Who She Became
“Run and hide,” everyone told her. Run and hide. Revolution had descended on the USSR and with it came murder, destruction, and chaos. Its bloody cloak enveloped the entire nation including her hometown of Poltava. The royal family had been murdered and other members of the royal bloodline awaited their execution. A hunt was on for anyone related to the monarchy and Anna Dehktyar knew that with her nobility status and her husband’s former position as a high-ranking officer in the imperial army, she and her husband toped the list of most wanted. All she could do now was run and hide.
Everything was destroyed – her home, her family. Two of her sisters were lucky. They were on vacation in France when the communists came to Poltava. They stayed in France and she never saw them again, but she was glad they were safe. She was forced to run. She and her husband ran to the countryside and disguised themselves as a couple of poor farmers. It was their only hope. She left everything in Poltava except for a few essentials and a handful of photographs. These photographs were her only connection to her family. The rest had to be burned in order to keep their identities as hidden as possible.
Now, only a few years after her family managed to escape from the Communists, her husband went missing. A group of men had picked him up in the middle of the night three days ago. She had no idea where he was taken. When the men came, no one said anything. Anna knew that these “night visits” had become more frequent now that Stalin was becoming more powerful, but they had managed to remain hidden all this time – why now?
Maybe it was the fact that her husband had become part of the town council, but too much time separated the occasion on which he gained this coveted position and the night he disappeared. It didn’t make sense. She had asked everyone that she knew if they had seen him, but no one seemed to know anything. Finally, she could do nothing, but go to the very people she feared.
On that cold winter morning, she decided to go to the police. As she made her way to the local town, her mind was filled with anxious thoughts. Where could he be? What would she do if he was not found? How would she take care of their three children? As her mind began to spin into a whirlpool of what if’s, Anna began to ponder her past – How did things change so much in so little time?
She was born to a wealthy noble family in Poltava. Even though she was one of three children, she was doted on as much as any only child. Her father was a holy man and he took especially good care of his family. One year, she recollected, he gave her a beautiful dress. It was adorned with various precious stones – pearls, emeralds, rubies, sapphires. There were so many jewels on it that you could not tell the color of the fabric underneath. It was her favorite dress and now it was carelessly thrown somewhere in a Communist loot pile.
Her life should have been simple. She had grown up in prosperity and her beauty allowed her to have many friends and suitors. In her youth, she happily married a high-ranking officer in the imperial army and they began their life together. Life was calm and peaceful, until it wasn’t.
In March 1917, a group of traitors in the Duma started the flame of revolution. They took over the government and forced Tsar Nicholas to abdicate his throne. The Tsar and his family were imprisoned in their own home and were herded from place to place like livestock. Anna did not understand how this could have happened. There was a great world war going on at the time. It was rumored to be a war of such magnitude that it would be the war to end all wars. How could anyone think of leading a revolution in a country in the middle of warfare? It was suicidal. It left the Soviet people vulnerable and weak.
During the time of the provisional government, there were rumors about the various factions that existed among the Communists. There was talk of civil war and people in Anna’s circle of friends began to worry for their own safety. People began packing up their belongings and leaving. Then, civil war broke out and the entire country fell into a state of chaos and turmoil. Suddenly, news came that the royal family had been murdered – Tsar Nicholas, his wife, and their five children. In addition, countless servants and friends of the royal family were killed. At this point, Anna was certain that they were coming for her and her husband. So, they took their most necessary belongings and ran. Later on, she heard the Vladimir Lenin had led his Bolshevik party to victory and that they had begun a process of taking possessions and land from the nobility and giving it to the poor. Anyone who resisted was shot.
Anna knew that her home and possessions were gone, but she was grateful to be alive. Although it was completely different life in the country from her life as a noblewoman, they survived – mostly due to her husband’s uncanny ability to do anything. They had three children during that time – two boys and a girl. She stayed at home to raise the children, while her husband worked in town. Everything was beginning to get to some state of normalcy.
Yet the rumors still haunted them. They heard that in 1922 a man by the name of Joseph Stalin had taken control of the Communist Party and that he had a tight regime. There were rumors that the NKVD, an internal affairs sector of the government, was actually a secret police force created by Stalin to eliminate any doubt in his power. There were stories of neighbors reporting each other to the government. No one could tell who was telling the truth so everyone was killed. There were tales of men coming in the middle of the night and taking people away. Is this what happened?
As she approached the police station, Anna took a deep breath to clear her head. She opened the door and let her children walk in first. Then, she came in and took a look around. It was a crowded room filled with all sorts of people – men, women, children, young, and old. She looked over to the desk and saw a quaint secretary sitting busy at work. Anna approached her and said, “Umm, excuse me, my husband disappeared three days ago, could you help me?” The secretary look up to see who had spoken, but her eyes immediately darted to the three little children that stood with this woman. She motioned for the woman to lean forward and whispered, “For your children’s sake, stop asking questions and go home.” Anna quickly took hold of her children’s hands and left the police station for in her mind she had heard only three words, “Run and hide.”
