This is an excellent book that digs below the history of Stalin or even Stalin's Russia into the lives of those living under Stalin. It is an incredible book, an absolute must read to anyone searching to understand those terrible years.
"The Whisperers is not about Stalin, although his presence is felt on every page, or directly about the politics of his regime; it is about the way Stalinism entered people's minds and emotions, affecting all their values and relationships." Pg. xxxii
"Increasingly, there was nothing in the private life of the Bolshevik that was not subject to the gaze and censure of the Party leadership. This public culture, where every member was expected to reveal his inner self to the collective, was unique to the Bolsheviks - there was nothing like it in the Nazi or the Fascist movement..." Pg 37
"Collectivization was the great turning-point in Soviet history. It destroyed a way of life that had developed over many centuries - a life based on the family farm, the ancient peasant commune, the independent village and its church and the rural market, all of which were seen by the Bolsheviks as obstacles to socialist industrialization. Millions of people were uprooted from their homes and dispersed across the SOviet Union: runaways from the collective farms; victims of the famine that resulted from the over-requisitioning of kolkhoz grain; orphaned children, 'kulaks' and their families. This nomadic population became the main labor force of Stalin's industrial revolution, filling the cities and industrial building sites, the labour camps and 'special settlements' of the Gulag." Pg. 81
"In 1935, the SOviet government had lowered the age of criminal responsibility to just twelve - partly with the aim of threatening those in prison with the arrest of their children if they refused t confess to their crimes." Pg 248
"As Stalin saw it, the family was collectively responsible for the behavior of its individual members." Pg. 248
"The Great Terror undermined the trust that held together families. Wives doubted husbands; husbands doubted wives. The bond between parent and child was usually the first of these family ties to unravel. . . . Children were put under pressure by their schools, by the Pioneers and the Komsomol, to renounce arrested relatives, or suffer the consequences for their education and career." Pg. 300
Section "Wait for Me" about those coming back from the Gulag's and their silence. "It was terrible. To this day, I do not understand. Why was she so frightened to speak? I think she did not want to burden me. She wanted me to be happy, not to make me bitter about life in the SOviet Union. She knew that everything that had been done to our family had been an injustice but she did not want me to think that." Pg. 454
Book 81
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