574
PAUL NEUBU RG
That period to which there can hardly be a full return left in·
delible marks on what is today's recognized generation in Eastern Europe.
however. Regardless of their current political views, they are Stalin's
children. They were born just before and during the war, in which they
lost relatives, and not a few their fathers or even both their parents. An
important part of their childhood experience had been the physical
deprivations and mental shocks which had prepared the way for what
happened after 1945 - and also left a mark on the psyche of their
parents. After 1948, they found themselves, still as children, in yet
another war situation. This time it was internal, but that made its
effects only more pervasive, enveloping each family and each individual. '
Indeed, this war situation, with its special atmosphere, its shortages,
its amorality, its terror, its insane propaganda, appeared to be a normal
way of life, presided over by the enduring figure of Stalin the Father.
That image of Stalin is still remembered by many of his children:
"One day in my third year at school," a twenty-nine-year-old agricul.
tural technician in Romania remembered, "I made my mother very
angry'. 'You'll be the death of me,' she said. 'Never mind,' I said.
'If
you die, I'll go to Comrade Stalin and be his son.' She slapped me
and then she just cried."
"When Stalin died, I was a little worshipper, and secretary of my
school form," a twenty-seven-year-old woman in Poland recalled. "I
was stunned. What's going to happen to us now, I thought. On the
radio all you could hear the whole day was the announcement, and
slow music. But the children in the class seemed very happy. Their
parents must have told them this was good news. But I didn't under–
stand that a t the time. I could only think that they must have gone
mad, and it frightened me."
And though Stalin himself has since been removed from the Mos–
cow mausoleum and almost expunged from the history books that he
~
once dominated, his children have hardly been able to forget the debt
they owe him, in both love and hatred. "When Stalin died I wrote a
poem that was full of sincere sadness," said a thirty-three-year-old Bul–
garian poet. One of the best of his ge neration, he had become a Com–
munist at the age of fifteen and has remained a Party member to this
day. "And I wouldn't take back a single word of it. Because if I did,
I'd also have to take back the anger I felt when I found out what kind
of a man Stalin had really been. I Ile\'er mention his name now, but
everything I write in a way expresses my feelings about this epoch."
"Miserable Stalin," a twenty-se\'en-yea r-old Czech poet had written
in 1962, following the Party decision to take down the tyrant's enormous
statue overlooking his city.
