How long does it take for the dead to be forgotten? Twenty-seven million Soviet dead. The dead, linked umbilically to the living by their hope for punishment to be exacted. Everything measured itself against these victims, whether it was his father’s silence or his own rebelliousness. Aged eighteen, he had wanted to prove to himself and to mankind that he would have behaved differently. But would he have? Or was a human being just a container to be filled by time with whatever it happens to have handy? Did you have any control over what you saw in the mirror? Or was one helplessness merely
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