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In 1937 [Great Terror] [10] my father’s cousin brother Leonid Ledovskiy was arrested. His real surname was Krikshtein and Ledovskiy was his Party nickname. He and his wife were underground Bolsheviks. Her Party nickname was Krasnen’kova. They had two children. their son was born shortly after Dzerzhinskiy [11] died and was named Felix after him. They named their daughter Ivstalinka after Stalin and his initials I.V. In 1937 Leonid was arrested at night. We were horrified that he turned out to be an enemy of the people being an old underground Bolshevik. Could we talk or think about things? Well, we thought about those happenings, but we didn’t talk. Nobody heard from him for a long time. Later militia called his wife. They offered her to repudiate him as an enemy of the people. They threatened to arrest her and send to GULAG [12] and send their children to a children’s home for children of enemies of the people. It was a tragedy for her to refuse from her husband, but to save her children she had to repudiate from her husband.
Period
Interview
Bertha Isayeva