The Whisperers

411, 412, 415–16female, 417–19 future expectations, 441–2medals awarded, 422

memories, 620–21 penal battalions, 413

power on battlefield, 433

return home, 448–9 wartime executions, 411, 413

Western influences, 441–3 and wives’ fidelity, 397–401, 448

wounded, 448, 456

Solomein, Pavel, 125

Solovetsky Camp of Special Significance (SLON), 81, 112–13, 114, 116, 121, 219, 338–9, 390

efficiency, 112–13Gorky’s praise, 194

Solts, Aron, 16, 31–2, 37, 288

Solzhenitsyn, A., 285–6, 604–5, 623, 634, 635, 636

Soviet Information Bureau, 383

Soviet Procuracy, 283, 536, 537, 538–9Soviet regime, atheism, 46, 54

bureaucracy, 32, 187

chaos of, 234, 235

collapse (1991), 581, 601, 629, 641, 652

conduct in war, 615, 618

consolidation, 81, 159

crimes, exposure, 594, 604– 5criticism of, 385, 458–64 currency reform (1947), 467

and dancing, 159

denunciation culture, 36

as deviation from Marxist principles, 531

and educated middle class, 470–72, 476

elite, 153, 156, 159, 265, 661‘enemies’, 131, 214, 234–5, 240, 275, 444, 464

ethnic scapegoating, 420

family metaphor, 162

and family values, 160, 161, 162

and famine, 98

Five Year plans and, 81, 111, 172

glasnost, 652

and Gulag, 112, 529–30, 534

and Jews, 420, 493, 614

justification, 618

Komsomol ethos, 30

legacies of, 645

and Leningrad intelligentsia, 488

loyalty to, 61, 77, 139, 153, 355, 360, 393

mutual surveillance in, 265

and Norilsk, 427

opposition to, 154, 201, 263, 283, 385, 426, 460, 461, 463, 468, 530, 599

peasants and, 82, 93, 99

private sphere, control, 561

propaganda, 125, 341, 401, 444

questioning, 439, 444

‘shock labour’, 159n

silent collusion with, 190, 266–7, 276, 502

Simonov’s support, 60, 64, 141, 198, 204, 270, 406, 409, 410, 411,