Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:20:57.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Part of History: The Oral Record and Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931-1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Larry E. Holmes*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of South Alabama

Abstract

All’s quiet now. Summer vacation has started, the halls and classrooms are deserted. Almost. It is 10 July 1992 and I am inside Moscow’s School No. 175 with Vladimir Dmitrievich Nikolaev, a pupil here from 1933 to 1941. Once this was School No. 25, hallowed ground, from 1931 to 1937 the most famous school in the Soviet Union, where a talented teaching corps instructed the children of Stalin and other representatives of the Soviet elite. The winner of many awards, School No. 25 was the object of my research for several years. It's a bit unnerving to imagine the sounds and images of the people who worked and played in these very rooms sixty years ago. Nikolaev interrupts, then enhances the experience: “This was the library; the deputy director’s office was here; Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, and I were in the same literature class there.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, Norfolk, Virginia, 18 March 1994. I am grateful to George Enteen, Ben Eklof, Sam Baron, Gary Marker, Tom Ewing, David Brandenberger, Marjorie Hilton, and Keith Arbour for their comments. Alia Pavlovna Zakharova helped arrange and assess most of the interviews. Research was supported by the University of South Alabama and by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board and the American Council of Teachers of Russian with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Information Agency. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed.

1 Statistical information in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv goroda Moskvy (RGIAgM), f. R-528, op. 1, d. 267, 11. 85-87. In 1933-34 the high percentage of female instructors at School No. 25 (75 percent) and the combined membership in the Communist Party and Young Communist League (15 percent) did not distinguish the school's staff from that in sister institutions in the October district, in Moscow, or in the Russian Republic. RGIAgM, f. R-528, op. 8, d. 1, J. 45ob.; Kadry prosveshcheniia (Moscow, 1936), 94, 96, 116-17; Nauchnyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi akademii obrazovaniia (NA RAO), f. 17, op. 1, d. 5, 1. 14. Basic information on School No. 25 from 1931 to 1937 can be found in Holmes, Larry E., “Legitimising the Soviet Regime: School No. 25, 1931-1937,” in Eklof, Ben, ed., School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia (New York, 1993), 176203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.I am preparing a book-length manuscript on the school's history from 1931 to 1937.

2 On space, see RGIAgM, f. R-528, op. 8, d. 1, 1. 32ob.; and f. 126, op. 12, d. 87, 1. 4. On shortages, see Narkompros’s reports in NA RAO, f. 8, op. 1, d. 173; and f. 17, op. 1, d. 18. For the October district, see Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv obshchestvennykh dvizhenii (TsGAOD), f. 78, op. 3, d. 41, 1. 24; d. 49, 11. 69, 71; d. 54, 1. 44; d. 56, 1. 64; d. 78, 1. 8; d. 113, 11. 122-23, 141; d. 135, 1. 105.

3 For most schools, see Danev, A. M., Narodnoe obrazovanie: Osnovnye postanovleniia,prikazy i instruktsii (Moscow, 1948), 151 Google Scholar. For School No. 25, see RGIAgM, f. R-528, op. 1, d. 267, 11. 22, 24; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 2156, 1. 54; and d. 2598, 1. 58.

4 GARF, f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 1844, 11. 1-2, 26, 77-80; and d. 2156, 11. 2, 6ob., 60-70; and NA RAO, f. 17, op. 1, d. 229, 11. 110-58; and f. 20, op. 1, d. 62, 1. 144.

5 See many examples of pupils’ artwork from the 1933-34 academic year in NA RAO, f. 17, op. 1, d. 370.

6 NA RAO, f. 17, op. 1, d. 234, 1. 4.

7 Fradkin, F. A. and Plokhova, M. G., “Problemy distsipliny v sovetskoi shkole,Sovetskaia pedagogika, June 1991, no. 6:9199 Google Scholar. For attempts at progressive education in the 1920s, see Holmes, Larry E., The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education inSoviet Russia, 1917-1931 (Bloomington, 1991)Google Scholar.

8 Nikolaev, Vladimir, Moskovskii romans (Moscow, 1988), 17 Google Scholar.

9 Bubnova herself was arrested in 1944 and spent seven and a half years in prison and exile (in Barnaul). See “Doch Narkoma,” Sovetskaia kul'tura, 8 March 1988, 3, and Holmes, Larry E., “Magic into Hocus-Pocus: The Decline of Labor Education in Soviet Russia’s Schools, 1931-1937,Russian Review 51, no. 4 (October 1992): 110 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 I have often wondered how the nature of the testimony might have changed if the interviews had been held, not in an apartment, but in the school itself. Perhaps in the near future a reunion of sorts can be arranged at the school where videotaping would be feasible.

