Sofia Petrovna

Beside herself, Sofia gathers her things to go to Sverdlovsk immediately to correct what she believes must be a mistake. Natasha and Alik persuade her to stay—it’s late; besides, as a native of Leningrad, Kolya will likely be brought back to the city for imprisonment. They decide that the following morning Sofia should go to the prosecutor’s office; Natasha will cover for Sofia at work.

After Natasha and Alik leave, Sofia tries to sleep but cannot, imagining the various misunderstandings that could’ve led to Kolya’s arrest. Sofia feels strangely isolated and alone: “In the darkness flashes from the streetcar wires, lightning-like, lit up the room. A square white patch of light folded like a sheet of paper lay across the wall and ceiling. In the nurse’s room Valya [the nurse’s daughter] was still squealing and laughing” (46).

Before dawn Sofia goes to the prison because she doesn’t know where the prosecutor’s office is. Outside the prison there are hundreds of women, from all backgrounds, who have been waiting overnight to give their imprisoned relatives money. When the visiting doors open at daybreak the crowd rushes into the building and lines up according to the numbers they took the previous night. Completely ignorant of this unfamiliar and convoluted routine, Sofia feels as though she’s slipped into some foreign city.

Sofia waits for hours, growing indignant about the long wait and the stuffy air in the endless chain of waiting rooms: “What a lot of uncivilized things we have to put up with in our lives! It’s so stuffy, yet they can’t even ventilate the place. Some­ one ought to write a letter to Leningrad Pravda about it” (52). When she finally reaches the front of the line, the man won’t tell her anything other than that Kolya is in fact imprisoned there. Shooed away by the women behind her, who worry that Sofia’s persistence will anger him into closing early, Sofia returns home, baffled by her experience.

Sofia takes off two weeks from the publishing house to investigate what’s happened to her son. In her absence Timofeyev assigns Erna to her duties. Alik lies to his boss in Sverdlovsk so that he can stay to help Sofia. Natasha, despondent about Kolya’s arrest, spends her free time helping Sofia around the house.

Like the relatives of other prisoners, Sofia spends her days waiting in line at the prison, the prosecutor’s office, and the information center, learning the intricacies of this convoluted system. However, despite her persistence Sofia learns nothing about Kolya’s supposed crimes, the status of his case, or his well-being. All she knows comes from Alik, who tells her that the NKVD arrested Kolya in the middle of the night, with no explanation.

Sofia believes Kolya is absolutely innocent; however, she simultaneously believes there must be a just reason for his arrest: “In our country innocent people aren’t held. Particularly not Soviet patriots like Kolya” (59). She speculates that with his tactlessness he might’ve angered someone important at work.

While Alik sees that Sofia is no different from the other relatives of prisoners, Sofia herself stubbornly refuses to admit this. Despite their ordinary appearance, Sofia believes the other women are the wives and mothers to the violent saboteurs she reads about in the papers: “She was sorry for them, of course, as human beings, sorry especially for the children; but still an honest person had to remember that all these women were the wives and mothers of poisoners, spies and murderers” (60).

Alik returns to the factory in Sverdlovsk, and Sofia returns to work. Six months pass, bringing the heat of summer and problems at the publishing house. Erna gets Natasha fired for mistakenly typing “Ret Army” instead of “Red Army” in the draft of an article—Timofeyev cites “lack of political vigilance” as the reason for her dismissal (63). In a company-wide meeting Timofeyev accuses Natasha—the daughter of a colonel in the White Army—of conspiring with the former director Zakharov (who hired her six years prior) to besmirch the Red Army by calling it the “Rat Army.” He announces that he’s also fired Zakharov’s former secretary, E. Grigorieva.

Timofeyev opens the floor for questions. The elevator operator, Marya Ivanovna, accuses Grigorieva (in absentia) of both tracking mud into the elevator and using it too much: “You take her up, and she wants to be taken down, too. A hundred times she goes up, and then take her down, too” (65). Anna validates Marya’s grievance.

Hesitantly Sofia takes the floor. She explains that Natasha’s supposed crime was in fact a simple typo and that she wrote “Ret,” not “Rat,” Army. Timofeyev dismisses Sofia’s correction, maintaining that Natasha perpetrated a clear act of class hostility. His response stuns Sofia.

After the meeting Sofia is shocked that her coworkers chat as if nothing has happened. She returns home to find a note from Alik: Having lost his job and been expelled from the Komsomol for not renouncing Kolya, he’s returned to Leningrad. Sofia suspects that Alik’s temper is really to blame for his firing.

As she heats water for a bath Sofia overhears her neighbors gossiping in the shared kitchen. The nurse accuses Sofia of stealing her kerosene, saying that she’s a criminal just like her son: “She thinks he’s some kind of innocent lamb […] Excuse me, please, but people don’t get locked up for nothing in our country” (69). Mrs. Degtyarenko counters that many innocent people are being arrested. Once everyone is asleep Sofia removes her cookware and kerosene from the kitchen.

