Notebooks for the Grandchildren

Mikhail Baitalsky (1903–78) was born in a village called Chernovo in Odessa Province. He spent his youth in Ukraine – Odessa, Kharkov, and the Donbass – on Komsomol work and was imprisoned during the Stalin era (1924–53). His Notebooks for the Grandchildren, begun in 1958 upon his release, represents one of the major political documents of his generation of communist activists.

• ForewordAcknowledgementsList of Maps and FiguresGlossaryIntroductory CommentsYuula BenivolskiTranslator’s NoteA Brief Chronology of the Russian Revolution and its AftermathTranslator’s IntroductionNotebooks for the GrandchildrenBaitalsky’s Introduction: Preliminary Remarks: The 1920s and the 1970sNOTEBOOK 11 Communist Youth League Christening2 Our Jacobin Monastery3 Were We Cultured?4 Standards of Human Behaviour5 Primary and Secondary Feelings6 Husbands and Wives in the Communist Youth League7 A Few Remarks about the Language of the TimesNOTEBOOK 21 How It Was and How It Became2 The Family of an Odessa Tailor3 Ideological Commitment and Calvinism4 I Saw My Homeland5 Friendship with Grisha6 Days and Evenings Without Romance7 Cain, Abel and the ‘Platform of the 83’8 The View from the Window of Cell No.9NOTEBOOK 31 I Make the Worst Choice2 My First Arrest3 A Year of Successes in Astrakhan4 I Could Have Remained Silent about This Too5 Features of the New Order6 More about Boris and the Features of the TimeNOTEBOOK 41 Holy and Unholy Work2 My Second Arrest3 ‘We Know All about You’4 Butyrka Humanism5 Becoming Acquainted with VorkutaNOTEBOOK 51 At the Brick Factory2 Tents for the Condemned3 Borya Elisavetsky4 Vorkuta, Kotlas, Kirov5 Russian PatriotsPhotographsNOTEBOOK 61 They Even Found Me Here2 My Co-Butyrnik3 You Don’t Get Something For Nothing4 A Credo on the Subject of Wages5 The Scream of a Woman in the Corridor6 ‘Consider Yourself Lucky!’NOTEBOOK 71 Distinguishing Padding from Content2 I End Up in the First Circle3 We Delve into the Psalms of the New David4 The Cunning Machine of the Special Judicial Sessions5 Conversations in the Main AlleyNOTEBOOK 81 To Vorkuta for the Second Time2 To Each His Own3 Even Those Who Were Deported Are Voting4 Joseph Rakhmetov5 A Period of Camp Liberalisation6 A Puddle With a Watchtower on Its ShoreNOTEBOOK 91 Meaningless Yackers Fall in Line2 Vorkuta– My Alma Mater3 The Poisonous Weapon of Hushing Things Up4 Love and Hatred5 On Very Ordinary Honesty6 I Hope for an EchoTranslator’s PostscriptAppendix 1: Timeline of Baitalsky’s LifeAppendix 2: Baitalsky’s Other WritingsAppendix 3: Baitalsky: Obituaries and EulogiesAppendix 4: Russian Government Archival Documentation of The Mass Executions February 1937–September 1938Appendix 5: The Vorkuta Hunger Strike: What Russian Government Archives Have RevealedAppendix 6: The 1938 Executions of the Left Opposition Supporters at the Brick Factory: The Executioner’s Official ReportAppendix 7: Excerpts from The Official Conviction and Rehabilitation Documents of a Leader of the 1936 Vorkuta Hunger Strike and 13 Co-DefendantsAppendix 8: The Moscow Trials 1936–1938BibliographyIndex