Lydia Chukovskaya worked for some thirty years as a columnist and literary translator. Her second husband was arrested and shot in 1937. She wrote two novels on Stalinism: The Deserted House and Descent into Water, which were rejected by the censors, ended up in the samizdat and were published abroad. Her defence of Sinyavsky and Daniel, the protection that her family offered Solzhenitzin and her impassioned public defence of Sacharov led to her expulsion from the Writers’ Union in 1974. Her most important work, in three volumes, is Notes on Anna Akhmatova, partially published in Paris and currently being published in Russia at the initiative of her daughter Elena. The Process of Expulsion is the story of her struggle against censorship and arbitrary acts.