Red Boyhood

Many children growing up in the Soviet Union before World War II knew the mean- ing of deprivation and dread. But for the son of an "enemy of the people," those apprehensions were especially compounded. When the secret police came for his father in 1938, ten-year-old Anatole Konstantin saw his family plunged into a morass of fear.Evicted from their home, their property confiscated, and eventually forced to leave their town, the Konstantin family experienced the fate of millions of Soviet citizens who fell victim to Stalin's purges. Looking back on those years from adulthood, Konstantin reflects on his growing awareness of the contradictions between propaganda and reality.