The Whisperers

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The Whisperers Page 90

by Orlando Figes


  traditional practices, 51, 76, 77

  Virgin Lands Campaign, 543–4, 547, 561

  See also collectivization, agricultural; famine; land

  Akhmatova, Anna, 218, 431, 488–9, 490, 491, 492, 583

  Akmolinsk Labour Camp for the Wives of Traitors to the Motherland (ALZhIR), 294, 316–17, 324, 356–61, 364–5, 366, 447, 510, 525, 540, 544

  children’s compound, 364

  conditions, 357–9

  correspondence rules, 359–61

  Dolinka orphanage, 317, 358

  effect on prisoners, 556–7, 571–2

  guards, 364, 630–32

  Pioneers, 359

  sexual relations in, 364–5

  ‘special regime’, 357–8, 360, 367–8

  teenagers in, 360

  Aksyonov, Vasily, 626–7

  Aleksandr Nevsky (film), 270

  Aleksandrov, Grigorii, 366, 557

  Aleksandrova, Irina, 473

  Aleksandrova, Valentina, 461

  Aleksandrovna, Liudmila, 572

  Alekseyeva, Klavdiia, 294–6

  Alekseyeva, Liudmila, 597–8

  Aliger, Margarita, 199, 400, 407

  Alliluev, Fyodor, 177

  Allilueva, Nadezhda, 155, 236

  Allilueva, Svetlana, 402

  All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion, 641

  All-Union Budget Commission, 219

  All-Union State Film Institute (VGIK), 260

  Altai region, 240, 435, 656

  Altman, Iogann, 494, 496, 589

  ALZhIR, see Akmolinsk Labour Camp for the Wives of Traitors to the Motherland

  Amur labour camp, 90

  Andrei Sakharov Public Centre and Museum, 634n

  Andronnikov, Iraklii, 406

  anketa, see questionnaires

  Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 562

  ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ campaign, 494–503, 508, 509, 518

  anti-Semitism, 420, 508–12, 518, 521, 570, 646, 647, 648

  Antonov-Ovseyenko, Sofia, 298–300, 299, 336

  Antonov-Ovseyenko, Valentina, 299, 336–8, 337

  Antonov-Ovseyenko, Vladimir, 16, 298, 299, 336

  apartments, see communal appartments; housing

  architecture

  collective housing, 9–10

  Constructivist, 10, 150, 152

  Arctic exploration, 416

  Arctic Gulags, 55, 208, 213

  Arctic railway, 468

  Arkhangelsk, 546

  exile to, 116, 143, 216–17, 292, 390, 391, 392, 424, 544, 545, 601

  labour camps, 326, 568, 599

  arrests

  doubts over, 276–81, 283

  exposed (1956), 594

  families ostracized, 285–92

  and labour supply, 423, 427

  mass (1930s), 73, 76, 112, 113, 191, 231, 234, 235, 279, 303, 335, 351, 584, 602, 630, 643