11 Oshinsky, David M., “Oral History: Playing by the Rules,Journal of AmericanHistory 77, no. 2 (September 1990): 609, 613Google Scholar.

12 Portelli, Alessandro, The Death ofLuigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaningin Oral History (Albany, 1991), 52 Google Scholar.

13 Henige, David P., Oral Historiography (New York, 1982), 45 Google Scholar.

14 Lawrence L. Langer refers to the “complex layers of memory that give birth to [later] versions of self” ( Langer, Lawrence L., Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins ofMemory [New Haven, 1991], xv Google Scholar). Ronald Grele notes that “oral history, like all biography or autobiography, encourages the view that individuals shape their own destinies“ ( Grele, Ronald J., Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History, 2d ed. [Chicago, 1985], 256 Google Scholar). On the romanticization of the horrors of war by veterans of the American Civil War, see Linderman, Gerald F., Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the AmericanCivil War (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 An example of objectivity lost when the interviewer-historian draws too close to his subjects can be found in Martin Gilbert's In Search of Churchill: A Historian’sJourney (London, 1994). Nevertheless, the book merits reading as an introspective examination of how a historian gathers and interprets information. For recent modest efforts to integrate the oral record into a larger understanding of the Soviet Union, see Kotkin’s, Stephen Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar, and Hoffmann, David L., Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941 (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar.

16 Povest' Anny Litveiko (Moscow, 1957), published in runs of 90,000 and 75,000 copies; Zhizn’ Anny Akimovoi: Povest' (Moscow, 1956), in 30,000 copies; Natasha: Povest' (Leningrad, 1948), in 15,000 copies. Kapusto, Iuliia, Poslednimi dorogami Generala Efremova:Po sledam viazemskoi tragedii 1942 goda (Moscow, 1992)Google Scholar, and Kapusto, Iu., Techeniezhizni: Povest' (Moscow, 1987)Google Scholar.

17 Fink, Carole, Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 35 Google Scholar.

18 For example, Linderman, Embattled Courage, and Rousso, Henry, The Vichy Syndrome:History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)Google Scholar.

19 Witnesses at Nazi war crime trials often confused the facts and were thereby easily “discredited” by aggressive defense lawyers. However, they successfully documented the enormity of the crimes in human terms.

20 NA RAO, f. 17, op. 1, d. 229, 11. 125-26, 131, 137, 141, 144, 151, 158.

21 GARF, f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 2246, 1. 25ob.; RGlAgM, f. R-528, op. 1, d. 242, 11. 22-23.

22 Interview with Lidiia Gelar’evna Model', 2 August 1995, Moscow. All interviews cited hereafter occurred in Moscow unless otherwise indicated.

23 Interviews with Irina Eitsveg, David Iakovlevich Gurevich, Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, and Tamara Moiseevna Spiridonova, 28 July 1993. In the interview with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993, Shneiderman used the same words to express his feelings about the school.

24 Orlov, Yuri, Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Russian Life, trans. Whitney, Thomas P. (New York, 1991), 44, 51Google Scholar.

25 Bonner, Elena, Mothers and Daughters, trans. Bouis, Antonina W. (New York, 1992), 320 Google Scholar.

26 Interview with Lidiia Gelar’evna Model', 2 August 1995.

27 Interviews with Nina Davydovna Manzon, 8 April 1990 and 27 May 1990; Lev Benediktovich Kozlovskii and Valerii Abramovich Tokarev, 27 May 1990; Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman and Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993; Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993 and 26 August 1993; Tamara Moiseevna Spiridonova, 28 July 1993; Boris Abramovich Rosenfeld, 19 November 1994, State College, Pennsylvania; Ol'ga Dmitrievna Turova, 11 July 1995; Daniil Mikhailovich Proektor, 12 June 1995; and Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995.

28 Interviews with Elena Andreevna Bubnova and Nina Davydovna Manzon, 8 April 1990; Lev Benediktovich Kozlovskii and Valerii Abramovich Tokarev, 27 May 1990; Lidiia Borisovna Libedinskaia, 16 June 1993; Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993; and Anatolii Dmitrievich Myshkis and Viktor Noevich Iarkho, 5 July 1995.

29 Interview with Daniil Mikhailovich Proektor, 12 June 1995. Of special importance are his Oruzhenostsy tret'ego reikha: Germanskii militarizm, 1919-1939 gg. (Moscow, 1971), and, with Lezer, Iokhen, a German historian, Revoliutsiia v politike bezopasnosti (Moscow, 1992)Google Scholar.

