A Gentleman in Moscow: Book 3, Addendum Summary & Analysis

The same morning that the Count looks for Mishka’s letter, Nina and her comrades board a train headed for Ivanovo in order to help increase agricultural production. But to pave the way for their efforts, a million kulaks (wealthier peasants) had been exiled because they resisted collectivization. They had been deemed enemies of the common good, but they were also the region’s most capable farmers. The remaining peasants were skeptical of innovation and unskilled in agriculture. The combination of these forces and uncooperative weather meant that millions of peasants would starve to death in Ukraine.

A footnote states that Nina and many other young loyalists would have their faith in the Party tested by what they saw. Most of Russia and the rest of the world, however, would not know what had happened, because journalists would be forbidden to enter the countryside, mail was suspended, and train windows were blackened. In fact, a New York Times journalist would deny rumors of the famine and go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage.

But at the time, when Nina’s train arrives in the fields of Ivanovo, she is overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape and is struck by the feeling that her life has begun.

Sofia asks the Count if he is awake. He responds that he is awake now. She tells him that she left her doll in Marina’s room.

On June 23, Andrey is riding the bus after paying a visit to Sofia. He stops at the market for some groceries and then returns to his small third-floor apartment. His wife, he knows, is not there; she is waiting at the new milk store that has opened at a decommissioned church. It became popular because at the back of the church there was a mosaic of Christ that no one had dismantled, and people went there to pray.

Andrey makes dinner for his wife, sets the table, and then walks down the hall. Without quite realizing it, he turns into the room of his late son Ilya, who had been killed in the Battle of Berlin. They left his room just as it had been before he left, but he worries that doing so is only prolonging their grief.

Andrey knows, however, that soon enough someone in the building will tell the housing authorities that their only son has died, and then they will be moved into an even smaller apartment and the room will have to be packed up regardless. Even so, he goes and smooths the blanket on the bed before turning out the light.