The older surviving children were taught songs: “I’m a little girl, I sing and I play. I haven’t seen Stalin but I love him each day.”44 On every orphanage wall was hung the same picture that could be seen all over the Soviet Union. It showed Stalin, “the Greatest Friend of Soviet Families,” holding a pretty little girl in his arms above the inscription THANK YOU, COMRADE STALIN, FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD. The photograph became a ubiquitous image of Stalinism. Later it was discovered that the six-year-old girl’s father and mother had both been killed in the Terror.