30 Interviews with Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993; Semen Matveevich Batshev, 21 July 1995; Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995; and Boris Morisovich Ginzburg, Liliia Romanovna Ginzburg, Asia Izrailovna Zharkovskaia, Boris Mikhailovich Potskhveriia, and David Iakovlevich Gurevich, 24 July 1995.

31 Interview with David Iakovlevich Gurevich, 24 July 1995.

32 General characterizations were provided in interviews with Anatolii Dmitrievich Myshkis and Viktor Noevich Iarkho, 5 July 1995; Vladimir Dmitrievich Zelenskii, 6 July 1995; Inna Solomonovna Brodskaia, 11 July 1995; Semen Matveevich Batshev, 21 July 1995; Boris Morisovich Ginzburg, 24 July 1995; Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995; and Raisa Efimovna Oblonskaia, 1 August 1995. Zelenskii and Batshev called Maksimov and Vasil'ev “muzhiki.“

33 Interview with Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993. See also Kapusto, Techenie zhizni, 56.

34 Interviews with Nina Davydovna Manzon, 8 April 1990, and Tamara Moiseevna Spiridonova, Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, and Irina Eitsveg, 28 July 1993. In an interview with Raisa Efimovna Oblonskaia, 1 August 1995, Oblonskaia emphasized how Iasnopol'skaia scolded pupils who preferred to quote the textbook when asked a question.

35 Interview with Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, 28 July 1993. Kapusto has written about the incident in Kapusto, Techenie zhizni, 55-56.

36 Interview with Lidiia Borisovna Libedinskaia, 16 June 1993; Libedinskaia, Lidiia, Zelenaia lampa: Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1966), 70 Google Scholar.

37 Interviews with Vladimir Dmitrievich Zelenskii, 6 July 1995; Semen Matveevich Batshev, 21 July 1995; and Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995.

38 Nekrich, Aleksandr, “Staropimenovskii, 5” (part 2), Detskaia literatura, 1991, no. 5:6869 Google Scholar.

39 NA RAO, f. 17, op. 1, d. 43, 11. 91-93, 110; and d. 42, 11. 114-16. For a more detailed discussion and analysis of Shevchenko’s lesson, see Holmes, “Legitimising the Soviet Regime,” 188-89.

40 Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 59-60.

41 Lewenstein, Henry-Ralph (Johnston), Die KarlLiebknecht-Schule in Moskau1931-1937: Erinnerungen eines Schülers (Lüneburg, 1991), 4243 Google Scholar. Perhaps literature was taught well in many schools because of the great works studied and because its teachers were among the best educated and most experienced. On 1 January 1935, one-third of the USSR’s literature teachers had completed higher education (only chemistry teachers had a better record) and they had more experience than any other group, about half (47.3 percent) having taught ten or more years. Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR:1935 (Moscow, 1936), 56, 60.

42 Interviews with Elena Andreevna Bubnova and Nina Davydovna Manzon, 8 April 1990; Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman and Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993; Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993 and 26 August 1993; Lidiia Mikhailovna Krasnogliadova and Inna Solomonovna Brodskaia, 11 July 1995; and Aida Zosimovna Slonim, 31 July 1995.

43 Interviews with Vladimir Dmitrievich Zelenskii, 6 July 1995; Daniil Mikhailovich Proektor, 12June 1995; and Boris Mikhailovich Potskhveriia, 18July 1995. In interviews with Vladimir Dmitrievich Nikolaev, 5 July 1992, and Lev Benediktovich Kozlovskii, 27 May 1990, Nikolaev and Kozlovskii emphasized Kholmogortsev’s excellence.

44 Interview with Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, 8 August 1993. Nekrich, “Staropimenovskii, 5” (part 2), 69. In an interview with Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28July 1995, Val'k recalled an approach that did not elicit questions and discussion.

45 Interviews with Lidiia Mikhailovna Krasnogliadova, 11 July 1995, and Aida Zosimovna Slonim, 31 July 1995. However, in an interview on 31 March 1996, Mariia Dmitrievna Surova recalled that Ovsiannikova taught “excellently and beautifully.“

46 GARF, f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 2209, 1. 2.

47 GARF, f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 1998, 1. 4 (conference sponsored by Narkompros for a reexamination of social studies syllabi). Leonova chose, however, to focus on a story about a campaign against kulaks.

48 GARF, f. A-2306, op. 70, d. 2380, 1. 2.

49 George S. Counts Papers, Special Collections, Milbank Memorial Library, Teachers College, Columbia University, box 6, series 3, folder 22, unpaginated, notes on ninth grade.

