Tag #145793 - Interview #102250 (Zoya Shapochnik)

When the doctors were exonerated after Stalin’s death we were told opposite things in the classes. Then one of the students asked whom we should we believe. She was reprimanded for questioning the correctness of the actions taken by the authorities. She was even summoned to the Komsomol committee and they wanted to expel her, but she got off with a reprimand. When Stalin died in 1953, I was in the tram on my way to university. It seemed to me that people were looking at me as if I had murdered him. I took Stalin’s death hard. I mourned with the others, being in the honor duty by his portrait. At that time we didn’t know what kind of a villain he had been.