Tag #151895 - Interview #77988 (rachel persitz)

In 1953 Stalin died. People around were crying and so was I. We were crying out of fear of the future. The 20th Congress denunciated the cult of Stalin. We [history teachers] were kind of at a loss. We didn't know what we were supposed to tell the students. Later we attended workshops and had school programs changed, allowing us to speak about what Stalinism was like openly. We spoke half-truths about the crimes of Stalin and about the lack of principles of his companions, but we never had any doubts about the correctness of the idea of communism. We were telling children that they were the happiest children living in the best country in the world, in the country of socialism, when children in capitalist countries were starving and dying from hard work.