The Whisperers Read online

  The Whisperers

  Orlando Figes

  The Whisperers

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Peasant Russia, Civil War:

  The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917–1921

  A People’s Tragedy:

  The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924

  Interpreting the Russian Revolution:

  The Language and Symbols of 1917

  (with Boris Kolonitskii)

  Natasha’s Dance:

  A Cultural History of Russia

  ORLANDO FIGES

  The Whisperers

  Private Life in Stalin’s Russia

  ALLEN LANE

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  ALLEN LANE

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2007

  1

  Copyright © Orlando Figes, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EISBN: 978–0–141–80887–1

  For my mother, Eva Figes (née Unger, Berlin 1932) and to the memory of the family we lost

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Note on Proper Names

  Maps

  Family Trees

  Introduction

  1 Children of 1917 (1917–28)

  2 The Great Break (1928–32)

  3 The Pursuit of Happiness (1932–6)

  4 The Great Fear (1937–8)

  5 Remnants of Terror (1938–41)

  6 ‘Wait For Me’ (1941–5)

  7 Ordinary Stalinists (1945–53)

  8 Return (1953–6)

  9 Memory (1956–2006)

  Afterword and Acknowledgements

  Permissions

  Notes

  Sources

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  xxxi Antonina Golovina, 1943

  2 The four secretaries of Iakov Sverdlov, chief Party organizer of the Bolsheviks, the Smolny Institute, October 1917

  17 Leonid Eliashov, 1932

  19 Iosif and Aleksandra Voitinsky, Yekaterinoslav, 1924

  21 A Lenin Corner, 1920s

  23 Aleksei and Ivan Radchenko, 1927

  26 Vera Minusova, early 1930s

  40 The Tetiuev family, Cherdyn, 1927

  42 Batania Bonner with her grandchildren, Moscow, 1929

  48 Peasant nanny, Fursei family (Leningrad)

  49 Natasha Ovchinnikova

  56 The Vittenburg family at Olgino, 1925

  60 Konstantin Simonov, Aleksandra and Aleksandr Ivanishev, Riazan, 1927

  61 Page from Simonov’s school notebook (1923)

  67 The Laskin family, Moscow, 1930

  71 The Slavin family, 1927

  78 Yevdokiia and Nikolai with their son Aleksei Golovin (1940s)

  89 ‘Kulaks’ exiled from the village of Udachne, Khryshyne (Ukraine), early 1930s

  90 Valentina Kropotina and her sister with three of their cousins, 1939

  101 Exiles in a ‘special settlement’ in western Siberia, 1933

  105 Left: Leonid and Aleksandr Rublyov, 1930. Right: Klavdiia, Natalia and Raisa Rublyova with Raisa’s husband, Kansk, 1930

  107 Left: Aleksandr and Serafima Ozemblovsky on their wedding day in 1914. Right: Serafima with Sasha and Anton Ozemblovsky in 1937

