Russians Recall Day of Stalin’s Death With AM-Stalin’s Legacy

MOSCOW (AP) _ For Soviet citizens, time stood still when Stalin’s death was announced 40 years ago. Like Americans who remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russians recall where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Here are some recollections:

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Alexander Burdonsky, the dictator’s grandson, now director of a Moscow theater:

″I was a cadet at the Suvorov Military School in Kalinin, 11 years old, when my commander announced the death of Stalin at a general meeting of our company. A special plane flew me to Moscow. I was taken to the Hall of Columns, where Stalin’s body lay in state. I felt no sorrow, but fear probably – fear and bewilderment that so many people were in the hall – and all were crying.

″I didn’t cry. In fact, I couldn’t press a tear out of my eyes, which added to my fear and bewilderment.

″The fear I had about my grandfather was instilled by the attitude toward Stalin on the part of my family, all relatives, people who surrounded us. As a child, I heard everybody saying ‘Bolshoi Khozyain’ (Big Boss) with reference to Stalin. In my imagination, he was like a two-headed hydra.″

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Former parliament speaker Anatoly Lukyanov, accused of helping lead the August 1991 coup against his law-school classmate, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev:

″At that time, I was a student at Moscow State University and was working in the Komsomol (Young Communists) committee. When Stalin died, there was a great national grief. With other Komsomol members of the university, I stood on Trubnaya Square, on which people were moving toward the Hall of Columns with the coffin of Stalin. … The whole nation was crying for Stalin. I am not prone to tears. I was not crying, but it was a great, common grief.″

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Nina Andreyeva, a chemistry professor, self-described Stalinist and a leader of the All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks:

″When Josef Vissarionovich Stalin died, I was in the eighth grade of a secondary school. I was 14. The news about his death was a shock to everybody. There was a memorial meeting held in our school. Both teachers and students cried. And it was genuine sorrow. Then we wondered about Leningrad for the whole night. The weather was terrible, wet and snowy and slushy. The funeral music sounded everywhere. All honest people were in a depressed mood.″

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Retired Gen. Dmitry Volkogonov, Yeltsin adviser, historian and author of ″Stalin, Triumph and Tragedy,″ a critical biography:

″My father was shot on Stalin’s orders and my mother died in exile. I was a son of the enemy of the people. Nonetheless, I believed in Stalin. More than that, I was a Stalinist because I didn’t associate the death of my mother and father with Stalin. I thought it was a mistake. I felt that Stalin had nothing to do with that.

″People felt deep grief. It was not just a demonstration of grief. Probably it’s the only case in history when a person who annihilated 21.5 million of his compatriots still received deep love from the nation. It’s hard to understand, but it was so.

″When finally, on the evening of March 5, we heard an announcement that Stalin had died, I saw that many people were crying. I wasn’t crying, but I felt deep grief. But women, and young people and old people – everybody was crying. It seemed that even the skies would fall. Everybody thought that Stalin was the foundation of power and happiness and prosperity of the country. . .. He seemed immortal.″

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Roy Medvedev, historian, legislator and former dissident:

″When Stalin died, I was in the Urals working as a school principal, and I was a person who knew sufficiently well about the crimes of Stalin. My father was repressed and died on Kolyma. I knew about the tortures in prisons. I also knew about the tortures my father suffered. Of course I didn’t know everything and I didn’t know the scale of the crimes, but I knew enough about his crimes to dislike him.

″I felt no grief.″