My mother's stories
chapter 23
Why did they kill him?
It's
strange how people's memory works. I have been writing my memoirs for
more than three years now and my mother's mental abilities have
deteriorated dramatically during this time. Only a year ago she
remembered a lot about her childhood and youth and only what she was
doing a minute or two ago slipped her memory completely. Nowadays she
has forgotten most of her past, even her violent mother, whom she
hated so persistently for so long. Nevertheless her father has
recently emerged,
escaping the dark hollows of her memory. So she was just sitting
muttering to herself in her present-day manner “What has happened
to him? I can't remember”. Giving her a clue, I reminded her that
her father was executed when she was only seven. My mother looked at me
perplexed and asked with sudden tears in her voice “Why did they
kill him? He was so good”. Trying to distract her, I started to
tell her about a great number of people, who were marked as “enemies
of the people” and executed at that awful time. And she suddenly
remembered “Oh, yes. I was a daughter of the enemy of the people.
So how did they humiliate me?” After some struggle my mother did
fish out that she had been forbidden to sit at the first row at
school – her place could be only at the back of the class.
The
detail that I have forgotten. It
was strange. She
used to tell me that being an excellent pupil she was sitting at the
first row, at least at primary school. My daughter confirmed she
recalled the same. So maybe my mother was just trying to use her
imagination to refill the dark holes in her memory. Or, perhaps, she
was forbidden to sit in the front after the War when she refused to
sign the renunciation of her father. Who knows? My
mother in her state can't help me now.
But
never mind. I still
remember a lot – all those things that she used to tell me when I
was a child and she was a young strong woman with excellent memory
for poems and her own past. Although even then her memory was not so
good for everyday business that always seemed to her too mundane to
pay too much attention to.
Anyway,
I remember that as “a daughter of the enemy of the people” she
didn't get a free lunch at school. It was an important addition to
the nourishment, because most of the children never got enough food
at home. Yet, there were some sympathetic teachers, who used to send
my mother to the kitchen to wash the dishes – so that she could
receive her lunch as a
payment for her work. How often could they do it? It's a pity I
forgot and my children don't remember either. Nevertheless it's a
great relief for me to know that if I have some doubts about my
recollections I can always ask them as they used to listen to my
mother's stories as often as I did at the same age.
But
I do remember clearly my mother telling me that she never saw her
father again after he went to the hearing. Only a note came from him
some time later. In that small piece of paper, given to them in great
secrecy, her father revealed the place where he had hidden the money
that he had saved to buy a house for the family. I think he knew what
was waiting for him. But even then, in his desperate state, he was
trying to be funny as usual and added in the end of the note that he
was treated there as a Gypsy from a well-known joke. The hint was
transparent enough – they knew he meant “tortured”. Many years
later, reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book,
I
learnt with a feeling of deep revulsion and terror that my
grandfather's case wasn't extraordinary. It was a usual practice.
Actually, punitive agency got official permission for such methods of
inquiry. My shock was especially profound because I was growing up
watching a lot of movies about The Second World War where brutal
German fascists ruthlessly tormented our selfless patriots before
killing them. And our soldiers were so brave and noble. If some of
them, mad with grief after getting a letter about his wife and
children killed by a
German
bomb, tried to be violent with German captives, the others always
stopped him saying “We can't behave like them”. I could never
watch those touching scenes without tears in my eyes. It was such an
awful irony suddenly to discover that our people could “behave like
them” and even worse, because they tormented their own compatriots
just to force them to sign a document with some absurd accusations
brought against them. No wonder people usually admitted everything.
Death was preferable if the alternative was the everyday torture.
I
remember how, thinking about Stalin's repressions,
I used to feel pity for all the poor people, who were doomed to live during that terrible time. But then something changed in my perception. I
think it started when Russian propaganda raised a turbid wave on TV
in order to clean Stalin's reputation. I felt confused when photos of
old women lovingly clutching his portraits suddenly popped up all
over the Internet. Looking at them I thought at first those women
were just a little bit touched in their heads. But I was knocked down
completely by a photo of a plump woman who wasn't even that old. A
sweet smile was playing on her lips while
on the portrait she was holding the head of the great moustached
leader was surrounded by the USSR National Emblem that looked like a
halo of a saint.
I
don't know exactly when it happened. Perhaps, at that moment as I was
watching that photograph or a bit later,
when I realized the extent of Stalin's rehabilitation in Russia.
Anyway, a frightful thought came to me once:
that bloody regime couldn't have existed if a lot of people hadn't
supported and justified it. And what is more there were plenty of
those, who were ready to fulfill a horrid work of torture and
shooting. I was not even sure if it was my own thought or I came
across it while reading online. But it didn't matter. I just felt it
was true at that moment.
So
that's why those hideous traumatic scenes from the old War movies
were shown so convincingly. Movie-makers didn't have to look for
German War criminals to consult. They could easily find a lot of good
experts with a long practice in their own country - that is in my
former country, which I was brought up to believe was the best in the
world. A ruthless reality gradually undermined this stupid
conviction, of course. But nothing could compare with that crashing
blow that it got when the whole truth about Stalin's repressions was
revealed to the people. It seemed most of my compatriots felt like
that at the time. And now even my best friend has recently told me
that Stalin's regime was not really that bad – there were plenty of
good things too.
I do hope that my head is more resilient and nobody
will ever be able to persuade me that a mass slaughter of people can
be justified by some high purposes or the future happiness of all the
others. It's painful for me to admit it but it looks like people can
be made to believe anything at all. The herd instinct – that is
what that sly mass propaganda uses here, I think. This irresistible
desire to join the majority even if they are all walking to the
precipice.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