  116 Maria, Nadezhda and Ignatii Maksimov with Ignatii’s brother Anton, Arkhangelsk, 1934

  119 The Uglitskikh family, Cherdyn, 1938

  122 The Golovins’ bed from Obukhovo

  135 Aleksandr Tvardovsky, 1940

  140 Simonov ‘the proletarian’, 1933

  147 The otlichniki of Class B, Pestovo School, 1936

  148 Fania Laskina and Mikhail Voshchinsky, Moscow, 1932

  149 The Laskin household in the Arbat

  152 Left: Maiakovsky Metro Station, 1940. Right: Avtozavod Metro Station, 1940s

  166 Left: Vladimir Makhnach, 1934. Right: Maria and Leonid, 1940s

  168 From left: Anatoly Golovnia as Chekist, 1919; Liuba Golovnia, 1925; Boris Babitsky, 1932

  170 Volik Babitsky and Liuba and Oksana Golovnia at the Kratovo dacha, 1935

  176 The Khaneyevsky household

  178 Communal apartment (‘corridor system’), 1930–64

  182 The Reifshneiders’ room in the Third House of Soviets, Moscow

  199 Simonov in 1936

  206 Teachers and students of the Law Department of the Communist Academy in Leningrad, 1931

  209 Zina and Pavel Vittenburg at the Kem labour camp, 1931

  212 Pavel Vittenburg in his office, Vaigach labour camp, 1934

  217 ‘Papa’s Corner’. Drawing by Mikhail Stroikov, 1935

  220 The Poloz family, 1934

  222 Letter (extract) from Tatiana Poloz to Rada, 12 June 1935

  225 Nikolai and Elena (‘Alyona’) Kondratiev, 1926

  226 Nikolai Kondratiev, ‘The Unusual Adventures of Shammi’ (detail)

  229 Osip and Julia Piatnitsky with their sons and neighbours’ children at their dacha near Moscow, late 1920s

  232 Osip Piatnitsky at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, Moscow, 1935

  247 Ida Slavina and her parents, 1937

  266 The Malygin house in Sestroretsk, 1930s

  288 The Nikitin and Turkin apartments, Perm

  291 Gulchira Tagirova and her children, 1937

  299 Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko with his wife Sofia and stepdaughter Valentina, 1936

  317 Angelina and Nelly Bushueva, 1937

  321 The house in Ak-Bulak where Elena Lebedeva lived with her granddaughters, Natalia and Elena Konstantinova, 1940s

  322 Elena Lebedeva with her granddaughters, Natalia and Elena Konstantinova, Ak-Bulak, 1940

  323 Veronika Nevskaia and her great-aunt Maria, Kirov region, 1939

  325 Inna Gaister with her sisters Valeriia and Natalia, Moscow, 1939

  328 Oleg and Natasha Vorobyov, 1940

  330 Left: Mikhail Mironov. Right: extract from a letter to his mother

  332 Zoia Arsenteva, Khabarovsk, 1941

  334 Marksena Karpitskaia, Leningrad, 1941

  337 Girls from Orphanage No. 1, Dnepropetrovsk, 1940

/>   346 ‘On Land and Sea and in the Sky’ gymnastic demonstration, 1938

  351 Elizaveta Delibash, 1949

  355 Physics teacher Dmitry Streletsky with schoolboys of the seventh class in the Chermoz ‘special settlement’, September 1939

