Motherland hears, motherland knows (2019 — 2023)

The Gulag was a system of forced-labor camps in the USSR that reached its peak during Stalin’s rule.
My father, 85, was born in ALZhIR (the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), northern Kazakhstan. My grandmother was a pianist; she was arrested while pregnant in Moscow and sent to the camp for 8 years. All the children of the prisoners lived separately from their mothers, with barbed wire between them. Granny taught the commandant’s children to play piano.

When she heard that a comittee was coming to place the children into an orphanage, she told the commandant that if her son was taken away, she would not teach his children anymore. He announced quarantine for the entire camp—thus, none of the children were taken. My dad first saw his mother at the age of 8, when they were freed. They were deprived of civil rights until Stalin’s death. “Motherland hears, motherland knows” is the title and the beginning of a song my father sang in front of Iosif Stalin as a member of the leading Soviet boys’ choir.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Russland), "Novaya Gazeta" and personally to Dmitry Muratov for their support of the project.