Following Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin rose to power as the leader of the Soviet Union. During his reign, his country faced the Great Terror, in which mass repression was used to suppress alleged political and social threats against the state. An operational order signed in 1937 directed officials to arrest hundreds of thousands of citizens and to execute a portion of them. Militia and NKVD troikas contrived evidence of conspiracies in order to implicate enough victims to fulfill the quota until moving on to target other groups such as Poles, the wives of men convicted of counterrevolutionary crimes, and alleged international spies (Daly 115). Between 1937 and 1938, 1,575,259 people were arrested and at least 681,692 people were executed (117). Despite the fact that the Great Terror lasted for only a few years, it affected millions of people throughout Russia, both those who were arrested, exiled, or murdered and those they left behind. The effects of this terror can be seen in Lydia Chukovskaya’s novella, Sofia Petrovna, in which Sofia Petrovna’s son is arrested for being an alleged saboteur. Sofia Petrovna complements and complicates this history of the Great Terror by providing both an external and internal account of a mother’s reaction to her son’s arrest and separation from her loved ones.

Through propaganda, Stalin was able to gain blind faith and loyalty from many Soviet citizens. This sense of loyalty to the state is also seen through Kolya, Sofia Petrovna’s son. Kolya accepts and advocates for any idea that the state supports. He even goes as far as to dismiss the so-called injustice that Natasha, Sofia Petrovna’s close friend, faces when she is not admitted into the Communist Party, as “vigilance [is] essential. Natasha did after all come from a bourgeois, land-owning family… the class struggle [is] still going on, and therefore it [is] essential to exercise the utmost vigilance when admitting people to the Party and the Komsomol” (24). Kolya holds the state’s belief in extreme caution and the eradication of the bourgeois class over his own perception of Natasha and her character, showing that Kolya holds the ideals of the state over his own personal beliefs and ideas. This is the loyalty that Stalin sought when he tried to purge the Soviet Union of all counterrevolutionaries and alleged saboteurs, but such devoutness does not save Kolya from suffering the same fate as the millions of others who were accused of disloyalty, as he is arrested in 1937.

Kolya’s arrest echoes the suffering of millions who were apprehended under false charges and were coerced into give confessions (Daly 115). Throughout the novella, Sofia Petrovna maintains her son’s innocence and believes that his arrest was a mistake. However, when Sofia Petrovna receives a letter from Kolya, he tells her that one of his classmates falsely claimed that he convinced Kolya to join a terrorist organization (Chukovskaya 106). This false charge portrays the injustice that countless citizens faced under the Great Terror so that authorities could arrest enough people so they could not be perceived as “too lenient” (Daly 115). In this same letter, Kolya tells Sofia Petrovna that he was forced to confess and that “Investigator Ershov beat [him] and trampled [him], and now [he is] deaf in one ear” (Chukovskaya 106). This violent coerced confession further complements the history of the Great Terror as it shows the abuse of power by officials who aimed to protect themselves from being seen as disloyal to the Communist Party (Daly 115). At the close of his letter, Kolya begs his mother to help him because he knows he will die soon if someone does not intervene. (Chukovskaya 106). His impending death reflects the stories of those who were apprehended during the Great Terror, as more than forty percent of those who were arrested between 1937 and 1938 were executed (Daly 117). Based on these facts, the treatment of Kolya’s characters is an accurate portrayal of the victims of the Great Terror. 

While Kolya’s character complements the history of the Great Terror, Sofia Petrovna’s emotional reaction to his arrest complicates it. Before Kolya is arrested, Sofia Petrovna is a loyal member of the Communist Party. When talking about the saboteurs, she refers to them as “monsters'' and says that they “were really no better than the fascists who were murdering children in Spain'' (Chukovskaya 34). By giving us a view into Sofia Petrovna’s internal monologue, the history of the Great Terror is complicated because the reader is privy to the emotional reactions and thoughts of an ordinary woman living during this time. Her willingness to condemn anyone seen as an enemy of the state shows her extreme loyalty to the Communist Party, which complicates the history of the Great Terror as it shows how faithful citizens were to the Communist Party in spite of Stalin’s fear that people who were harboring anti-Soviet tendencies had invaded Soviet institutions (Daly 115). When she learns that Kolya has been arrested, Sofia Petrovna is so bewildered that she is left speechless: “but he’s… they probably… have already released him… have seen he’s the wrong person… and released him” (Chukovskaya 45). Though Sofia Petrovna’s unwavering loyalty lies in her son, she still cannot bring herself to believe that the state could possibly be purging itself of innocent people. This complicates this history of the Great Terror because it shows how a citizen of the state and member of the Communist Party could have reacted to their loved one being arrested. Instead of simply offering a factual account of Kolya’s arrest, Sofia Petrovna’s character provides insight to the emotional reactions that countless ordinary citizens had when their loved ones were arrested. 

While it is easy to think of the victims when considering statistics, Sofia Petrovna’s character gives the reader an understanding of how the Great Terror may have been perceived by everyday people who were not arrested and how it might have affected them. Sofia Petrovna’s character also reveals how the Great Terror turned citizens against each other. While in line to see Kolya, she begins to sympathize with the other woman in line before realizing that “an honest person had to remember that all these women were the wives and mothers of poisoners, spies and murderers” (Chukovskaya 60). Although she believes that her son has been arrested by mistake, she still has faith in the state and its fairness and competency in criminal justice. Instead of extending the same courtesy to the other people that have been arrested, she immediately assumes that they have committed the crimes that they have been accused of. At this time, suspicion and fear ran rampant through the Soviet Union, causing people to distance themselves from one another, especially in the workplace, to ensure that they could not be implicated by association (Daly 116). Sofia Petrovna’s attitude complicates this idea, as it provides insight into the mind of an ordinary citizen and shows how this fear and suspicion crept into all corners of everyday Soviet life. While her attitude is symptomatic of the time, her internal monologue complicates the factual history of the Great Terror because it reveals to the reader how this fear altered the mindsets of Soviet citizens, thereby showing how the historical events affected perception. This perspective differs from historical accounts because Chukovskaya, as she writes in her afterword, does not focus on facts, but instead “[wants] to show that when people’s lives are deliberately distorted, their feelings become distorted” (Chukovskaya 111-112). This focus on the internal and emotional aspect of the historical event adds a new aspect to the Great Terror that is not considered in traditional accounts. In short, Sofia Petrovna’s internal monologue complicates the history of the Great Terror because it reveals the emotional component of the event instead of merely recounting facts.
Through the characters of Kolya and Sofia Petrovna, the history of the Great Terror is both complemented and complicated. Kolya’s story shows how innocent citizens were arrested and suffered under Operational Order No. 00447. As the reader does not see him after he is arrested, his story aligns perfectly with the stories of those who were disappeared during the Great Terror. However, by allowing the reader to glimpse into Sofia Petrovna’s psyche, her character complicates history because it shows the emotional and human reactions that corresponded with those events. By providing insight into the human experience at this moment in history, the reader gets a better idea of what it would have been like to live in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. This joint historical and emotional account of the time better communicates how terrifying it would have been to experience these purges. In order to fully understand this experience, one needs to understand both the historical conditions and how it affected those living under these conditions. Simply understanding the historical account would not allow one to fully understand the fear that Soviet citizens experienced during the Great Terror, but only considering the emotional account of the experience would not give readers the context needed to understand the importance of the emotions being discussed. To have a firm grasp on all aspects of the Great Terror, one must understand the joint historical and emotional account of the time.