Download or read book Russian at Heart written by Olga Hawkes and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a family in an era made famous in the novel and film, Dr Zhivago. Sonechka Balk was born into the gentry in the Crimea in 1904. She is the youngest of four children. World War One and the revolution tears her family apart; relationships are destroyed by events beyond her control. An orphaned teenager, Sonechka is forced to work for Lenin's secret police, the Cheka, counting the bodies of those who have died of starvation and those murdered by the Bolsheviks.