Susanna Sirota’s Komsomol membership card

My Komsomol membership card that I received in 1939.

In 1938 I joined the Komsomol believing that young people with advanced ideas had to be in the Komsomol. We were young, optimistic and enthusiastic. And, if there was a war to happen tomorrow we were ready to win a victory, this was what our favorite song said.  It was a confusing period, but Stalin and Lenin were our faith, religion and god, if you want. I think that the first word any baby pronounced was Lenin and not ‘mama,’ so strong the ideology was. We didn’t have any doubts. We were young, optimistic and enthusiastic. In 1942 I became a candidate to the Party. This was the only way we knew we had to go: become pioneers, then Komsomol and finally party members. 

Many years were to pass and I had to read many books and meet with many people to have the scales fall from my eyes and see the horror of this regime in a different light. I was a party member and it’s non-existent now. Only uneducated people still cannot believe in those crimes of Stalin and his retinue. My husband