Elena Skrjabina Elena Skrjabina (1906-1996) was professor emeritus of Russian at the University of Iowa. She grew up in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) where her father was a member of the last Russian Parliament before the 1917 Communist revolution. From 1941,when the Germans invaded Russia, until 1945, when the Allied forces won the war, Elena Skrjabina suffered many hardships that she chronicles in her works. Read More Read Less