  ‘mistaken’, 141, 272, 273, 275, 278, 279, 284, 305, 309

  preparation for, 241–7, 277, 304

  review (1939), 279, 280

  speaking out against, 231–2, 281–5

  wartime, 392

  Arsenteva, Zoia, 331–2, 332

  Artek holiday camp, 129, 249

  Artseulov family, 292–3

  asceticism, Bolshevik ideal, 14–19, 30, 158, 161

  Avdeyenko, Aleksandr, 192, 193, 195

  Averbakh, Leopold, 256

  ‘Averbakhians’, 281

  Axis Powers, threat, 235–6, 371–2, 467

  Babak, Marina, 621

  Babel, Isaak, 251, 280

  Babitskaia, Liuba (née Ivanova, formerly Golovnia), 170, 557, 557–9

  Babitsky, Boris, 168, 168, 169, 170, 195, 366, 558

  Babitsky, Volik, 168, 170, 170, 366, 367

  Babi Yar massacre (1941), 570, 571

  Babushkina, Lydia, 598–9, 650

  Bagirov, M. D., 585

  Baigulova, Elena, 183

  Baikal–Amur railway, 468, 581

  Baitalsky, Mikhail, 30–31, 180, 641–2

  Baku, Institute of Medicine, 585–6

  Baltic Factory, 648

  Baltic States

  Soviet invasion (1939), 372–3

  Soviet rule, 537

  Bamlag complex, 581, 585

  Bargin, Ivan, 424–5

  Barinov, Sergei, 358, 368

  Basmachi Muslim rebels, 200

  Bazanov, Filipp, 216

  Begicheva, Natalia, 494, 497

  Belarus (Belorussia), 89, 105, 106, 108, 164, 260

  anti-Semitism, 509

  Jews, emancipation, 69

  orphanages, 99, 235

  post-war arrests, 467, 468, 469

  Belbaltlag labour camp, 113–14

  Belikova, Zinaida, 528

  Belinsky, Vissarion, 494

  Belykh, Gregorii, 12–13

  Berg, Raisa, 24

  Berggolts, Olga, 523

  Beria, Lavrenty

  and amnesty (1953–4), 530, 536–7

  arrests, review, 279, 280

  East German reforms (1953), 537

  execution, 537

  fear of, 526, 527

  and Gulag system, 468, 527, 530

  and Norilsk strike, 533

  rape of Okunevskaia, 402n

  Berlin, Isaiah, 488

  Berman, Matvei, 100

  Berzin, Eduard, 116–17, 118, 215, 526, 633

  Bezgodov, Viktor, 355

  Bezymensky, Aleksandr, 286

  Bikin transit camp, Khabarovsk, 629–30

  Bindel, Riab, 273–4

  biographies, spoilt, 199, 401, 462, 476, 598, 647

  concealment from authorities, 131, 137, 147, 167, 329, 334, 473–8, 473–9, 563–4, 598, 599, 601, 603, 604

  concealment from families, 147, 548, 601, 649–50, 652, 653–4

  consequences of, 199, 436, 473, 476, 510, 647

  remedying, 262, 344–5, 347, 401, 435, 473, 478

  wartime relaxation of controls, 435

  See also questionnaires

  birthrate, decline (1930s), 160

  Black Book, The (Grossman & Ehrenburg), 494

  black market, 172, 242

  black people, 183–4

  Bliukher, Marshal V. K., 289

  Bobrovskaia, Tsetsiliia, 288

  Bolshevik Cake Factory, 138

  Bonner, Elena, 14, 36–7, 42, 243, 285, 289, 295–6, 540–41

  Bonner family, 14, 36–7, 41–3, 48, 137, 540–41

  Borshchagovsky, Aleksandr, 490, 494, 497–501, 501, 502, 622

  Botova, Afanasia, 581–2‘bourgeois culture’, 7, 8, 16

  bourgeoisie post-war, 470–73

  ‘Red Terror’ against, 5

  repression, 136

  return feared, 72–3

  Soviet, emergence (mid 30s), 157–63

  ‘bourgeois specialists’, 42, 55, 73, 113, 153

  Bragin family, 435, 437, 526

  Brezhnev, Leonid, 155

  political clampdown, 605, 616–17, 623

  and wartime suffering, 621

  Brik, Lilia, 625

  Britain

  appeasement policy, 371

  declares war on Germany (1939), 372

  negotiations with Soviet Union (1939), 372

  Briukhova, Marfa, 326

  Brodsky, Iosif, 646, 648

  Bronshtein, Katia (née German), 545n

  Bronshtein, Svetlana, 511, 606–7

  Bronshtein, Vera, 511, 529

  Bubennov, Mikhail, 519

  Budkevich family, 14, 245, 286–7, 343–4, 583–4

  Bukharin, Nikolai, 9, 309

  alleged crimes, 238, 272, 276

  on Moscow Master Plan, 150

  and NEP, 6–7, 71, 72, 83, 154

  recants (1934), 197

  Right Opposition, 230

  Stalin and, 72, 74, 595

  Stalin’s defeat, 71

  trial and execution, 238, 297, 309

  Bulat family, 335–6, 449

  Bulgakov, Mikhail, 194, 489, 622

  Bulgakova,
Elena, 408, 622, 623

  Bulganin, Nikolai, 536, 537

  bullying, 393, 528

  in orphanages, 319, 335, 340

  in school, 289, 307, 334, 348, 417, 512

  in university, 348, 354

  Bunin, Ivan, 482

  burials, 54

  Bushuev family, 316–20, 356–9, 455, 456, 458, 475–6, 525, 556–7, 580, 581, 600–601, 601, 606 316, 317, 318, 358, 359, 455, 600

