Tag #153915 - Interview #103414 (Revekka Mexina)

Repression of 19368 and the following years didn’t touch our family, except for uncle Lyova – I told about him already. We were sure that he was innocent, of course. This resulted in our doubts that the others arrested were guilty. We already realized that many innocent people were arrested often for slanderous accusations. But we didn’t associate what was happening with the name of Stalin.  At that time NKVD managers were fired and taken to court every now and then for the allegedly deviations from the directions of Stalin. Those were public cases that ended in sentencing to death, as a rule. And we believed that Stalin knew nothing about the arrests of innocent people and that those giving direct orders were just using his name. I lived with this belief until the ХХ Party Congress9. When Stalin died in 1953 I cried all day through. I felt like the whole world crushed and there was only uncertainty ahead of us.