Selected text
My sisters Victoria and Inga, the younger one was five years old, and I, eleven years old, were taken to a transit home for orphaned children - that we became all of a sudden despite our parents living - at the Holy Danilov Monastery in the center of Moscow. We got a wash in the shower, they took our fingerprints and photographs en face and profile, as if we were adult criminals. We were provided sufficient food and had clean bed sheets, but we weren’t allowed to leave the monastery. The walls around the Monastery were stuffed with broken glass. We were horrified waiting for them to send us to a children’s home, because we knew that my sisters and I would end up in different children’s homes in different towns and would be given different names and never be able to find each other again. Twice a day our tutors arranged ‘lessons of political education’ for the children of enemies of the people, taking us through a crowd of whistling and hooting local stray children: ‘Look at the saboteurs and traitors of their Motherland! Death to spies’. Our aunt Sophia saved us. She managed to obtain guardianship of the three of us. She took us to her home and told us that our father had been sentenced to ten years in prison without the right to correspond with us. From the talks in the children’s home I already knew that it meant the death penalty. She also told us that our mother had been sentenced to eight years in camps on the charges of being a non-informer.
Aunt Sophia had her own daughter, Marianna, born in 1932. The family never mentioned the father of the girl. Sophia worked as an economist in an office, but she couldn’t manage to support four children and aunt Rosa helped her. We went to school. Many of my classmates’ parents had been arrested as well. It was not appreciated to talk about it, and we felt very lonely. When the war in Spain [see Spanish Civil War] [14] began, the schoolchildren began to dream to fight on the side of the republicans. I was no different. ‘It’s important to go abroad’, I thought naively remembering exciting stories that uncle Victor had told us. The radio broadcast merry songs: ‘We live merrily today and tomorrow will be even better…’ And our situation was that our aunts worked so very hard to feed four children.
Aunt Sophia had her own daughter, Marianna, born in 1932. The family never mentioned the father of the girl. Sophia worked as an economist in an office, but she couldn’t manage to support four children and aunt Rosa helped her. We went to school. Many of my classmates’ parents had been arrested as well. It was not appreciated to talk about it, and we felt very lonely. When the war in Spain [see Spanish Civil War] [14] began, the schoolchildren began to dream to fight on the side of the republicans. I was no different. ‘It’s important to go abroad’, I thought naively remembering exciting stories that uncle Victor had told us. The radio broadcast merry songs: ‘We live merrily today and tomorrow will be even better…’ And our situation was that our aunts worked so very hard to feed four children.
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
Vladimir Tarskiy