Tag #115342 - Interview #95074 (Evgeniy Kotin)

I remembered the repressions of the middles 1930s in the USSR not only by the arrest of Lev Drubetskiy, but also by the arrest of the husband of my mother’s sister Maria. Almost every day at our classes at school we were told to paint over the portraits of the ‘peoples’ enemies’  [24], including the portraits of the legendary commanders, ardent communists and militaries , whose portraits were in our textbooks. Nobody told us what was going on, neither in school nor at home. We were children and could not get how it might have happened that such famous people turned out to be peoples’ enemies and act against soviet power they had been struggling for. But at the back of my mind I understood that I should not ask my teachers about it. I just painted over the portraits and kept it out of my mind. I had not the slightest doubt in the correctness of the verdicts.