Sofia Petrovna

Sofia spends more and more time at work. She’s tasked with collecting dues for Mestkom, giving her a certain amount of power in the office—she can even request dues from Timofeyev.

Sofia befriends the best typist, Natasha Frolenko. Natasha is a modest, pallid young woman who’s enamored of Kolya. Natasha’s father, a colonel in the White Army (the Imperial Russian army that fought the Bolsheviks), died when she was five, in 1917. After the Revolution, Natasha and her mother were evicted from their house, starting a period of hardship for them. Despite her Communist sympathies Natasha is denied membership to the Komsomol—the Soviet Communist youth organization—because of her bourgeois background.

Sofia prepares the office for a visit from two bosses from Moscow. When the bosses arrive, they stand out in their expensive, foreign-made clothes. Sofia gives a speech on behalf of the nonparty workers in which she pledges to increase productivity. The speech is well received, and Sofia is exhilarated. She returns home to make dinner for Kolya, who’s just been accepted to the Komsomol. In the shared kitchen Sofia extols the wonders of work to her neighbor, Mrs. Degtyarenko: “It gives you so much to think about, adds so much to your life. Especially if your job is connected with literature” (12).

Kolya returns from studying with his friend Alik Finkelstein for their final high school exams. Kolya is indignant about an antisemitic remark an old-regime classmate, Sashka Yartsev, made about Alik; Kolya and his classmates have organized a mock trial to address the insult. Before bed Kolya recites from heart a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, a Soviet hero.

With Kolya’s graduation and the arrival of summer, Sofia gets her first vacation. Suddenly spending more time at home, she rues having to cede most of her apartment to other families after the Revolution. Although Sofia likes Mrs. Degtyarenko, her messiness annoys Sofia. She hates her other neighbor, an unnamed nurse who clings to the trappings of her gentry past. Sofia thinks the nurse and her teenaged daughter are mean and crude. More than anything, Sofia resents not being able to give Kolya his own room. Kolya believes in the justice of dividing apartments to provide equitable living.

After being accepted to college, Kolya and Alik celebrate by building a radio. Sofia enjoys using it to listen to operas, concerts, and news about the availability of perfume (which is in short supply). Unlike Kolya, she has no interest in news about the spread of fascism in Europe, preferring to read foreign novels that Natasha brings when she visits to embroider.

Back at work, Sofia wishes she were Zakharov’s secretary—she secretly adores him. Meanwhile she plans to request that Mestkom fire Erna for her insolence and sloppy work. On the Eighth of March (the national Soviet holiday for women), Sofia receives a bouquet and card from Mestkom congratulating her on her hard work. After the flowers wilt she presses them in a book as a keepsake.

A year passes. Now in her third year at the publishing house, Sofia gets a substantial raise. Kolya grows into a handsome, confident, and well-mannered young man and excels in college. He’s so perfect that it worries Sofia: “[She] would look at him with both tenderness and fear, glad and yet afraid to be glad. What a good-looking young man, and healthy, too, he didn’t drink or smoke, a good son and loyal Komsomol member” (19). Sofia believes Kolya is superior to Alik in every way.

Sofia is troubled that she can’t give the 20-year-old Kolya a room of his own. He has fallen in love with a girl at college, and Sofia worries that not having his own room is hindering him from moving forward with his girlfriend. When Sofia shares her worries with Natasha, Natasha implies that she’s secretly in love with Kolya and despairs that he doesn’t feel the same.

Kolya and Alik are selected to fill a need for engineers at a factory in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg)—they will finish college remotely. Sofia anxiously readies Kolya for the move. She sees him and Alik off at the train station; she implores Alik to protect Kolya.

With Kolya gone, Sofia spends most of her time at work. In her free time she and Natasha go to movies about heroic soldiers. Sofia pities Natasha, who in addition to being heartsick for Kolya is again refused Komsomol membership, despite her detailed knowledge of Soviet politics. When Sofia writes Kolya, he takes an unsympathetic party line to Natasha’s plight: “Kolya replied that injustice was a class concept and vigilance was essential. Natasha did after all come from a bourgeois, landowning family. Vile fascist hirelings, of the kind that had murdered comrade Kirov, had still not been entirely eradicated from the country” (24). Hearing of his response, Natasha dejectedly takes Kolya’s advice to read Lenin.

