Word: poskrebyshev
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Members of the dictator's entourage were always at risk. On Stalin's orders, the wife of Mikhail Kalinin was arrested and tortured while her husband continued to serve as the country's titular President. The wives of Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and of Stalin's personal secretary Alexander Poskrebyshev were also imprisoned. Meanwhile, the secretary endured other kinds of hell. "One New Year's Eve," Medvedev recounts, "Stalin rolled pieces of paper into little tubes and put them on Poskrebyshev's fingers. Then he lit them in place of New Year's candles. Poskrebyshev writhed in pain...
Like Solzhenitsyn's work, Children of the Arbat is highly autobiographical and is as much nonfiction as fiction. Rybakov spent his childhood at 51 Arbat Street, where much of the action takes place. Many of the book's characters, including Stalin, his private secretary Alexander Poskrebyshev and Sergei Kirov, are real people. Most of the fictional characters are also patterned after actual Soviet citizens...
Line Stealers. The intrigue and double-dealing became almost a part of the actors' lives. They began to suspect each other of stealing lines. Eli Wallach, playing Poskrebyshev, Stalin's secretary, exploded and complained that his part had been cut to nothing. "The audience would have a better show if they watched the rehearsals," cracked an amused technician. "There's more drawing aside and whispering here than I've ever seen. Probably more than there ever was in the Kremlin...
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