The Lost Daughter by Gill Paul

Author:Gill Paul [Paul, Gill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2018-10-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Leningrad, March 1937

PETER’S OFF-DUTY HOURS WERE OFTEN CONSUMED by meetings: Communist Party meetings, trade-union meetings, and – worst of all – Komsomol meetings when workers were invited to speak out against their co-workers and a commission decided on their guilt or innocence.

‘Grigory Yezhov was summoned today,’ he told Maria one evening, after checking that none of the children were in earshot. ‘If they can accuse him, none of us are safe.’

‘What is he accused of?’ Maria knew the man and had always thought him a drearily staunch Communist.

‘Yuri Yermilov overheard him saying he doubts we can achieve the targets in the new Five Year Plan. Now, he might well have said that; we all know they are absurd. But it’s hardly treason, is it?’ He looked grey and exhausted.

‘What did the committee decide?’

‘He got a reprimand.’ Peter rubbed his cheek with his knuckle. ‘Do you think I should have spoken on his behalf? I would have if I thought he faced jail.’

‘It’s so petty,’ Maria sighed. ‘I don’t like the Russian people any more. This regime brings out the worst in everyone. But I agree, it’s better not to speak up or you could find yourself targeted next.’

All over town, portraits of a moustachioed Stalin gazed down at them. His image hung on the outside of shops and factories, on the walls of every office and in each school classroom. Children sang songs thanking him for the good life he had brought them, and ubiquitous loudspeakers round town blared out his praises, but Maria and Peter were alarmed by the mass arrests under his premiership.

At first it had been the neighbour in their block who tried to cross into Finland, then several factory colleagues disappeared after a purge of the Party in 1933. More recently there had been a purge of any remaining kulaks. There was never any prior warning. Maria arrived in the morning to find co-workers missing and no explanation offered. The woman who’d lost her hand in the conveyor belt disappeared; so did the man who had been angry with Maria for telling his wife where to find him.

The secret police, known as the NKVD, always came in the middle of the night, the brakes of their black vans screeching on the road outside, followed by a loud banging on the door. Maria lay awake listening as a couple on the first floor were arrested one night.

‘We’ve done nothing wrong!’ the woman was screaming as they were led away. ‘We love the Party. We love Stalin.’

They must have done something, Maria persuaded herself. We just don’t know what it was.

She still kept her card files of people who were looking for missing family members, but was wary when new folk approached her. Every apartment block and workplace had informers who would run to the NKVD at the slightest provocation. They might be jealous because you had a better apartment or a more pleasant job than them; perhaps they thought you had not been effusive enough when greeting them in the street.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.