This article is an attempt to reconstruct the involvement of an illiterate peasant woman Mariya Gritsenko into politics and her behavior during the Great Terror. Besides, the author tries to work it out if a specific strategy of silence could be a kind of protest. The research is based on a limited number of sources such as archival materials of investigatory files, refer-ences,
interrogation records, correspondences. These turned out to be not only important sources
for the reconstruction of the biography, the practice of terror, but also for understanding the strategy of human’s behavior in case of choice.
Mariya Gritsenko and her husband were “harbintsy” (Harbinese) — former employees of Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), who returned to the Soviet Union from Manchuria. They were away from Russia for almost 30 years, and were unable to adapt here. Their behavior did not fit in established Soviet Canon of slanders and defamations. At one party meeting Com-munist Mariya Gritsenko didn’t take part in the condemnation of “the enemy of the people” — a person she knew in Harbin. This person was arrested and convicted as a Japanese spy.
Mariya Gritsenko’s file gives an opportunity to ask some questions in historical context: “harbintsy” and their features, creation of the Soviet man, role of women as keepers of life foundations, concept of conscience as the base of peasant mentality, and broader — essence of Russia. In this article the author used the anthropocentric approach, which allowed to put Mariya Gritsenko’s case in context of the 1930s epoch and research emotions, spiritual life and women’s ambition to express themselves.
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