Tag #112110 - Interview #94906 (Arkadi Yurkovetski )

The period of struggle against cosmopolites [20] and of doctors’ plot [21] was not so visible in the army. I remember Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953. There was a mourning meeting in our military unit. We all sobbed and combat officers had tears flowing down their faces. I cried, too. There was mourning in the town, there were lowered red flags with a black band hanging from them. Only in 1956 after Khrushchev [22] spoke at Twentieth Party Congress [23] I got to know what a terrible tyrant Stalin was. But back in 1953 we sincerely mourned for him.