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‘I was frightened every single day’: the perils of guarding Stalin

1 August 2020

9:00 AM

1 August 2020

9:00 AM

Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning Alex Halberstadt

Jonathan Cape, pp.320, 14.99

In Russian, the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ translates as ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’. For those who experienced the worst of the Soviet Union’s terrors, this is not just a throwaway adage but a strategy for self-preservation. As Alex Halberstadt’s father — the son of one of Stalin’s former bodyguards — attests: ‘There is no more to be gained from sifting through the past than through cigarette ashes.

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