Widow
of the Revolution
Documentary
(56 min.)
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Widow
of the Revolution |
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| Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1991: From revolution and civil war to famine and mass terror, from the war against Nazi Germany to four decades of repression, tens of millions of Soviet citizens died while millions of others were exiled. Anna Larina embodies this time and the country's struggle. Born in 1914, her father was close to Lenin and her husband-to-be was the legendary Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin. As a child, she sat on Lenin's lap, got lectures from Trotsky, and used Stalin to send puppy-love notes to Bukharin. But after Bukharin's arrest by Stalin in 1937, then his trial and execution as an "enemy of the people", Larina was cast into Siberian exile for 20 years. After her return in 1959, Larina began a 30 year effort to have Bukharin's name cleared. In 1988, Gorbachev officially exonerated Bukharin, restoring him to the Soviet pantheon. Also 1988, Anna published her best-selling memoir "This I Cannot Forget." | |||