Tag #150245 - Interview #78110 (Mikhail Gauzner)

When Stalin died on 5th March 1953, my grandfather David Gauzner, who could hardly be suspected of love for the Bolshevik party [the Communist Party], cried and said to me, 'Mikhail, what's there ahead? You see, everything may go topsy-turvy without the man. And we'll have it served right upon us.' He was afraid of sedition because they always beat the Jews in troubled times. My father's reaction was ambiguous. On the one hand, he had survived the period of the struggle against 'cosmopolitans' and had no illusions left as to the attitude of Stalin's regime towards Jews. On the other hand, he was a product of his age. My father had survived the war under the guidance of the most potent organizers, and considered Stalin a superb organizer and creator of that machinery. I was the Komsomol organizer of my class at the time, and we organized a guard of honor in front of Stalin's portrait with a black crape band. I watched particularly that nobody would stir things up because it would be committing sacrilege. Well, we were like that in those times.