  357 Left: Zinaida Bushueva with her brothers, 1936. Right: Zinaida in the ALZhIR labour camp, 1942

  359 Children at ALZhIR, 1942

  361 Embroidered towel (detail) made by Dina Ielson-Grodzianskaia for her daughter Gertrud in the ALZhIR labour camp

  365 Ketevan Orakhelashvili with Sergei Drozdov and their son Nikolai, Karaganda

  370 Zhenia Laskina and Konstantin Simonov on their honeymoon in the Crimea, 1939

  375 Valentina Serova, 1940

  389 Natalia Gabaeva with her parents, 1934

  391 Anastasia with Marianna and Georgii Fursei, Arkhangelsk, 1939

  403 Serova and Simonov on tour, Leningrad Front, 1944

  406 Aleksei and Konstantin Simonov, 1944

  407 Simonov in 1941

  409 Simonov in 1943

  425 Ivan Bragin and his family, 1937

  451 Antonina Mazina with her daughter Marina and Marina Ilina, Chimkent, 1944

  456 The Bushuev ‘corner’ room in the communal apartment at 77 Soviet Street, Perm, 1946–8

  474 Inna Gaister with two friends at Moscow University, 1947

  476 Nelly and Angelina Bushueva, 1953

  477 Leonid Saltykov, 1944

  481 Valentina Kropotina and her husband, Viktor, 1952

  483 Simonov in 1946

  495 Fadeyev at the Writers’ Union, 22 December 1948

  500 Aleksandr Borshchagovsky, 1947

  504 Simonov at the Congress of Soviet Writers in the Belorussian Republic, Minsk, 1949

  507 Simonov in 1948 (left) and in 1953 (right)

  514 Samuil and Berta Laskin, Sonia Laskina, Aleksei Simonov and Zhenia Laskina circa 1948

  517 Zhenia and Sonia Laskina at Vorkuta, 1952

  524 Stalin’s body lies in state in the Hall of Columns, Moscow, March 1953

  527 Mourning ceremony at the Gorky Tank Factory in Kiev, 6 March 1953

  539 The Laskin family at their Ilinskoe dacha near Moscow, 1956

  543 Valentin Muravsky with his daughter Nina, Karaganda, Kazakhstan, 1954

  546 Marianna Fursei with Iosif and Nelly Goldenshtein, Tbilisi, 1960

  551 Aleksandr Ságatsky and Galina Shtein, Leningrad, 1956

  554 Fruza Martinelli, 1956

  556 Left: Esfir and Ida Slavina in 1938. Right: Esfir in 1961

  557 Liuba Golovnia after her return from ALZhIR, Moscow, 1947

  564 Vladimir Makhnach, 1956

  568 Elena Konstantinova, her mother Liudmila, her grandmother Elena Lebedeva, and her sister Natalia, Leningrad, 1950

  569 Nina and Ilia Faivisovich outside their house, near Sverdlovsk, 1954

  573 Sonia Laskina’s certificate of release from the Vorkuta labour camp

  592 Simonov with his son Aleksei, 1954

  600 Zinaida Bushueva with her daughter Angelina and her son Slava, 1958

  602 The grave of Nadezhda’s father, Ignatii Maksimov, Penza, 1994

  603 Tamara and Kapitolina Trubina, 1948

  609 Simonov and Valentina Serova, 1955

  617 Aleksei and Konstantin Simonov, 1967

  620 Mother Russia, part of the Mamaev Kurgan War Memorial complex in Volgograd

  627 Simonov in 1979

  631 Ivan Korchagin, Karaganda, 1988

  632 Mikhail Iusipenko, Karaganda, 1988

  638 Norilsk, July 2004

  640 Vasily Romashkin, 2004

  642 Leonid Saltykov, 1985

  643 Vera Minusova at the Memorial Complex for Victims of Repression near Yekaterinburg, May 2003

  651 Nikolai and Elfrida Meshalkin with their daughters, Marina and Irina, Perm, 2003

  655 Antonina Golovina, 2004

  Note on Proper Names

  Russian names are spelled in this book according to the standard (Library of Congress) system of transliteration, but some Russian spellings are slightly altered. To accommodate common English spellings of well-known Russian names I have changed the Russian ‘ii’ ending to a ‘y’ in surnames (for example, Trotskii becomes Trotsky) but not in all first names (for example, Georgii) or place names. To aid pronunciation I have opted for Pyotr instead of Petr, Semyon instead of Semen, Andreyev instead of Andreev, Yevgeniia instead of Evgeniia, and so on. In other cases I have chosen simple and familiar spellings that help the reader to identify with Russian names that feature prominently in the text (for example, Julia instead of Iuliia and Lydia instead of Lidiia). For the sake of clarity I have also dropped the Russian soft sign from all personal and place names (so that Iaroslavl’ becomes Iaroslavl and Noril’sk becomes Norilsk). However, bibliographical references in the notes preserve the Library of Congress transliteration to aid those readers who wish to consult the published sources cited.

  Northern European USSR

  Southern European USSR

  Western and Central Siberia

  Eastern Siberia

  The Soviet Union in the Stalin era

  Introduction

  Antonina Golovina was eight years old when she was exiled with her mother and two younger brothers to the remote Altai region of Siberia. Her father had been arrested and sentenced to three years in a labour camp as a ‘kulak’ or ‘rich’ peasant during the collectivization of their northern Russian village, and the family had lost its household property, farming tools and livestock to the collective farm. Antonina’s mother was given just an hour to pack a few clothes for the long journey. The house where the Golovins had lived for generations was then destroyed, and the rest of the family dispersed: Antonina’s older brothers and sister, her grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins fled in all directions to avoid arrest, but most were caught by the police and exiled to Siberia, or sent to work in the labour camps of the Gulag, many of them never to be seen again.

