Sasha Filipenko: Красный крест (Red Crosses)

The latest addition to my website is Sasha Filipenko‘s Красный крест (Red Crosses). Sasha, a recently widowed young man moves to Minsk, where he buys a flat. He has one neighbour on the same floor – Tatyana Alexeyevna. Though she has Alzheimer’s, she tells him her story. She had worked in the Soviet Union during the war for the NKID. Her husband was captured by the Romanians, making both him and her a traitor. She is sent to a gulag and her daughter is sent to an orphanage. When she finally gets out, she spends her time looking for her daughter, her husband and one other man. Above all the books is about the horrors of the Soviet system – a system, Filipenko claims – is still, to a certain extent still in existence in Belarus.

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