Between Shades of Gray: Chapter 28 Summary & Analysis

The group is brought to a large collective farming area marked by one-room cabins. They are ordered off the trucks and into the shacks, though they quickly realize there are already people living in them. Lina, Elena, and Jonas are assigned to a run-down shack where an Altaian woman is already living—and the woman begins to scream and yell. Elena says that the woman is claiming she has “no room for filthy criminals,” and has barely enough food for herself, let alone other people. Elena tells Jonas and Lina to put their stuff in the corner, but the woman grabs Lina’s hair in an attempt to throw her out. Elena slaps her and Jonas kicks her in the shin. Elena and the woman stare each other down, until the woman laughs. She tells Elena “feisty people make good workers,” and demands rent to let them stay. The farm grows beets and potatoes, rationed by the Communist guards. Lina recalls Kostas explaining the tenets of Communism to her—where everything is owned by Stalin and rationed out to the people. Lina realizes she is on a kolkhoz, a collective farm, and about to become a farmer. She notes that she hates beets.