Gennady Levitsky provides an eyewitness account of Jewish life in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, and the Jews' struggle to retain their identity as well as their right to emigrate from the USSR. It was a rough journey from the "empire of evil" to the "free world". The book also touches on the unique aspects of the Holocaust in the Baltic republics, Stalin purges, Gulag, and the methods employed by the KGB, to hold the population of the country by the "iron fist". It gives much information that is unavailable from the other sources.