The Two Faces of Tatiana Matveevna

Abstract

Ten years ago I was in Moscow doing research about elite life in the 1930s. One of the people I interviewed was Tatiana Matveevna N., an ironic, imperious, and mischievous woman in her eighties. As we sat in her apartment drinking tea and eating chocolates (“I’m not supposed to, but how can I resist?”), she talked about her happy childhood in Rostov; her parents’ death from typhus during the civil war; her lean year in an orphanage in Saratov; her life with her uncle, a rising Party official; her brief marriage to a sad man who hardly noticed the Revolution; her arrival in Moscow with a small daughter and lots of ambition; her tempestuous college days during the First Five Year Plan; and her exciting first job posting in 1936. It was not easy to be the only female engineer in a large factory, but she excelled in her work, received numerous awards, became a Stakhanovite, and was elected Komsomol secretary. (At this point she smiled and shrugged resignedly.)

Tear off the masks! is a slogan with only limited appeal in most societies, since they operate on the assumption that civilization requires a certain amount of masking.

—Sheila Fitzpatrick