CAROLYN KRAUS
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once." Why should parents tell their children of their own suffering,
of relatives who disappeared in the night ? They might let something
slip at school. Why condemn them to death? "So the children grew,"
wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam in her memoirs of those years, "swell–
ing the ranks of the hypnotized ."
These children and their children are now the Russian people.
If
someone else disappears, it is none of your business .
If
your
country launches an invasion , well, it has its reasons . During my
travel in the Soviet Union in the seventies, I found no one who held
discriminating opinion about current leaders, even flattering ones.
Ko ygin was thought to be slightly more liberal than Brezhnev, but
neither of these men existed as individuals . This instinctual apathy is
an enabling condition of people working, raising children, leading
their lives.
