Silence

the long version

"Silence is a clearly written novel about Stalin's Moscow after the war. Konstantin and Serghey are self-possessed ex-soldiers who gradually find that their society cares more for speculators and the word of black-marketeers than for honest Communists like themselves. A cowardly soldier whom Serghey knew at the front tracks him down throughout the book, until he is expelled from the mining institute at which he has been studying. Serghey's father is then taken off by the police after a sudden house search: he, too, has been denounced by a hypocrite, an enemy of the true Communism of the old school that the father represents. And, lastly, the artist Mookomolov is threatened by the painters' union with expulsion for being too 'cosmopolitan'." (Bill Byrom, The Spectator, Jul 23, 1965)