The History of Repression

The sprawling grounds of Rodionovsky Institute— Institute de Demmlselles or Institute for Daughters of Noblemen —included a garden lined with old linden trees and a nearby ravine the girls found too eerie to investigate. Nonetheless, Vera Figner enjoyed walking the garden on pleasant summer days, a nice reprieve from the cloistered environment of the classroom. After all, it was by design that young ladies were kept “like hot-house plants,” cut-off from family and outside influence. [1] With the traditional bully battle cry of “keep the masses uninformed,” educational institutions of Imperial Russia regularly omitted writings of literary intellectuals like Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Nekrasov. To make matters worse, courses at Rodionovsky were grossly inadequate. How is it, Vera wondered, that a professor’s lessons on zoology do not include an anatomical model? Or that botany class failed to make use of a microscope? Perhaps the answer to these questions is best explained

Ever wonder how much it cost to put someone to death? Ok, I haven't either, but I'll bet your curiosity will get the better of you on this one. I mean, 2 rubles for the hangman's traveling expense?  Revolutionary novelist Victor Serge is one of the most compelling figures of Soviet history. First published in 1926 as Les Coulisses d’une Sûreté générale, Serge set forth a manifesto which exclaimed "the epoch of civil wars has begun." Following is an excerpt from Serge's nonfiction book " What Everyone Should Know About Repression ."     In among all the red tape and paperwork of the Tsarist police there abound the saddest of human documents, as we have already seen. Although it is a little outside our subject, I think we should devote a few lines to a series of simple receipts for small sums of money, found enclosed in one of the files. Especially as these little slips of paper appear all too often after the liquidation of revolution

A photograph hung in the hallway of my childhood home in Chicago. It wasn’t hard to see, a Russian relic among family photos and quirky plaques of the 1980’s. You know the type: a wood slab etched with a warm inscription like Welcome to the [insert surname] Home, or a list of moral lessons disguised as house rules—If you open it… close it. If you make a mess… clean it up—or my personal favorite, If you break it… don’t try to fix it.   But as a child, a photograph of my great-grandfather Anatole Poraykoshitz intrigued me more than a list of aphorisms scrawled into part of a sawed-off tree trunk. Like a puzzle, I’d piece together the archaic image with lion-hearted stories told to me. Tales which elevated Anatole to general status in the tsar’s army. The rank of general fit with the ornamental uniform he wore, I thought. Or his straight posture indicated he might be a man, who against formidable odds escaped to the United States to avoid persecution by the hands of the Bol