  Bykov, Rolan, 185

  careerists, 29, 266, 461, 472, 474

  carnivals, 159

  cattle, numbers, 93

  Caucasus, German successes in, 410, 429

  Cement (Gladkov), 15

  censorship, 623

  labour camp letters, 218

  relaxation, 561 (1960s), 605, 621

  wartime, 371, 383, 443, 464

  Central Committee, 230, 231, 458

  decree against Akhmatova/ Zoshchenko (1946), 488, 489, 491, 500n

  and dissent (1956), 597

  Kliueva/Roskin censure, 492

  members’ execution or imprisonment (1937–8), 238

  Central Control Commission, 35, 36

  Central House of Literature, 623, 624

  Chapaev (Furmanov), 59

  Chaplin, Charles, 482

  Chausova, Maria, 164–6, 166

  Chechens, 420, 424

  Chechik, Elizaveta, 185

  Chechneva, Marina, 407

  Cheka, 30, 36, 58, 167, 283, 293

  See also KGB; MVD; NRVD; OGPU

  Cheliabinsk, 43, 167, 394, 405, 460, 462, 476, 511

  Cheliuskin, SS, 220

  Cherdyn, 39–40, 118, 347–8, 553, 576

  Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk, 104, 450

  Cherkassy orphanage, 450–52

  Cherkesov, Vsevolod, 582

  Cherkesova, Elena, 559, 582

  Cherkesova, Svetlana, 296–7

  Chermoz, 297, 348

  ‘special settlement’, 103, 353–4, 355

  Chernoutsin, Igor, 595–6

  childcare, 41–50

  grandmothers’ role, 41–5

  as mother’s role, 161

  children

  abandoned, 99, 106–7, 160, 285, 289–92, 329–35

  of arrested parents, 221–3, 224–6, 246–7, 249, 285–7, 294–7, 316–69, 435, 436

  christening, 44

  in communal apartments, 39, 40, 167, 177, 183, 184, 185–6, 204–5

  and Communist utopia, 188–90

  domestic responsibilities, 324–5

  of elite, 276–7

  evacuated (1940s), 387, 388–92

  in exile, 87–91, 95, 99, 106, 108, 116, 143, 145, 210–11, 216–17, 350, 351, 353, 354, 356, 358–9, 363–4, 462

