Delibash, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna
Elizaveta Aleksandrovna gave two interviews to Irina Flige, the first in May 2004, the second in January 2005. Elizaveta's daughter also took part in the project; she was interviewed by Tatiana Kosinova in May 2006. Elizaveta is able to talk about her life in a remarkably analytical manner, separating direct memories from received intelligence and clearly differentiating between present and past consciousness. This makes these interviews particularly valuable. Elizaveta recollects her childhood years, reflecting on the short- and long-term effects of her frequent uprooting and dislocation from her parents on the development of her own psychology. She recalls the year she lived with her parents in the Vetlag labour camp, when she was only five, describing the barracks and the school. She remembers in extraordinary detail the years she spent with her grandparents in Tbilisi, and then with her aunts and other relatives in Leningrad who concealed her from the Soviet authorities. She reflects on her childhood understanding of the reasons for the arrest of her parents and on the ways she responded to the stigma which she felt in her childhood as the daughter of an 'enemy of the people.' She also talks about her mother's final letters from the Solovetskii labour camp, reflecting on their emotional impact both on her childhood and on her adult life. One of the interviews' most interesting themes is the psychological tension between Elizaveta's yearning for her mother as a child and the Soviet influence of her aunt Sonya, who encouraged her to forget about the past in order to advance in Soviet society. Elizaveta gives a penetrating insight into a child's understanding of the terror, into her disorientation at the loss of her parents, and into her confused fears. She talks about the ways she found to overcome that fear, principally by joining the Komsomol and becoming a student activist, although she also reflects on the return of her childhood fear at later moments of her life, and concludes that it never went away. In her interview with Kosninova, Elizaveta's daughter Anna talks about the inheritance of her mother's fear and the ways it has affected her behaviour.

Interview 1 [May-04]
Interview 2 [January-05]