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After rehabilitation my father began his efforts to resume his membership in the Communist party. I was always surprised that after Stalin’s prisons and camps my father was convinced through his life time that those were acts of enemies of the Soviet power, ideas of socialism and communism were the most significant for him. I even envied his moral and political firmness, though I felt sorry for him: he was a very nervous, impulsive and very vulnerable man. My father submitted his request for restoration of his membership to Kiev regional party committee. They reviewed his request and said: ‘You, dear Isaac Abramovich, if you were in prison, then there must have been something about it. You go to work, and you will demonstrate what you are like and then we shall admit you to the party’. My father came home in tears. He went to Moscow where he got an appointment with Shvernik, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and they resumed his membership in the party and returned all his military orders. My father came home inspired.
Period
Interview
Grigoriy Stelmakh