A Hero's Daughter

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Andrei' Makine was born and brought up in Russia, but A Hero's Daughter, his first novel to be published, was, like his subsequent novels, written in French. The book is set in Russia, and the author includes a number of Russian words in the French text, most of which, with his agreement, I have kept in this English translation. These include shapka (a fur hat or cap, often with ear flaps); dacha (a country house or cottage, typically used as a second or vacation home); izba (a traditional wooden house built of logs).

The text contains a number of references to events and institutions from the years of the Second World War, 1941 to 1945; the polizei was a force of Russian collaborators recruited by the occupying German power to assist them; the Panfilova Division (the 316th Rifle Division led by Major General Ivan Panfilov) became celebrated for the heroism of twenty-eight of its soldiers, who threw themselves with their grenades in the path of advancing German tanks in the defense of Moscow during the winter of 1941 and prevented them from breaking through.

There are also a number of references to institutions and personalities from the Communist era in Russia. A soviet was an elected local or national council as well as the building it occupied in a town or village. The NKVD (Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrenikh Del), the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, were the police charged with maintaining political control during the years of Stalin's purges from 1934 to 1946. The KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti), the Committee of State Security, was created in 1953, on Stalin's death, to take over state security with responsibility for external espionage, internal counterintelligence and internal "crimes against the state"; its most famous chairman was Yuri Andropov. A kolkhoz was a collective farm, a kolkhoznik a member of the farm collective; a kulak was the derogatory term for a wealthy peasant, considered to be an enemy of the Soviet regime under Stalin. The Komsomol was the Communist youth organization, the junior branch being the pioneers. "Iron Felix" was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the "Cheka," the forerunner of the NKVD; COMECON, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, was an economic association of East 'European countries during the Soviet era. "Beriozka" stores were created exclusively to sell goods to foreign visitors, who paid not in rubles but in foreign currency; some of these accepted vouchers from Soviet citizens who worked abroad and could exchange foreign currency for vouchers. Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov was army chief of staff from 1941 onward; Geidar Ali Rza Ogly Aliev was a KGB general. A kommunalka was a communal apartment. The terms perestroïka (reconstruction, reorganization) and glasnost (openness) became watchwords during the period of Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalization of the Soviet regime from 1985 onward.

G. S.