The Origins of Socialist Realism.

[NNadir]

11. When I was a little boy, my neighbor's parents were two people who escaped...

...from the Ukrainian famine of the 1920's and 1930's. There was plenty of wheat grown, but Stalin was selling it all to buy machine tools from the West, mostly Germany.

I was a child and all I knew of my neighbor's parents - who eventually moved in with their daughter - was that they'd left "Russia" before World War II.

They used to give me Soviet stamps for my stamp collection from their letters from relatives left behind.

I wish I'd known then what I know now, since they could have provided an interesting oral history. The mother lived to be over 100, and I knew her into my early 20's.

People who lived under Stalin are dying off now, and what they suffered needs to be remembered somehow.

Thanks for your comment.