Ukrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: The Sea is Only Knee Deep

The Sea is Only Knee Deep is the true story of Paulina Zelitsky’s defection to Canada from the Soviet Union with her two young children in 1971. This two-volume memoir explores many topics including: Stalin’s final years, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and the dangers of defecting.

Paulina’s story begins in Cuba in 1968. She is part of the engineering team designing a top secret submarine base for Soviet nuclear submarines. 

The two volumes of The Sea is Only Knee Deep are full of intricate details of Paulina’s life experience: living in Odessa as a child, getting an engineering education, marrying a Cuban citizen, experiencing Fidel Castro’s Cuba, suffering the indignity of an attempted rape, planning to defect from the Soviet Union, and learning to live in her new country of Canada.

There is a great deal of technical detail about Paulina’s top secret engineering work on the nuclear submarine base in Cuba which was the cause of the undisclosed second Cuban missile crisis beginning in 1969.

Paulina also describes Cuban life during the 1960’s, and gives readers insight into Fidel Castro’s idiosyncratic leadership style based on rumors from servants who worked for his family members. 

Readers of the two volumes of The Sea is Only Knee Deep will be fascinated by Paulina’s insights into the Ukrainian famine, anti-Semitism, Odessan family life, education, and culture, as well as political oppression in the Soviet Union and Cuba. 

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