A distant relative of mine was a general in the KGB. 'As long as I live,' Stalin said of him, 'not a hair of his head shall be touched.' Stalin didn't keep his word - which can't have been wholly surprising even then. Unlike many of his colleagues, however, my relative wasn't shot: he was beaten and tortured and kept in prison for 12 years. He died in 1981 with - I've been told - a portrait of Stalin by his bed.

LRB 4 August 1994 | PDF Download