Nina Lugovskaya

• 2 November 1932, she describes government interrogators who had come to her family's apartment to question them. "Their faces are so repulsive, it was astonishing. The first one, in a greatcoat, was blond with gray, piercing eyes and thin lips that turned down slightly when he smiled, which made his face very unpleasant; the second, short one in the jacket turned out to be a Jew, with short-cropped, black hair, a typical Jewish nose, and small brown eyes. His face was bright pink, and you could see the outline of his shaved beard clearly, his skin was so smooth. Yuck."[1]
• 12 November 1932, she describes the funeral of Stalin's wife. "The only noteworthy event yesterday was the funeral of Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva. There were masses of people there, and I had a rather unpleasant feeling looking at the joyful, excited crowd of curious people shoving forward with happy faces to get a look at the coffin. Boys shouted 'Hurrah!' as they dashed along the roadway, stamping their feet. I walked backward and forward, trying to listen to the passersby talking. I managed to catch a few words filled with surprise and rather spiteful irony. Somehow I didn't feel sorry for this woman -- after all, Stalin's wife couldn't be even the slightest bit good, especially since she was a Bolshevik."[1]
• 21 January 1933, Nina describes a friend who is a supporter of the Bolsheviks. "Oh you Bolsheviks, you Bolsheviks! What have you done, what are you doing? Yesterday, Yulia Ivanovna gave our group a talk on Lenin and of course she talked about our socialist regime. It hurts me so much to hear these shameless lies from the lips of a woman I idolize. Let Evstikhevich tell lies, but not her, with that way of getting genuinely carried away, lying like that. And who to? To children who don't believe her, who smile silently and say to themselves: Liar, liar."[1]
• 2 May 1933, she writes about educational indoctrination. "My God! I want to drop everything, abandon everything and live. I do want to live, afterall. Live! I'm not a machine that can work without a break or a rest, I'm a human being. I want to live! Forget my problems! I'm glad there's school tomorrow. It'll give me a little break from myself, but then again, I won't know my social studies. But to hell with this new society, anyway! Genka's the only one who can get enthusiastic about it and spend hours reading what Lenin and Stalin have said and what advances our Soviet Union has made. Ah, life, life! I wish the dogs would tear you to pieces."[1]
• 21 August 1933, she wrote about the economy. "Sixty kopeks for a kilo of white bread! Fifty kopeks for a liter of kerosene! Moscow's grumbling. The angry, hungry, tired people in the lines abuse the authorities and curse life. Nowhere can you hear a single word in the defense of the detested Bolsheviks. Prices at the market are shooting up because of the increased prices for bread and everyday stuff. And you can't help asking yourself what's coming after this, when the price of bread has already doubled, and potatoes cost five rubles for an eighth of a pound at the market and there aren't any at all in the state shop. What are workers going to eat in winter, when there aren't any vegetables or anything else now?[1]
• 31 August 1933, she write about the Holodomor. "There are strange things going on in Russia. Famine, cannibalism... People arriving from the provinces tell all sorts of stories. They say they can't clear all the dead bodies off the streets fast enough, that the provincial towns are full of starving peasants dressed in tattered rags. That the thieving and banditry everywhere are appalling. And what about Ukraine, with its vast, rich fields of grain? Ukraine.. What has happened to it? It's unrecognizable now. Nothing but the lifeless, silent steppe. No sign of the tall, golden rye or the bearded wheat; their swelling heads of grain no longer sway in the wind. The steppes are overgrown with high weeds. Not a trace left of the cheerful, bustling villages with their little white Ukrainian houses, not a single note left of those rousing Ukrainian songs. Here and there you can see lifeless, empty villages. The people of Ukraine have fled and scattered. Stubbornly, without end, the refugees flow into the large towns. They have been driven back time and again, whole trainloads of them dispatched to certain death. But the struggle for life has proved stronger, and people dying in the railway stations and on the trains have kept on trying to reach Moscow. But what about Ukraine! Oh, the Bolsheviks were prepared for this disaster, too. The insignificant little plots of land sowed in spring are harvested by the Red Army, sent there especially for the purpose."[1]
• 22 September 1933, Nina writes about the Young Pioneers. "Yesterday I was at the Young Pioneers meeting, Liza spread vile, slanderous lies about our girls who have left the Pioneers, and about me. No one liked her before anyway, and now she's made herself even more unpopular. We talked about it a lot during break and decided to boycott her. Today almost everyone agreed and supported us. Oh, we'll get her back! We won't let her laugh at us, we'll make her sorry for that sharp little tongue of hers. A general boycott is no joking matter![1]
• 29 November 1933, she wrote about school. "What do I need books and learning for? I wasn't made to stuck in a stuffy room, to be with people. Freedom! My heart craves it...To become one with nature is what I long for, to go soaring high above the earth with the free wind and to fly...to unknown countries far away. But they keep me locked up, torment me and torture me and poison my life".[1]

Throughout her diaries Nina showed contempt for the Bolsheviks, writing "These bloody Bolsheviks! How I hate them! All hypocrites, liars, and scoundrels", "I could feel my fury with the Bolsheviks rising in my throat, my despair at my own powerlessness", "These lousy Bolsheviks! They don't think about us young people at all, they don't think about the fact we are human beings too"! In one passage she recounted "sixty-nine White Guards were arrested and shot in Leningrad without any investigation or trial".[1]

Her diaries reflect a nationalist patriotism, in which she wrote about the SS Chelyuskin incident: "wanted to cry for happiness and sympathy with these great heroes...to participate in the general celebration". On her country she wrote: "How can it be? Great Russia and the great Russian people have fallen into the hands of a scoundrel. Is it possible? That Russia, which for so many years fought for freedom and which finally attained it, that Russia has suddenly enslaved itself."[7]