The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

* They were lishentsy (literally meaning the ‘disenfranchised’) – a category of people, mainly from the old intelligentsia, the petty bourgeoisie and the clergy, deprived of civil and electoral rights. During the 1920s the lishentsy were subjected to a growing level of discrimination by the Bolsheviks, with many families denied access to Soviet schools and state housing or deprived of ration cards.