The following morning Alik and Natasha learn the name of the prosecutor in Kolya’s case: Tsvetkov. Sofia goes to his office with Alik, where Natasha has saved them a place in the enormous line. Looking depressed, Natasha leaves. Both she and Alik have been blacklisted from employment. Sofia smugly reprimands Alik for cursing the people that blacklisted him, arguing that speaking out requires tact and pointing to her defense of Natasha as an example of tactful maneuvering that allowed her to keep her job.

Ahead of her in line Sofia recognizes Zakharov’s wife and young daughter. Zakharov has been sentenced to 10 years in a gulag; his wife and daughter are set to be deported to rural Kazakhstan. Astonished that Mrs. Zakharovna hasn’t been told her husband’s whereabouts, Sofia blames her for not being persistent. In a fury Mrs. Zakharovna responds: “‘Do you think […] that any one of them’—she gestured at the crowd of women with the ‘travel vouchers’ [deportation documents]— ‘knows where her husband is? […] No one knows and neither do I’” (75). Sofia muses on the suffering husbands cause their wives.

Finally, Sofia meets Prosecutor Tsvetkov, an apelike, rude man. In the middle of a phone call, he distractedly informs Sofia that Kolya was given 10 years in a gulag. Calming herself, Sofia waits until Tsvetkov hangs up the phone. As he opens and closes the empty drawers of his desk, he barks that Kolya confessed to a terrorist plot. Sofia is stunned: “[She] tried desperately to remember what else it was she wanted to ask. But she’d forgotten everything. And anyway in this room, in front of this person, all words were to no avail” (78). She wanders out of the office.

On their way home, Alik curses the NKVD, accusing them of being infiltrated by anti-Soviet saboteurs who have plotted against Kolya, a patriot. Sobbing, Sofia responds that because Kolya confessed he must be guilty. Alik says there’s only one thing left to do: They must talk to Stalin face to face.

Sofia has a different perspective the following morning, believing that Kolya must be the victim of an overzealous investigator: “Now in the light of day, it became clear what rubbish this all was. She would not see Kolya for ten years! Why on earth? What hideous nonsense! It couldn’t be” (81). She thinks that soon Kolya will be released and things will return to normal.

At the publishing house Sofia finds a new edition of the company newspaper posted in the lunchroom. In one article Anna censures Timofeyev for not unmasking Zakharov, Grigorieva, and Natasha earlier. In another article an anonymous author calls for Sofia to be fired for defending Natasha. After finishing the article Sofia realizes her coworkers have been eyeing her all day.

Back home Sofia tells Natasha of the article. Natasha tells her that Alik has been arrested.

Natasha—who grows more despondent by the day—and Sofia talk about Kolya’s confession. Natasha is baffled as to how he could’ve been tricked into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Sofia now believes that Alik’s temper and foul mouth are to blame for Kolya’s arrest. Natasha urges Sofia to resign before she’s fired—this way she won’t be blacklisted from finding other work. As Natasha leaves she becomes expansive, hugging Sofia and reminding her to send money to Alik in prison.

The following day Sofia gives her resignation to Timofeyev, who happily accepts it. Her coworkers—including Erna, whom Sofia suspects is the anonymous author of the article—all bid her a cheerful goodbye. Sofia leaves the office for Natasha’s. There, a neighbor tells her that Natasha attempted suicide with sleeping pills that morning.

Sofia rushes to the hospital. The tram is delayed and crowded. After several mothers with babies get on, people start refusing to give up the seats reserved for them. An old woman yells for the mothers to suck it up: “Soon they’ll take over the whole car! […] They get to ride to and fro! In our day, we had to lug our children around in our arms. Carry it a while, won’t kill you!’’ (88). The scene makes Sofia even more tense. At the hospital Sofia learns that Natasha died earlier that afternoon.

Sofia buries Natasha alone. She spends the following night in line for the prison—it’s the first time she hasn’t had Alik or Natasha to relieve her. Kolya has been deported to a gulag. The guard says Kolya will write to Sofia with his location.

Meanwhile, Sofia has trouble finding work: Employers ask whether any of her relatives have been arrested, and she’s scared to lie. She also has problems at home, where she’s replaced as the representative of her apartment group and ostracized by her neighbors. She grows fearful of everyone and everything. Nonetheless, Sofia waits in line at the prison to deposit money for Alik. There she encounters Mrs. Kiparisova, who urges her not to deposit the money so that the NKVD won’t connect Alik’s and Kolya’s cases, creating even more problems. Sofia returns home.

With nothing else to do for Alik or Kolya, Sofia falls into a depression, spending days in bed. She rereads Natasha’s suicide note in which she writes she didn’t have the strength to endure the senselessness of the Soviet regime. Sofia debates whether to destroy the note to prevent the NKVD from finding it.