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After the speech of Khrushchev [24] at the Twentieth Party Congress [25] I couldn’t understand why people were grieving so much. I had no idea about what was going on in the USSR in the 1930s, the dispossession and repressions [26]. People living in the USSR must have lived in constant fear. Many people’s relatives were killed or repressed. However, many people tried to erase this from their memory, or they were afraid of thinking about such things. People were grieving about Stalin’s death.
The Twentieth Congress was a shock to me. I was in evacuation during the war and was raised to respect Soviet values. At school and later, in college, we were told that Stalin was everything for the Soviet people and that he was the stronghold of the Soviet Union. I was used to this way of thinking, and when everything turned out to be wrong and collapsed, I was terribly shocked. It was even more difficult to believe that it had been kept such a secret. How could one conceal such crimes from people? I recalled the director of my school, who was arrested.
The Twentieth Congress was a shock to me. I was in evacuation during the war and was raised to respect Soviet values. At school and later, in college, we were told that Stalin was everything for the Soviet people and that he was the stronghold of the Soviet Union. I was used to this way of thinking, and when everything turned out to be wrong and collapsed, I was terribly shocked. It was even more difficult to believe that it had been kept such a secret. How could one conceal such crimes from people? I recalled the director of my school, who was arrested.
Period
Location
Talinn
Estonia
Interview
Ester Vee