The Whisperers: Private Life In Stalin’s Russia (Orlando Figes)

Question 1

What story about Pavlik Morozov illustrates that Stalin’s campaign to intimidate the population had ‘no moral limits’?

‘A relative by .….. may also be .. ….. .. … s….. . And such a person .. … .. .. …… . ‘
MG

Answer 1

Figes tells of Pavlik Morozov, a teenager said to have been killed by older family members because he had denounced his father for selling false papers to kulaks living in nearby “special settlements.” (The kulaks were a category of so-called richer peasants who were regarded as the principal obstacle to collectivization.)

The father was sentenced to a labor camp and later shot.

After the boy’s death, the Soviet press created “a propaganda cult” around his case.

Maxim Gorky called for a monument to be erected because the boy had “understood that a relative by blood may also be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared.”