Tag Archives: Kremlin

Andrei was carving a wooden sleigh. So expert was he in the use of a knife that he could make a toy sleigh, driver and all, in two long winter evenings. Another night would be enough for the horse, which wasn’t difficult, but Andrei always had a hard time with the yoke that went over the neck. The yoke was shaped like a big wishbone and Andrei could never understand why Russian horses wore such high and heavy yokes. “Just like us peasants!” thought Andrei, “We too carry heavy burdens and are little more than slaves.” Andrei thought many things that he didn’t say. One didn’t have to he a peasant to learn that lesson in Russia 400 years ago. Look at the terrible death that the local boyar, or noble landlord, had suffered! The ruler of all Russia, Ivan justly nicknamed the Terrible, had been merciless. Even Andrei, who hated all landlords, had pitied the wretched boyar. Andrei lived in a region where streams flowed out to three seas — the Baltic, the Black and the Caspian. It was a level land of great pine forests where trappers caught fur-bearing animals and of clearings where farmers grew barley and flax. It was a land of snow and biting cold more than half of each year. Now it was winter and Andrei was carving toys for sale. When spring came, Andrei would put away his knife and pick up his hoe. Much — too much — of what Andrei earned, summer or winter, would go to the new landlord. Badly off as Andrei was, his sons were to be in a still worse position. To prevent their leaving the farms, the government bound the peasants to stay on the land of their masters. Thus they became serfs, in many ways …

AS THE SKY darkened over Moscow on the evening of March 5, 1953, thousands of people waited in line before a building called the Hall of Columns. Some of them wept; some carried flowers. Moving slowly and silently toward the entrance, they could see a forty-foot portrait of Premier Josef Stalin, framed in gold, which hung on the side of the building. News of Stalin’s death had been announced late that afternoon and now he lay in state in an immense room whose marble columns were draped in flags of red and black. Four days later, Stalin’s body was carried to the tomb on Red Square where lay the body of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. At twelve noon, when Stalin’s body was placed beside that of Lenin, cannon were fired in every city of Russia. Cars, trucks, busses and trains stopped for five minutes, while people repeated the phrase, “Proshe, oteytz”–“Farewell‚ father” and so the Russians took leave of the man who had ruled them for twenty-nine years. Those twenty-nine years had been among the most eventful and terrible in history, not only for Russia, but for the world. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union had been industrialized. It had fought off an invasion from Nazi Germany and after the war, had established a mighty Communist empire in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. A once backward country had become one of the greatest powers on earth, but the price, in lives and liberty, had been unbelievably high. Millions of people had been killed for resisting Stalin’s program of rapid industrialization, or for disagreeing with him on political issues — or simply because Stalin had suspected them of disloyalty. The older that Stalin grew, the more tyrannical he became. In 1946, when the cold war with the West began, …