Notebooks for the Grandchildren

Marilyn Vogt-Downey translated for the Pathfinder Press Writings of Leon Trotsky series (1970s), Samizdat: Voices of the Soviet Opposition (Pathfinder in 1974), The Bulletin in Defense of Marxism (1990s) and The USSR 1987-1991: Marxists Perspectives (Humanity Books, 1993).

Foreword

Acknowledgements

List of Maps and Figures

Glossary

Introductory Comments

 Yuula Benivolski

Translator’s Note

A Brief Chronology of the Russian Revolution and its Aftermath

Translator’s Introduction

Notebooks for the Grandchildren



Baitalsky’s Introduction: Preliminary Remarks: The 1920s and the 1970s



NOTEBOOK1

 1 Communist Youth League Christening

 2 Our Jacobin Monastery

 3 Were We Cultured?

 4 Standards of Human Behaviour

 5 Primary and Secondary Feelings

 6 Husbands and Wives in the Communist Youth League

 7 A Few Remarks about the Language of the Times



NOTEBOOK2

 1 How It Was and How It Became

 2 The Family of an Odessa Tailor

 3 Ideological Commitment and Calvinism

 4 I Saw My Homeland

 5 Friendship with Grisha

 6 Days and Evenings Without Romance

 7 Cain, Abel and the ‘Platform of the 83’

 8 The View from the Window of Cell No.9



NOTEBOOK3

 1 I Make the Worst Choice

 2 My First Arrest

 3 A Year of Successes in Astrakhan

 4 I Could Have Remained Silent about This Too

 5 Features of the New Order

 6 More about Boris and the Features of the Time



NOTEBOOK4

 1 Holy and Unholy Work

 2 My Second Arrest

 3 ‘We Know All about You’

 4 Butyrka Humanism

 5 Becoming Acquainted with Vorkuta



NOTEBOOK5

 1 At the Brick Factory

 2 Tents for the Condemned

 3 Borya Elisavetsky

 4 Vorkuta, Kotlas, Kirov

 5 Russian Patriots



Photographs



NOTEBOOK6

 1 They Even Found Me Here

 2 My Co-Butyrnik

 3 You Don’t Get Something For Nothing

 4 A Credo on the Subject of Wages

 5 The Scream of a Woman in the Corridor

 6 ‘Consider Yourself Lucky!’



NOTEBOOK7

 1 Distinguishing Padding from Content

 2 I End Up in the First Circle

 3 We Delve into the Psalms of the New David

 4 The Cunning Machine of the Special Judicial Sessions

 5 Conversations in the Main Alley



NOTEBOOK8

 1 To Vorkuta for the Second Time

 2 To Each His Own

 3 Even Those Who Were Deported Are Voting

 4 Joseph Rakhmetov

 5 A Period of Camp Liberalisation

 6 A Puddle With a Watchtower on Its Shore



NOTEBOOK9

 1 Meaningless Yackers Fall in Line

 2 Vorkuta– My Alma Mater

 3 The Poisonous Weapon of Hushing Things Up

 4 Love and Hatred

 5 On Very Ordinary Honesty

 6 I Hope for an Echo



Translator’s Postscript

Appendix1: Timeline of Baitalsky’s Life

Appendix2: Baitalsky’s Other Writings

Appendix3: Baitalsky: Obituaries and Eulogies

Appendix4: Russian Government Archival Documentation of The Mass Executions February 1937–September 1938

Appendix5: The Vorkuta Hunger Strike: What Russian Government Archives Have Revealed

Appendix6: The 1938 Executions of the Left Opposition Supporters at the Brick Factory: The Executioner’s Official Report

Appendix7: Excerpts from The Official Conviction and Rehabilitation Documents of a Leader of the 1936 Vorkuta Hunger Strike and 13 Co-Defendants

Appendix8: The Moscow Trials 1936–1938

Bibliography

Index