Znamenskaia, Antonina Nikolaevna
Antonina Nikolaevna gave four extensive interviews, the first lasting several days, to Tat'iana Kosinova, in March 2004, and January, March, September 2005. This was one of the most detailed and intensive series of interviews in the project. Antonina Nikolaevna is a superb speaker with a vivid recall of details from every period of her life, stretching back to her early childhood, and a remarkable capacity to analyse her thoughts and emotions in the past objectively. Her story is of course a fascinating one - the story of a life led in secret - which raises very interesting questions of identity. She talks in extraordinary detail about her childhood in Obukhovo prior to collectivization - about her various relatives, about the customs and social relations of the village, about the working practices, the moral principles, religious beliefs and domestic habits of her parents. She recalls the collectivization of the village and the role of the Komsomol in forcing out the 'kulaks' from the collective farm. She recalls the years she spent in exile in Shaltyr, providing vivid details of the living conditions of the 'kulak' exiles there. In some of the most interesting sections of the interviews she reflects on the feelings of inferiority which she experienced as a 'kulak daughter' after her return from Siberia. She recounts the discrimination she suffered at school, and talks about her yearning to be treated equally, which led her to apply to the Pioneers (unsuccessfully) and the Komsomol (which she joined in 1939). She describes in detail the various strategies she adopted to conceal her spoilt biography; to gain admission to medical school, first in Sverdlovsk and then in Leningrad, during the war; and to keep her past concealed from the authorities, from colleagues, friends and neighbours, and even from her first husband and their daughter, for over forty years. She talks about the rearrest of her father, in 1947, and about the feelings of returning fear which it instilled in her. She also talks about her motives for joining the Party in 1961. Finally, and often movingly, she talks about the complex processes by which she came to disclose the truth about her past after 1991.

Interview 1 part 1 [March-04]
Interview 1 part 2 [March-04]
Interview 2 [January-05]
Interview 3 [March-05]
Interview 4 [September-05]