Ниночка – “Ninotchka” (Little Nina) – an anti-Soviet propaganda story about a girl who turned in her mother to the Communist secret police, intended to smear the Soviet Union, then an ally of the Western powers. Serbia, late 1930s or early 1940s. In Serbian. Extremely rare.
Alexandra Petrovna, a mature Russian woman, lives in Moscow with her daughter Nina (Ninochka), a 16-year-old girl. The father, a respected engineer, disappeared during the Revolution. The mother is left alone with the child, without property or means, and struggles to support them both. Nina, having grown into a beautiful young woman, is drawn to a life of glamour, indulgence, and moral depravity – she associates with sailors, soldiers, and communists, scorns her mother’s self-sacrifice, mocks her character, and demands that she hand over personal belongings for her own use. When the mother refuses, Nina insults her, threatens to inform on her (“I know commissars – I’ll tell them how you treat me”), and even kicks her until she falls to the ground. Later, Nina betrays her mother to the authorities—and the mother is arrested by two Chekists (Soviet secret police officers). Before she is taken, the mother bids her daughter a warm farewell: “May Gd bless you, my beloved daughter.” Nina remains alone and remarks with contempt: “At last I can live the way I want.” Shortly afterward, she reads in the newspaper that her mother was executed for “counter-revolutionary activity.” Her reaction: she shrugs, waves her hand dismissively, and walks away entirely devoid of emotion.
Russian émigrés opposed to Stalin were known to have circulated anti-Soviet booklets across Europe – especially in the Balkans, France, and Germany. Their aim was to portray the Soviet Union as a realm of moral terror, to undermine the legitimacy of the Revolution, and to warn against communism – presenting the USSR as morally corrupt despite its alliance with the Western powers during the war.
Extremely rare. Not listed in the global library catalog WorldCat.
[4] pp. Good condition.
