Nora Ikstena is a Latvian author, she studied English language and literature at the University of Latvia. She lived in New York City for several years and returned to Latvia. Soviet Milk was published in 2015, since then it has been translated in 15 different languages. The original name of this novel in Latvian is Mates Piens (Mother’s Milk).

The Soviet Union invaded Latvia along the two other Baltic States of Estonia and Lithuania in 1941. In the past, especially during the Second World War the Baltic Republics were the major playgrounds between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. During the Soviet invasion the communist government began the sovietization process, they deported many Latvians to Siberia or executed them and they brought Russians and other Soviet nationalities to Latvia. During the Soviet period execution,interrogation by KGB, denunciation, fear, exile, and the shortage of consumer goods were norms in Latvia and the other Soviet republics. The sovietization had major psychological impacts in the mind of individuals, especially the older generation.

The story is about two generations of women, a mother and a daughter who each talks about her mother. The mother is the product of the communist regime, she is depressed, cold, and alcoholic. She isolated herself to a remote region in Latvia, refused to take care of her daughter and did not give her milk because she did not want to share her misery with her daughter.
The time period of the story is from late 1960s (Brezhnev era) to early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall fell down and Gorbachev introduced freedom of speech (Perestroika and Glasnost).

The mother’s profession was a doctor, the author mentions how the atheists can be tools in God's hands. Many villagers who were less involved with the central government were believers. One Lady in the story did not have any child, she prayed to God and she had hope.The mother who was a doctor helped her to have a child with fertility treatments, the doctor did not have any hope, beliefs and something to live for. She was severely destroyed by the communist regime.

Isktea explains the effects of taking away freedom in macro scale and micro scale. The first one was mother and daughter In Latvia and the farthest they could go was in the Soviet Empire, the second one the girl’s pet hamster Bambi, he lived in the cage and the farthest he could go was the girl’s room. At first Bambi was fine but he changed when he had a family, he killed his girlfriend and children because he did not want them to be miserable.

During the late 1980s, the mother and daughter switched roles, the daughter went to the village and took care of her mother. Their relationship improved but mother did not live long enough to see the collapse of the Soviet Union and rebirth of the independent Latvia. Also, the author mentions another mother which is invisible, it the the Soviet Union’s autocratic regime. The milk is what the Soviet government provided for its citizens. She described that the milk had a bitter taste and at school it was mandatory for the students to drink a bottle a day.

I really enjoyed this book by Nora Ikstena, it has many symbols, sometimes I did not comprehend them. Also, the mother and daughter don't have names in the novel, each one talks about her mother. I was off track a few times and did not know who was talking. Overall it is a great book, I recommend it to any world literature enthusiast. ( )

I loved the way it was written, how neither of the main characters had names and how the pov shifted between them. It is so clear that the characters stand for so much more than just themselves. It's so poetically written, and even though it spans so many years none of the pacing feels off. ( )

Nora Ikstena’s novel, Soviet Milk, is a bleak and sometimes brutal account of the Soviet occupation of Latvia (1944-1989) told from two very personal points of view: an unnamed mother and daughter, their stories narrated in alternating parallel threads. In the first, beginning in 1969, the daughter relates events surrounding her birth and upbringing. The central traumatic incident of the daughter’s very early life is her mother’s refusal to provide the newborn with milk from her breasts, convinced it is poisoned. Because of this, the daughter develops an aversion to milk and won’t drink the milk provided to students in school. The mother’s narrative, beginning in 1944, is overshadowed by the cruel Russian aggressor that has overrun their small Baltic neighbour and controls every aspect of Latvian life. Her father raises spruce trees for use at Christmas celebrations, and a key event takes place when she is very young: Russian soldiers arrive on their rural property, hack down the trees (Christmas was banned under Soviet rule), ransack the house, and take her father away. He is subsequently exiled to Siberia and dies there. Both women grow up strong and smart. The mother trains as a doctor, excels in her studies, specializes in gynaecology, and takes a research position at a prestigious institution in Leningrad. But her career is derailed when she experiments with a technique for impregnating women that falls outside approved Soviet methodologies, and she is exiled to a rural outpost and condemned to treating an endless procession of female patients in an ambulatory clinic. The daughter grows up splitting her time between her mother’s isolated rural home and her grandparent’s apartment in Riga. She also excels in her studies but is resentful of the Soviet-dictated curriculum, and yet is cunning and ambitious enough to preserve her future by cloaking defiance under a veneer of conformity. The latter sections of the novel are haunted by the mother’s deepening despair and self-destructive tendencies. One of her patients—the incongruously named Jesse—becomes a close friend and eventually a caregiver when the mother’s mental and physical health go into decline. The writing is rich with symbolic meanings and allegorical flourishes—ie, milk, normally a source of nourishment, but which has been contaminated by Soviet hegemony, and which the daughter refuses to drink. Paradoxically, this novel of lives stifled and hopes thwarted is strangely uplifting: Mother Latvia may buckle under the Soviet boot, but the daughter survives to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc, and new independence for her country. The translation by Margita Gailitis beautifully conveys Nora Ikstena’s message of hope along with the torment and pervasive fear under which the Latvian people lived for more than 40 years. Soviet Milk is also a stern reminder that the freedoms we currently enjoy are hard won and should never be taken for granted. ( )

A Latvian grandmother, her daughter, and granddaughter navigate life in the Soviet Union, focusing on 1969-1989. A father is exiled to Siberia, a doctor loses her prestigious Leningrad post and is assigned to a rural Latvian women's clinic, a girl's rural school always starts late so the students can cut beet and carrot tops.

While this novel is about lives under the Soviet regime--interrogations, accusations, choices being determined for you--it is also about family. Both blood family and created family. ( )

The alternating POVs were hard to follow at first, but otherwise I enjoyed it. ( )