Lily's Daughter

Stalin’s Death

In early March there are signs of incipient spring. The forsythia begins to bloom; there is a tinge of green on the trees. Margaret Island has daffodils poking up in the fields where grass is yet to emerge. We start to think about the end of the school year, months away but suddenly within sight.
On an otherwise boring day, there is a call to assembly in the gym that doubles as Assembly Hall: an all-school assembly, declared on the loudspeaker by the principal in ominous tones. We file out of classrooms with some apprehension. Something big is clearly afoot.
The gym, the largest space in the building, is crowded by all several hundred of us, grades 1A to 8B, each comprised of some thirty to forty students and led by its homeroom teacher. There is a makeshift dais at one end of the hall where the principal, the Young Communist League representative and all teachers not standing with their classes are assembled. There are also several people on the dais we don’t know. They all look stricken. The principal takes the microphone, not really needed in the gym where unamplified speech could easily be heard, especially since the student body is far more silent than usual, but the microphone is always used so the sounds of announcements invariably emerge from the booming loudspeakers strung up all over the building.
The principal clears her throat. Silence is complete. She says: Iosip Vissarionovich Stalin, our Father, is dead.

Now you could hear a pin drop. The universal initial reaction in that Assembly Hall is complete disbelief! Gods don’t die! Whether they are good Gods or evil ones, they don’t just suddenly keel over and die. In our young lives, Stalin was a constant, ever-present deity, large, looming, ever lauded. The mention of his very name now produces instant, shocked dilemma: we are so accustomed to rise and shout: Long Live Stalin! Long Live Stalin! accompanied by ten minutes of rhythmic clapping each time it is pronounced that even now the first sounds emerging after the stunned silence are the younger children tentatively starting to clap and cheer until they are hushed by their teachers.

School is dismissed for the rest of the day; tomorrow will be a National Day of Mourning. We are to assemble in front of the school building for a march to Hero’s Square for the Memorial Service.