I was born in Moscow; I went to a Soviet school, where I discovered that
there were things one should never mention in class. In particular, my
parents told me never to reveal to my classmates any conversations we
were having at home and never to discuss anything going on in our
family.
So at an early age I learned how to keep my mouth shut.
Children in my class talked about everything — what was happening at
home, who their family’s friends were, what books they were reading,
what radio programs they tuned to, and so on.
There were innocents among us who discussed all the details of their
families’ lives, not suspecting that someone might be listening to what
they were saying in order to report it to their KGB bosses.
There was one boy in our class who paid a high price for having been
overly talkative. He said that his father had a fight with a neighbor
over food shortages in Moscow and allegedly complained that food prices
were high and life in general was miserable.
At night, there was a knock on the door, and his father was taken away
by the KGB men. He was pronounced an “enemy of the people.” His son was
summoned to the KGB to confirm his story.
The boy’s father (Iosif U.), a highly specialized engineer, was educated
in Germany. Building bridges was his specialty. And that was precisely
what the Soviet authorities were looking for: they needed a brilliant
engineer to build a bridge of strategic importance in Siberia.
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