Tag #117098 - Interview #78547 (Leo Ginovker)

Our whole family witnessed the arrival of the Soviet authorities in Tallinn in June 1940 [see Estonia in 1939-1940] [16]. All our property – the factories, several houses, the shop, the boat, and cars – was nationalized at once, and radios were confiscated. My brothers were removed from the factory, but I was allowed to stay for some reason. I became the manager of the planning department; I even had two or three subordinates. We didn’t understand any of that planning, but we did something in the department: we drew some kind of charts, put them up on the walls, sent reports somewhere… An Estonian man was appointed factory director; he had been a house painter before. The factory managed to get by. The raw materials were brought in from Russia, and the end products were taken back. My brothers found jobs in some artels [17], we were paid our salaries, and life went on. One more family settled in our apartment – it wasn’t ours anymore, but the state’s. It was a married Jewish couple. He was a composer and worked in a military theatre; his last name was Vetlin. They both were astonished at the abundance of goods in Estonian shops and bought everything up: furniture, bicycles, suits, bed linen. None of these things were ever sold freely in the USSR. Vetlin was convinced that the war wouldn’t happen and that rumors of Germany preparing for war were just a provocation.