WHAT RAISA REAPED
Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s Oct. 27 review of Raisa Gorbachev’s reminiscenses, “I Hope,” rekindled bitter memories for me.
As a result of the Marxist-Leninist system, Mrs. Gorbachev’s grandfather, a well-to-do farmer ( kulak ) disappeared during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. My parents disappeared in the post-Stalinist purge era of the late 1950s.
Unlike Mrs. Gorbachev (nee Titorenko), I did not sell out to the very system that destroyed my family. Mrs. Gorbachev became a specialist in the Marxist-Leninist theory which she lectured on as a faculty member in the Philosophy Department at Moscow University, her alma mater.
During the recent Soviet coup of Aug. 5-7, Mrs. Gorbachev, while on vacation on the Crimean peninsula, experienced first-hand the very terror her Marxist-Leninist system promulgates.
Isn’t there an American saying, “What you sow, you will reap”?
NATASHA VANDERHEYDEN, LAS VEGAS
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