This is a book addressed to schoolchildren about the events of the era of the Great Terror. It was written (and created illustrations) by Evgeny Yelchin. He was born in Leningrad in 1956, but emigrated to America in 1983. The author’s personal and family experiences are embodied in “Stalin’s Nose,” but one should not look for autobiographical features in it. Or rather, if we are to look, it will be for all of us, as well as our grandparents. Our common past, phantasmagorically condensed, but no less recognizable, appears in this book along with all its disappeared and still unlived features.
“Stalin's Nose” is just one day in the life of an ordinary Soviet schoolboy, Sasha Zaichik. But during this day, Sasha will have time to witness the arrest of his beloved father, an NKVD officer, rehearse the role of a detachment standard bearer, become the son of an enemy of the people, break a bust of Comrade Stalin, cause a real commotion at school, provoke the arrest of a teacher, and be the target of recruitment by an NKVD agent. On this day, Sasha Zaichik’s world rapidly collapsed: all his ideas about good and evil, sustainability and justice of the world order crumbled to dust. It turned out that behind the official phrases from newspaper editorials about “enemies of the people” there were real, close people hiding. And you yourself, who until recently were considered a role model, become an outcast, a person whose face is covered with ink in a group school photograph. At the end of the book, standing on the outskirts of the famous NKVD building on Lubyanka, in an almost endless line of relatives of those arrested, the hero encounters non-poster people, human feelings of people whose loved ones are in trouble, and finally finds hope.
Author: Evgeny Yelchin
Pages: 176 (offset). Hardcover
Dimensions: 188x140x17 mm
