From a Reuters review of the book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, by Orlando Figes:
After countless biographies of Stalin, a new book gives voice to the millions of ordinary Russians who suffered the dictator’s reign of terror in silence.
“The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia”, by award-winning historian Orlando Figes, is based on hundreds of interviews with survivors of the era of Josef Stalin, and their stories still have the power to shock.
A slain boy becomes the hero of a propaganda cult, lionised in the press for denouncing his father to the police, neighbours betray neighbours, bravery is punished, cowardice is rewarded and innocents are executed….
…Parents were wary of voicing opinions for fear their children would repeat them, deliberately or not, to teachers at school. One wrong turn could lead to arrest, torture or worse, meaning Soviets were reduced to whispers in their own homes.
Because children of “enemies of the people” were often deemed guilty by association, they resented their parents. Wives came to believe the trumped up charges against husbands, while arrests and imprisonment tore families apart, often permanently.
Quoted here.
