The Whisperers

Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 441–2; interview with Semyon Golovko, Norilsk, July 2004.

8: Return (1953–6)

1. SLFA, Spravka MVD, 11 November 1955; Yevgeniia to Sonia Laskina, 8 September 1955, 5 October 1955; interview with Fania Laskina, September 2003; interview with Aleksei Simonov, November 2003.

2. Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Dokumenty prezidiuma TsKPSS i drugie materialy: mart 1953–fevral’ 1956 (Moscow, 2000), p. 213.

3. SLFA, Sonia Laskina to Dmitry Shepilov, 4 June 1955; V. Frid, 58?: zapiski lagernogo pridurka (Moscow, 1996), pp. 358–9.

4. Y. Gorlizki and O. Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2004), p. 131; D. Shepilov, Neprimknuvshii (Moscow, 2001), p. 267; A. Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1993), pp. 209–10; K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Moscow, 1990), pp. 246–7.

5. V. Naumov, ‘Repression and Rehabilitation’, in W. Taubman, S. Khrushchev and A. Gleason (eds.), Nikita Khrushchev (New Haven, 2000), pp. 90–91; SLFA, Sonia Laskina to Dmitry Shepilov, 4 June 1955; Konstantin Simonov to Yevgeniia Laskina, 24 September 1955.

6. N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, translated and edited by S. Talbott (Boston, 1974), p. 79; A. Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (London, 1994), p. 223; N. Adler, Beyond the Soviet System: The Gulag Survivor (New Brunswick, 2002), pp. 90–93.

7. SLFA, Yevgeniia to Sonia Laskina, 16 September 1955; Vladimir Lugovskoi to Yevgeniia Laskina, 20 July 1956; Maia Bykova to Yevgeniia Laskina, 25 December 1974; interview with Aleksei Simonov, Moscow, June 2003.

8. E. Bonner, Mothers and Daughters (London, 1992), pp. 89–90, 328, 330–31; interview with Elena Bonner, Boston, November 2006.

9. Compare this with the memoirs of the dissident Liudmila Alekseyeva, who recalls that her moral distancing from the Soviet regime was similarly influenced by her reading of Herzen and by the example of the Decembrists: L. Alexeyeva and P. Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston, 1990), pp. 34– 5.

10. MSP, f. 3, op. 33, d. 2, ll. 33, 39.

11. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, l. 47.

12. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, ll. 132, 166.

13. MSP, f. 3, op. 45, d. 2, ll. 26–7, 89–90, 134.

14. MSP, f. 3, op. 24, d. 2, l. 38.

15. MSP, f. 3, op. 35, d. 2, ll. 40– 54.

16. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 27, 29.

17. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 3, ll. 1– 5.

18. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 31.

19. MSP, f. 3, op. 39, d. 2, ll. 36, 47, 52, 54.

20. B. Okudzhava, ‘Devushka moei mechty’, in Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 283– 94.

21. MP, f. 4, op. 10, d. 2, ll. 9, 28.

22. MSP, f. 3, op. 38, d. 2, ll. 19, 36.

23. MM, f. 12, op. 29, d. 2, l. 20.

24. SFA, I. Slavina, ‘Tonen’kii nerv istorii’, ms., p. 17; interview with Ida Slavina, Cologne, June 2003.

25. MP, f. 4, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 23–4, 43– 5.

26. GFA, letter from Anatoly to Liuba Golovnia, 5 December 1940; O. Golovnia, ‘Predislovie k pis’mam’, ms., p. 70; L. Golovnia-Babitskaia, ‘Predsmertnye zapiski’, ms., p. 4; A. Bachinskii, ‘Zhizn’, liubov’ i smert’ Anatoliia Golovni’, Stolitsa S, 17 January 1997; interview with Yevgeniia Golovnia, Moscow, July 2004.

27. MSP, f. 3, op. 46, d. 3, l. 43; MM, f. 12, op. 29, d. 2, ll. 34–5.

28. M. Nikolaev, Detdom (New York, 1985), p. 96; interviews with Viktoriia Shweitser, Moscow, July 2004; Amherst, November 2006.

29. O. Adamova-Sliuzberg, Put’ (Moscow, 2002), p. 153.

30. Ibid., pp. 154–5.

31. On this see D. Field, ‘Communist Morality and Meanings of Private Life in Post-Stalinist Russia, 1953–64’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1996). On youth culture: J. Furst, ‘The Importance of Being Stylish: Youth, Culture and Identity in Late Stalinism’, in same author (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London, 2006), pp. 209–30.

32. MM, f. 12, op. 16, d. 2, ll. 78, 79–80, 85, 97.

33. MFA, L. Makhnach, ‘Otets’, ms., pp. 3–8; interview with Leonid Makhnach, Moscow, July 2004.

34. MSP, f. 3, op. 8, d. 2, l. 24.

35. L. El’iashova, “‘Kak zhit”? O zhizni Sof’i Mikhailovny Firsovoi’, Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, no. 22 (3489), 20 October 1998, p. 24; Frid, 58?, p. 389; Sluzhili dva tovarishcha: kniga o zhizni kinodramaturgov Dunskogo i Frida (Moscow, 2002), p. 146.

36. MM, f. 12, op. 18, d. 2, ll. 12–14, 17–19.