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went to work as a driver on a poultry farm. And he brought poultry to us at the maternity home, and sometimes he came for the refuse, to collect any remains. They fed us well. There was one time when he was unloading, and I was just going off duty. So he says to me, “Come on, Anna Timofeevna, I’ll give you a lift home; why tramp through the mud?” He dropped me off. I wanted to pay him. He wouldn’t take it. He dropped me off once, he dropped me off twice. The third time, I say to him, “Come in, Lenia, I’ll make you some tea, since you don’t want to take any money for driving me.”
The next day he came already dressed in civilian clothes made out of a foreign fabric. He lit his cigarette with a lighter, like in the movies, and told me everything about having been abroad. My husband had vanished at the very beginning of the war, when everything was still a muddle; I didn’t even get a death telegram about him. Lenka moved in with me. Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for my neighbor. Like a cancer of the womb, she gnawed at me. It was one thing and another, and the fellow is twenty years younger than you. Only she lied, it wasn’t twenty, it was fifteen. He’s only after your money, she says, and all of your belongings. He’ll take everything, and then, like in American movies, he’ll strangle you. Now I’m telling you, like a cancerous growth she ate away at me. It was all from envy. I put up with it; I didn’t say anything. I just tried to do the best I could by Lenka. After all, a man can always leave. True enough, he didn’t bring home his pay, but when he managed to get some extra he’d give me a hundred rubles or fifty. Shortly after Christmas, I went and bought a calendar, a pretty, tear-off one. I was always trying to buy pretty things for the house. I bought a picture with swans, gave two hundred rubles for it—a hundred of mine and a hundred of Lenka’s. I boasted about it and showed it to Praskov’ia. So all at once she says, “Well, at least you’ll have a picture with a proper couple in it.” I brought home this calendar, and on it there was such a lovely portrait of comrade Stalin wearing officers’ epaulets, all covered in medals. Lenka came home from work. I showed it to him: a calendar, I say, I bought it. All right, he says. But there were quarrels between us even before that, especially when Praskov’ia wasn’t home, since I didn’t want her to hear us and be gleeful. Then in the evening I wanted to go to the movies.
Lenia ate heartily and then sat down to shave. I said to him, “Let’s go to the movies today.” But he answered, “I can’t, I met one of my army buddies today and promised to go out with him this evening for a beer.” I answered him, “So what are you doing shaving your mug for an army buddy? What, he’s never seen you unshaven?” One word led to another, and we wound up having a major talk. Suddenly, Lenka jumped up and said that there were two people ruining his young life—Stalin and me. “How I’d like to slash you with a razor right now,” he says, “but, I never again want to go to prison.” He took
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the razor (he never shaved with a safety razor) and one, two, three, he went and sliced up the entire face of comrade Stalin in the portrait, and then even gouged out the eyes.—He put on his coat and hat, slammed the door, and left. I sat and cried, and felt sorry for the calendar, and felt sorry for myself. To be sure, if he could have he’d cut my throat, too. He served that sentence for something—they don’t put you in prison for nothing. And here comes Praskov’ia, and without malice, but out of kindness to me, says, so what are you doing, she says, you’re crying. So I went and told her everything. She immediately began to tremble and said to me that we had to destroy the calendar right away. You know what might happen, she said, on account of that. She took the portrait part, nailed the pages back up to the wall, and left. Well, my Lenka returned, and we made up.
Only, three days later, my Lenia comes home at an unusual time—I was sleeping after a night shift. He’s pale and trembling and says to me that he was called to the MGB. There they showed him that same sliced-up portrait and said, how is it that you could bring yourself to commit such an offense against a portrait of comrade Stalin. So, Lenka says to me, “You know, Aneta, (he called me Aneta, in the foreign fashion), I’ve already served one sentence and got out on amnesty. The absolute least they’ll give me for recidivism is ten years. But you’re a leading citizen, with irreproachable service, an exemplary worker. So I ask you, I beg you, go and say that this is your doing. They’ll swear at you for it, maybe give you a reprimand, but you’ll save a person’s life.”
The lad is right, I think. The next day, we went to the MGB. We no sooner approached the watchman, than Lenka goes and says to him, “This is about the business of the portrait of comrade Stalin. “ They immediately let us in and led us to the investigator’s office. Lenka says, “I’ve brought her. She’ll tell you everything herself.” And he left. I told them everything, just as Lenka taught me. The investigator wrote everything down and then gave it to me to read over. “Everything’s written down correctly?” he says. “It’s correct.” “Then sign it.” He showed me where to sign. I signed. “Now, I say, may I go home?” “No, now I’ll send for the man on duty and he’ll take you to a cell.” “What kind of cell?” “A prison cell. You’ll sit there until the trial, and then we’ll see.”
“What do you mean, until the trial? What trial?” “Well,” he says, “We’re going to try you.” “What are you going to try me for? What’s all this about?” “We’re going to try you for crimes against the state, according to the law.” Here I started to cry, and for three days in the cell I kept crying. After three days, they led me to the trial. They didn’t even want to hear what I had to say. “Is it you,” they say, “who signed your statement?” “Yes,” I answer, “but I didn’t know they would be passing judgment on it.” “Now,” they say, “it’s too
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late. You should have thought about that earlier.” And the witnesses were Lenka and Praskov’ia. The judges retired for five minutes. Then they returned and read out my sentence: in accordance with article fifty-eight, point eight, for a terroristic act against a portrait of our leader and teacher, friend of all the nations, comrade Stalin,—twenty-five years in a corrective labor camp. And so they brought me here.
Part IV
Apogee and Fracture: 1954–1991
Whatever the Soviet Union was under Stalin, it began to assume another face after him, though this was not always apparent. Nikita Khrushchev, impetuous and brash, seemed to contain many contrasting elements in his policies and character alike. A party official of the highest ranks, he was a faithful supporter of Stalin, and there was much blood on his hands.
However, it was Khrushchev who shocked the party (and then the world) by being the architect of de-Stalinization. The secret speech to the 20th Party Congress on February 24, 1956, attacked Stalin for numerous crimes and the cult of personality. Among the beneficial results, besides those of opening a vast new forum for discussion, was the release of millions of prisoners from the GULAG. What could be more anti-Stalinist than this? Thousands of prisoners were also rehabilitated, though this honor was initially reserved for high-ranking Communist Party members. The number of those released from the camps is generally cited to be close to eight million; at least a million continued life in the camps, however.