Tag #144479 - Interview #78227 (frieda stoyanovskaya)

1935-1936 was the time of repression [the so-called Great Terror] [8]. They were chasing after the 'enemies of the people'. They didn't find any in my school. But in the Union of Soviet Writers arrests began in 1936. There was a rule that before a writer was arrested, they expelled him from the Party. My husband, Semyon Gordeyev, was Deputy First Secretary of the Communist Party Committee at the Union of Soviet Writers. He had to conduct these meetings. It was all so scary that he didn't tell me anything about them. The writers often committed suicide, knowing the procedure after they were expelled from the Party. Semyon suffered all his life for being involved in all this. He expected to be arrested, too. When we heard about the Great Patriotic War [9], the first thing that he said was, 'Thank God, they won't arrest me, and I will be killed on the front.' Arrests of the writers continued until the start of the war and afterwards. They happened almost every night and we were aware of them.