50 Interview with Elena Andreevna Bubnova and Nina Davydovna Manzon, 8 April 1990. Almost all pupils responded in a similar fashion.

51 David Iakovlevich Gurevich presented me with his daybook following an interview, 28 July 1993.

52 Interview with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman and Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993.

53 Interview with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993. Students also put in verse form instances of their lack of preparation for Ol'ga Simonovna Polovchanskaia’s demanding German classes: interview with Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova and Tamara Moiseevna Spiridonova, 28 July 1993.

54 Interview with Inna Solomonovna Brodskaia, 11 July 1995.

55 Interviews with Vladimir Dmitrievich Nikolaev, 5 July 1992; Lev Benediktovich Kozlovskii and Valerii Abramovich Tokarev, 27 May 1990.

56 Interview with David Iakovlevich Gurevich, 4 August 1993.

57 Interviews with Boris Abramovich Rosenfeld, 19 November 1994, State College, Pennsylvania, and Boris Morisovich Ginzburg, 24 July 1995. Ginzburg brought copies of the newspaper that he had preserved over the intervening years to the interview.

58 Interview with Mariia Dmitrievna Surova, 31 March 1996. Surova also insisted that school administrators and teachers did not interfere.

59 Interviews with Vladimir Dmitrievich Zelenskii, 6 July 1995; Boris Morisovich Ginzburg, Liliia Romanovna Ginzburg, and David Iakovlevich Gurevich, 24 July 1995; and Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995.

60 Interview with Anatolii Dmitrievich Myshkis, 5 July 1995.

61 Interviews with Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva and Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993; Tamara Moiseevna Spiridonova, Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, and Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993; Viktor Noevich Iarkho and Anatolii Dmitrievich Myshkis, 5 July 1995; and Mariia Dmitrievna Surova, 31 March 1996.

62 Interview with Raisa Efimovna Oblonskaia, 1 August 1995. The Russian writer, Raisa Orlova, who graduated from another school in 1935 to attend Moscow’s Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History, remembered the latter institution in much the same terms as “a creative organism, a second homeland“; see Orlova, Raisa, Memoirs (New York, 1983), 77 Google Scholar.

63 Hunt, Lynn, “The Unstable Boundaries of the French Revolution,” in Perrot, Michelle, ed., A History of Private Life, vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 14 Google Scholar.

64 Interviews with Anatolii Dmitrievich Myshkis, 5 July 1995, and Mariia Dmitrievna Surova, 31 March 1996.

65 Interview with Liliia Romanovna Ginzburg (Taubina), 24 July 1995. The landing at the North Pole occurred in May 1937. Later that summer Babushkin died in a search for his fellow flyer, Sigismund Levanevskii, who disappeared over the North Pole in August.

66 This understanding of events was articulated especially well in interviews with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993, and Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, 28 July 1993.

67 Bonner, Mothers and Daughters, 292.

68 Interview with Lidiia Mikhailovna Krasnogliadova, 11 July 1995.

69 Interviews with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman and Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993; Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, David Iakovlevich Gurevich, and Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993; and Liudmila l'vovna Rosenfeld and Boris Abramovich Rosenfeld, 19 November 1994, State College, Pennsylvania.

70 Interview with David Iakovlevich Gurevich, 28 July 1993.

71 Interview with Daniil Mikhailovich Proektor, 12 June 1995. For a similar response from a future writer, see the memoirs of Simonov, Konstantin, Glazami chelovekamoego pokoleniia: Razmyshleniia o I. V. Staline (Moscow, 1990)Google Scholar. He believed in Stalin, the miracle of industrialization, and the construction of the Belomorskii Canal as a humanistic exercise. “The country was changing before our eyes. When something didn’t turn out, it meant that someone had interfered” (63). The noted historian of the October revolution, P. V. Volubuev, recalled that as a child in the 1930s he believed in the regime’s ideals and never felt fear until he arrived at the front. See McClarnand, Elaine, “The Debate Continues: Views on Stalinism from the former Soviet Union,Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 20, no. 1 (1993): 17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Interviews with Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995; Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva and Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993; David Iakovlevich Gurevich and Tamara Mikhailovna Kasparova, 28 July 1993; and luliia Borisovna Kapusto, 28 July 1993 and 8 August 1993.

73 Orlova, Memoirs, ix.

74 Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 53.

75 Interview with Lidiia Borisovna Libedinskaia, 16June 1993.

76 In his study of Magnitogorsk, Kotkin finds elements of belief and disbelief coexisting within everyone, the latter the product of lived experience, the former primarily of revolutionary interpretation (Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 228-29).

