My grandmother, Maria Ivanovna Dikareva Scott, called “Masha” by most, and “Babushka” by me and her other grandchildren, was born in a tiny log cabin, in the tiny village of Laikova Khrapovitskaya, in the central Western province of Tver, Russia, six years before the Russian Revolution in 1911. She died 93 years later in her home in suburban Ridgefield Connecticut. Her life was deeply impacted by the huge historical events that she lived through and skirted on the edges of: the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Stalin’s 5 year plan and the industrialization of Russia, Stalin’s purges, the Second World War, the Cold War.

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