ABSTRACT
Anastasia Posadskaya interviewed Anna Dubova at her one-room wooden dacha near Moscow on a sunny day in May 1994. Dubova’s personal life reflected the chaotic conditions of her time and the ineffectiveness of state policies aimed at strengthening the family. Fearful that her kulak origins would catch up with her, soon after coming to Moscow she married a minor party activist whom she did not love in order to change her surname and “find refuge,” as she openly acknowledged to Posadskaya. Dubova’s grandmother was evidently a widow who returned with her children to her father’s house after her husband’s death. That is why she was included in the division of household property, from which women, and in particular married daughters, were normally excluded. In the interview, Dubova continued to use the words “we” and “us,” as if she suffered along with her family, when in fact she remained in Moscow, as she herself made clear.