  Antonina spent three years in a ‘special settlement’, a logging camp with five wooden barracks along a river bank where a thousand ‘kulaks’ and their families were housed. After two of the barracks were destroyed by heavy snow in the first winter, some of the exiles had to live in holes dug in the frozen ground. There were no food deliveries, because the settlement was cut off by the snow, so people had to live from the supplies they had brought from home. So many of them died from hunger, cold and typhus that they could not all be buried; their bodies were left to freeze in piles until the spring, when they were dumped in the river.

  Antonina and her family returned from exile in December 1934, and, rejoined by her father, moved into a one-room house in Pestovo, a town full of former ‘kulaks’ and their families. But the trauma she had suffered left a deep scar on her consciousness, and the deepest wound of all was the stigma of her ‘kulak’ origins. In a society where social class was everything, Antonina was branded a ‘class enemy’, excluded from higher schools and many jobs and always vulnerable to persecution and arrest in the waves of terror that swept across the country during Stalin’s reign. Her sense of social inferiority bred in Antonina what she herself describes as a ‘kind of fear’, that ‘because we were kulaks the regime might do anything to us, we had no rights, we had to suffer in silence’. She was too afraid to defend herself against the children who bullied her at school. On one occasion, Antonina was singled out for punishment by one of her teachers, who said in front of the whole class that ‘her sort’ were ‘enemies of the people, wretched kulaks! You certainly deserved to be deported, I hope you’re all exterminated here!’ Antonina felt a deep injustice and anger that made her want to shout out in protest. But she was silenced by an even deeper fear.1

  This fear stayed with Antonina all her life. The only way that she could conquer it was to immerse herself in Soviet society. Antonina was an intelligent young woman with a strong sense of individuality. Determined to overcome the stigma of her birth, she studied hard at school so that
one day she could gain acceptance as a social equal. Despite discrimination, she did well in her studies and gradually grew in confidence. She even joined the Komsomol, the Communist Youth League, whose leaders turned a blind eye to her ‘kulak’ origins because they valued her initiative and energy. At the age of eighteen Antonina made a bold decision that set her destiny: she concealed her background from the authorities – a high-risk strategy – and even forged her papers so that she could go to medical school. She never spoke about her family to any of her friends or colleagues at the Institute of Physiology in Leningrad, where she worked for forty years. She became a member of the Communist Party (and remained one until its abolition in 1991), not because she believed in its ideology, or so she now claims, but because she wanted to divert suspicion from herself and protect her family. Perhaps she also felt that joining the Party would help her career and bring her professional recognition.

  Antonina concealed the truth about her past from both her husbands, each of whom she lived with for over twenty years. She and her first husband, Georgii Znamensky, were life-long friends, but they rarely spoke to one another about their families’ pasts. In 1987, Antonina received a visit from one of Georgii’s aunts, who let slip that he was the son of a tsarist naval officer executed by the Bolsheviks. All those years, without knowing it, Antonina had been married to a man who, like her, had spent his youth in labour camps and ‘special settlements’.

  Antonina Golovina, 1943

  Antonina’s second husband, an Estonian called Boris Ioganson, also came from a family of ‘enemies of the people’. His father and grandfather had both been arrested in 1937, although she did not discover this or tell him about her own hidden past until the early 1990s, when, encouraged by the policies of glasnost introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev and by the open criticisms of the Stalinist repressions in the media, they began to talk at last. Antonina and Georgii also took this opportunity to reveal their secret histories, which they had concealed from each other for over forty years. But they did not speak about such things to their daughter Olga, a schoolteacher, because they feared a Communist backlash and thought that ignorance would protect her if the Stalinists returned. It was only very gradually in the mid-1990s that Antonina at last overcame her fear and summoned up the courage to tell her daughter about her ‘kulak’ origins.