77 Interviews with luliia Borisovna Kapusto, 28 July 1993 and 8 August 1993.

78 In an interview with luliia Borisovna Kapusto, 28 July 1993, Kapusto called my attention to these lines recently published in Kapusto, Poslednimi dorogami GeneralaEfremova, 60.

79 Interview with Genrikh Oskarovich Val'k, 28 July 1995. In an interview with Andrei Nikolaevich Gorbunov, 2 August 1995, Gorbunov noticeably dissented, remarking that he and many of his schoolmates knew the truth about collectivization and political repression. Yet shortly after making these remarks, Gorbunov commented that he and other pupils shared a prevailing sense of optimism and purpose in their personal and public lives.

80 Interview with Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993.

81 Dina Kaminskaya, Final Judgment: My Life as a Soviet Defense Attorney, trans. Michael Glenny (New York, 1982), 21.

82 Nekrich, Aleksandr, “Staropimenovskii, 5” (part 1), Detskaia literatura, 1991, no. 4:54 Google Scholar.

83 Lewenstein, Die Karl-Liebknecht-Schule, 33, 61.

84 Orlova, Memoirs, 65.

85 Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 47.

86 Hochschild, Adam, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (New York, 1994), 70, 143Google Scholar.

87 The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910-1954, ed. Mossman, Elliott, trans. Mossman, Elliott and Wettlin, Margaret (New York, 1982), 154 Google Scholar.

88 Kaminskaya, Final Judgment, 20. For a similar analysis of how German police 80. Interview with Antonina Nikolaevna Iakovleva, 22 July 1993.

89 Alliluyeva, Svetlana, Only One Year, trans. Chavchavadze, Paul (New York, 1969), 148 Google Scholar; Kaminskaya, Final Judgment, 18; interview with Viktor Noevich Iarkho, 5 July 1995.

90 In an interview on 28 July 1993, Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto recalled this reaction of a fellow pupil.

91 Interview with Nina Davydovna Manzon and Elena Andreevna Bubnova, 8 April 1990. Stalin’s daughter has written that she could not believe that all those arrested were guilty: “I could only assume that they must have become the victims of some frightful mix-up, which even Father himself could not disentangle” (Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 148). Kaminskaia reacted with indifference to the arrest of classmates’ parents and the loss of her father’s job (Kaminskaya, Final Judgment, 18). Nadezhda Mandelshtam remembers a man who believed in the virtues of arrests, considering his own arrest a mistake and part of the “overhead of production” ( Mandelshtam, Nadezhda, Hope Abandoned, trans. Hayward, Max [New York, 1974], 156 Google Scholar).

92 Orlova, Memoirs, 62; Lewenstein, Die Karl-Liebknecht-Schule, 54.

93 Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 52.

94 Bonner, Mothers and Daughters, 226.

95 Interview with Raisa Efimovna Oblonskaia, 1 August 1995.

96 Slonim, Marc, Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems, 1917-1977, 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1977), 186 Google Scholar; Terras, Victor, A History of Russian Literature (New Haven, 1991), 584 Google Scholar.

97 Interview with Iuliia Borisovna Kapusto, 8 August 1993. Bonner recalled that she fell in love with Korchagin and with other similar stories of heroism (Bonner, Mothers and Daughters, 202-3).

98 Interview with Lidiia Mikhailovna Krasnogliadova, 11 July 1995.

99 Interview with Raisa Efimovna Oblonskaia, 1 August 1995.

100 Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: Obshcheobrazovatel'naia shkola. Sbornik dokumentov,1917-1973 gg. (Moscow, 1974), 175-76.

101 Pravda, 30 May 1937, 3; the full resolution may be found in Tsentr khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii (TsKhSD), f. 6, op. 1, d. 74, 1. 127.

102 Interviews with Valerii Abramovich Tokarev, Lev Benediktovich Kozlovskii, and Nina Davydovna Manzon, 27 May 1990 and 13 July 1992; and Vladimir Dmitrievich Nikolaev, 5 July 1992.

103 Interview with Arkadii Mikhailovich Shneiderman, 22 July 1993.

104 This scene brings to mind the haunting end to the film, Radiant Path (released in 1940), when the face of the heroine blends with the star on one of the Kremlin towers suggesting the “unity of the individual with the state” (Maria Enzensberger, ’“We Were Born to Turn a Fairy Tale into Reality’: Grigorii Alexandrov’s The RadiantPath,” in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema [London, 1993], 105).

105 Gefter, Mikhail as cited in Boffa, Giuseppe, The Stalin Phenomenon, trans. Fersen, Nicholas (Ithaca, 1992), 187 Google Scholar.