The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

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.

The other major shift credited to Khrushchev was the gradual relaxation of the strictures on literature and the arts. The term “thaw” is now universally used to denote this. If the Party itself admitted Stalin’s errors, it could relax the reins in the field of cultural expression. Vladimir Dudintsev’s 1956 novel Not by Bread Alone and Vera Panova’s The Seasons are two early markers; fortunately they were two of many. Negative elements of Soviet society could be (albeit carefully) portrayed. Sometimes this was fragile and arbitrary. Boris Pasternak was vilified for Dr. Zhivago, for example. Yet, four years later in 1962, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was cleared for publication.

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