  family life, 11–14, 162–9, 175, 177–9, 228

  fear, 352

  games, 24–5

  in Gulag, 99

  homeless, 99

  ignorance of Great Terror, 276–7

  image of absent parents, 548, 550, 551–2

  as informers, 107, 122–6, 124–5, 129, 261

  Jewish, 66, 70

  ‘kulak’, 90, 99, 131, 142–7, 353, 436, 479, 480–81, 656

  learning through play, 24

  loss of parents, 319, 390–92

  names changed, 316, 327, 342

  parents, denunciation, 122–6, 129–30

  and parents’ arrest, 208–9, 274–5, 300–305, 307–8, 309, 313–14, 390–92, 439

  and parents’ guilt, 53, 77, 274–5, 307, 322, 342, 344, 345, 347, 444, 445

  parents’ history concealed from, 391–2, 646–7, 652, 654

  patriarchal families, 53, 77

  political indoctrination, 20–22, 24–5, 27, 273–4

  post-war life, 458

  poverty, 458

  private family housing, 168–9

  and relative’s arrest, 300–305

  released from orphanages, 547–8

  renunciation of parents, 130–32, 300–304, 343–4, 349, 475–7

  reunited with parents, 108, 449–54, 544–58, 560, 561–5, 571

  rules of listening and talking, 38–40, 254

  on the run, 107–10, 343

  rural, 126–9

  schooldays, 294–8

  silenced, 254

  social acceptance, desire for, 341, 343, 345–7, 349, 352–3, 354, 355–6

  of specialists, 211, 213, 216–17

  values, change in, 32–3, 50

  See also orphans; Pioneers

  children’s homes, orphanages, 99, 316, 317, 329

  children released, 547–8

  conditions in, 318–19, 320, 335–43

  damage by, 335

  identity, erasure, 125–6, 316, 327, 342

  in labour camps, 363, 364

  labour in, 342

  moral system, 341

  population, 99

  as recruiting ground, 341

  runaways, 343

  Soviet propaganda, 341

  children’s labour colonies, 329

  child support, 161

  China, Cultural Revolution, 37

  Christmas, 146n

  Chubar, Vlas, 301

  Chuianov, A. S., 412

  Chukovskaia, Lydia, 484–5

  Chukovsky, Kornei, 482, 485, 622

  Church, Russian Orthodox

  campaign against, 5, 7, 68, 127, 349

  land, redistribution, 51–2, 77

  public confession and penance, 33

  relaxation of controls (1943–8), 435, 437

  role in marriage and divorce, 10

  violent assault against, 85

  wartime, 414

  See also priests; religion

  churches, destroyed, 85

  cities

  and famine (1930s), 98

  housing shortage, 120–22, 172, 174

  migration to (1930s), 98–9, 118–19, 126–7, 128

  purging, 98–9

  wartime destruction, 457

  workers and NEP, 7

  Civil War (1918–20), 4, 13, 18, 32, 34, 35, 38, 54, 58, 200, 240–41

  campaigns against ‘kulaks’, 34, 87

  casual relationships in, 10

  class war, rural, 78n

  grain requisitioning, 49, 72

  hostages, 58

  peasant wars, 93

  Polish invasion, 164, 240

  private trade outlawed, 65

  romance of, 59, 73, 92, 416

  shortages, 6, 73

  class identity, manipulation, 136–47

  class war, 74

  halted by NEP, 62

  rural, 78n, 124

  coal, production, 83, 110, 113, 159n, 426

  Code on Marriage and the Family (1918), 10

  Cold War, 464, 481

  and defence of Soviet culture, 488, 499

  and fear of foreigners, 492–3

  military demands, 458

  collectivization, agricultural, 81–93

  criticism of, 85, 129, 438, 441

  and disrepair, 96

  failure, 96–7

  Komsomol and, 77, 79

  in NEP, 83

  peasant resistance to, 84–5, 92–3

  second wave (1930), 93

  taxation policies, 83

  temporary halt (1930), 93

  as trauma, 128–9

  workers’ livestock, 158

  See also kolkhoz

  Comintern, 311

  leadership reshuffle (1935), 230

  Piatnitsky at, 228, 229–32

  purge (1937), 540

  Stalin and, 230–31, 234

  communal apartments, 9, 152–3, 172–86

  conversation in, 253

  ‘corridor system’, 177–9

  elder, post of, 179–80

  impact on residents, 186

  kitchens, 182

  lack of privacy, 180, 182–4

  as microcosm of Communist society, 179

  mutual surveillance and, 180–82

  nostalgia for, 185

  and sense of comradeship, 184–5

&nbs
p; shared responsibilities, 179

  squabbles in, 181–2

  toilets, 183–4

  communal living, 9–10, 51, 152, 167, 172–86, 176–7

  Communism

  consumerism and, 158

  defence, 30

  and Fascism, 236, 373

  future rewards, 159, 188

  instilling, 20–22

  ‘march towards’, 191, 616

  NEP and, 7

  private life and, 4

  violent leaps towards, 4–5, 91–2

  War Communism, 5, 6

  Communist Party, Communists (Bolsheviks)

  agrarian policies, 215

  belief in, 33–4

  collective leadership, 536, 594

  ‘condensation’ policy, 9, 174–5

  Congresses, 11; (1925), 36; (1927), 72; (1934), 193; (1961), 538 (1956), 575, 593–6, 597–9, 614, 615, 646

  control systems, 34–40

  education policy, 20–25

  ethos, dominance, 32

  family policies, 8–9, 160–64, 166

  flee German army (1941), 380

  and Great Terror, 272–3

  identity, 33

  judgement, acceptance, 272–3

  leaders, purge, 238, 464–5

  membership numbers, 3n

  mistrust of peasants, 81–2

  morality, 33

  and NEP, 71–2

  officials, NKVD servants, 264

  officials, shift of power from, 422, 432

  and peasants, 50, 51, 77, 83–6

  and personal appearance, 158–9

  Plenum (1953), 537

  portrayed as ‘big family’, 162

  religion, campaign against, 68, 127

  seize power (1917), 3

  seen as Jews, 420, 508

  as self-policing collective, 37

  as source of all justice, 272

  as source of Truth, 190–91

  in troikas, 283

  unity, repentance and, 244

  weakened influence, wartime, 422, 432, 434–46

  work and discipline, ethos, 168

  See also Central Committee; Party members; Soviet regime

  comradeship

  communal apartments and, 184–5

  wartime, 420–21

  ‘condensation’ policy, 9, 174–5

  confession, public, 33

  confessions, extraction, 272–3

  Conquest, Robert, 98

  conscript labour, 467–8

  Constituent Assembly, 38n

  Constructivism, 10, 150, 152

  consumer culture, Soviet (mid-30s), 158–9, 166

  consumer goods, 467

  demand (1928–), 119

  post-war shortage, 457, 458–9

  consumer industries, 466n

  investment in, 157–60

  conversations, private, 36–40, 183–4, 251–5

  Cooper, Gary, 482

  cooperative sector, 466n

  Cossacks, 429

  cremation, 54n

  Crimea, Soviet Germans, 651

  Crimean Tatars, 420, 424

  Criminal Code, 82, 204

  criminal responsibility, age of, 99, 247–8, 329

  currency reform (1947), 467

  Czechoslovakia

  German invasion (1939), 371, 372

 

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