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Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sofia Petrovna, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Uncertainty and Disbelief
Patriotism and Fanaticism
Pride, Status, and Moral Superiority
Loyalty, Political Allegiance, and Truth
Summary
Analysis
The next day, everyone talks about how the director is headed to Moscow that night to give a report of the publishing house’s progress so far this year. But when Sofia goes to his office to deliver documents that afternoon, she’s stopped by the party secretary, who tells her she can’t enter the director’s office. She glimpses inside the door and sees a man on his knees going through a filing cabinet, at which point the director’s secretary whispers to her that the director has been arrested.
Sofia has great respect for the director of the publishing house. The fact that he has been arrested, then, clearly comes as a shock to her. After all, he’s an influential, widely respected person; his arrest therefore goes to show that even the most powerful, accomplished Soviet citizens are at the mercy of the government.
Themes
Sofia can’t believe that the director, whose name is Zakharov, was arrested for being a saboteur. In fact, she doesn’t believe it, but Natasha insists that it could be true. She and Sofia talk about the matter after work, going back to Sofia’s apartment to discuss. Natasha shows her an article about a Soviet sent by the government to do work in Germany. This citizen was loyal to the Soviet Union, but he fell in love with a young woman who stole top-secret documents from him. He was too nervous to report the incident after returning to the Soviet Union, so he simply devoted himself to the Communist Party to make up for what happened. But then fascists started blackmailing him into giving them more secret documents. He was eventually caught.
The story in the newspaper is sensationalist and unnerving. It’s the exact kind of story that encourages citizens to view each other with great suspicion. Even though Natasha and Sofia respect the director, the tense, paranoid political climate pushes them to assume that he must have done something wrong. Otherwise, there would be no way of explaining why he was arrested—unless, of course, Sofia and Natasha considered the possibility that he was wrongfully arrested.
Themes
Natasha says that what happened to the citizen in the newspaper article could easily have happened to Zakharov. In fact, Zakharov even traveled abroad, and now Sofia and Natasha remember the elevator operator telling them about how Zakharov gave his wife a beautiful piece of clothing from Berlin.
Sofia and Natasha are both quite fond of the director, but the fact that he was arrested throws their entire opinion of him into question. Suddenly, they view him as a potentially malicious, untrustworthy man. This complete shift in how they see him is a perfect illustration of how easy it is to get swept up into political hysteria and paranoia.
Themes
As Natasha is preparing to leave, the doorbell rings. It’s Alik, who bursts into the house in a hurry. Sofia immediately assumes that Kolya has died of typhoid, but Alik won’t say anything until they’re all back in Sofia’s room. Finally in private, he tells her to calm down. A few days ago, he says, Kolya was arrested. Having said this, he breaks into tears.
Much like the director, Kolya is a widely respected Soviet citizen. The newspaper even printed an article about him quite recently as a way of celebrating his ingenuity and his contribution to the Soviet Union’s technological advancement. And yet, he has been arrested, illustrating (once again) that nobody is safe from the Soviet Union’s culture of fear and paranoia.
Themes
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