Russian / Russia
Deti vorona. 1938 god
(The raven’s children. 1938)
Jakovleva, Julija
(Yakovleva, Yuliya)
(text)
Moskva: Samokat, 2016. – 258 p.
(Series: Leningradskie skazki / Jakovleva, Julija; Kniga pervaja)
ISBN 978-5-91759-444-6
Stalinism | Soviet Union | History 1937-1938 | Political persecution | Deportation
Reading age: 12+
White Ravens issue: 2016
When little Shurka and his big sister Tanya return home one night in a Kommunalka (communal apartment) in Leningrad, they find their father has disappeared. Their mother is strangely quiet that night and the next evening also. It is the time of the great terror of the years 1937/1938: The children’s parents have been abducted by the secret police as so-called Enemies of the People. For Shurka, however, they have ended up in the clutches of a powerful raven (Stalin) entirely by mistake. The boy decides to go to the latter’s house and set things straight. Yet the more Shurka experiences, the more he begins to hesitate: Nothing is true anymore, and everyone is suspicious and a potential traitor. The first part of Yuliya Yakovleva’s five-volume family saga is told from Shurka’s perspective and powerfully describes the child’s loss of innocence and belief in the Soviet system, as well as what it is like to have one’s family stolen away and one’s own life utterly disrupted.