed part of WWII history: the impact of the war on the former Soviet Union and its citizens. The amount of detail the author can pour into this narrative and the emotional impact these characters and their journey have on the reader will leave a lasting impression on them.

The haunting realities the author painted with the imagery in their writing brought the horrors of war and the challenges many faced during this time. The savage nature of humanity during this time and how people were forced to endure and embrace resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors is a central theme of this story and the heart of these characters overall. The exploration of history as a whole was also remarkable, from the role and development of the Russian Gulag to the role that the Russian Cossacks played in the war and so much more. 

The Verdict

Author Marina Osipova’s “The Drau River Flows to Siberia: The Victims of Victory” is a must-read novel, a genuinely harrowing, emotional, yet vital piece of historical fiction. The heartbreaking connection the two protagonists share and the honest style of writing that the author deploys will stay with readers long after the book ends. If you haven’t yet, be sure to grab your copy today!

Rating: 10/10

About the Author

Marina Osipova was born in East Germany into a military family and grew up in Russia, where she graduated from the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives. When she was five, she decided she wanted to speak German and, years later, she earned a diploma as a German language translator from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages. In Russia, she worked first in a scientific-technical institute as a translator, then in a Government Ministry in the office of international relations, later for some Austrian firms. For many years, she lived in New York, working in a law firm, and then in Austria for several years. In the spring of 2022, after spending ten months in Russia, some unfortunate world events brought her back to the United States.

A long-standing member of the Historical Novel Society, she is dedicated to writing historical fiction, especially related to WWII. Her books garnered numerous literary awards, including a 1st Place WINNER of the 2021 Hemingway Book Awards novel competition for 20th Century Wartime Fiction (a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards). At some point or another, all her books hit the Amazon Top 100 lists in Historical Russian Fiction and Historical German Fiction and How Dare the Birds Sing even #1 or #2 in War Fiction in Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Her readers praise her books for “emotional realism,” for “taking on a subject that few authors have touched,” for “writing with heart and compassion while not holding back from hard cold realities of war,” for “giving an authentic and in-depth look at a culture that tends to baffle westerners.”

To learn more about Marina Osipova and her captivating books, visit her website at marina-osipova.com.

You can find her also on 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marina.osipova.14/

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marina-osipova-65b81418/