In his weekly letters to Sofia Kolya mainly writes about the urgent need for the Soviet Union to manufacture more of its own goods. Sofia doesn’t care and wishes Kolya would tell her how he and Alik are doing. Ten months after Kolya’s departure he sends her a prototype of a large cogwheel—the first produced at his factory using his novel method. This feat earns Kolya a front-page article in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. At work, everyone, even Erna, congratulates Sofia on having such an exceptional son.

Sofia and Natasha plan the office party for New Year’s 1937. In the bags of candy for the children they put slips of paper thanking Stalin for a happy childhood; they also hang a portrait of Stalin with a little girl on his knee. On the red star for the crown of the tree they glue a baby photo of Lenin.

Everyone enjoys the party except for Anna, who resents that her son’s present is less expensive than the one for Timofeyev’s son. Sofia judges Anna for wearing an expensive, revealing dress and for not disciplining her son when he breaks his present.

Near the end of the party the publishing house’s accountant (who was friends with Sofia’s husband) tells her that the NKVD (the secret police) have arrested a number of doctors, including Kolya’s godfather, Dr. Kiparisov. Sofia wonders if a new wave of arrests is starting, just like the one following Sergei Kirov’s assassination a year prior. At that time, the police arrested anti-Bolsheviks and former members of the nobility, including an old school friend of Sofia’s, Mrs. Nezhentseva. Sofia didn’t understand how her friend, a French teacher, could have anything to do with Kirov’s murder. Kolya explained that Mrs. Nezhentseva was an enemy of the people because she demeaned the poet Mayakovsky and said that things were cheaper before the Revolution.

The papers don’t mention the arrests of the doctors. Instead, there’s a surge in articles about the fascist spies and saboteurs who have infiltrated Soviet life with the help of Trotskyists. Sofia is incensed that anyone would try to murder Stalin and that saboteurs are derailing civilian trains.

The publishing house holds a mandatory meeting. Anna locks the doors to ensure that no one leaves early. She announces that the former supervisor of the print shop, Gerasimov, has been arrested for being related to someone else who was arrested. Anna dismisses Natasha’s question about what Gerasimov actually did to warrant arrest.

Following this meeting there is struggle between Zakharov, Timofeyev, and Anna over who will get fired for overlooking Gerasimov. Sofia doesn’t understand why they’re fighting over who will take the blame. Every day Zakharov is summoned to the Leningrad party headquarters.

Sofia runs into Dr. Kiparisov’s wife, who looks notably aged by her husband’s arrest. Sofia greets her warmly and tells her she believes Dr. Kiparisov is innocent; Mrs. Kiparisova dejectedly confirms that her husband is innocent. Relieved, Sofia says they should celebrate when he’s inevitably released: “Since [Dr. Kiparisov] isn’t guilty—then everything will be all right. Nothing can happen to an honest man in our country” (37). Mrs. Kiparisova gives her an expressionless look.

The next day Zakharov is arrested; Timofeyev looks pleased. A member of the NKVD searches Zakharov’s office. Sofia can’t believe that such a devoted party man was arrested: “They knew him at Smolny, and in Moscow, they couldn’t arrest him by mistake. He wasn’t some Kiparisov!” (40). Natasha says she’ll explain everything outside the office.

At Sofia’s apartment Natasha shows Sofia a newspaper article about a loyal party member, A., who betrayed his country for a woman, S. Sent to Germany on an official mission, A. falls in love with S., who professes Soviet sympathies. One day A. returns to find that S. has stolen confidential party documents from his apartment. He ends the relationship and returns home but hides the theft. Subsequently the Gestapo blackmail him into giving them the confidential blueprints of the factory he works at. The NKVD discover the plot and arrest A. Natasha believes that anyone can be manipulated by a beautiful woman and tells Sofia that Zakharov himself did a mission in Berlin.

Sofia still protests that Zakharov can’t be guilty—they know him to be a good man. Natasha retorts: “What do we know? […] We know he was director of our publishing house, but we don’t actually know anything more than that. Do we really know about his personal life? Can you really vouch for him?’” (41-42). Sofia realizes this is true and reflects that even her husband was almost seduced by their flirtatious housemaid. Over tea Sofia and Natasha speculate that with his military posture Zakharov could’ve been an officer in the White Army.

As night falls and Natasha is leaving there’s an urgent knock at the door—it’s Alik. Kolya has been arrested.