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Russian Language 2. Translation . “ Stalin ’s Grandson”
Theatre director Alexandr Burdonsky only rarely gives interviews about his family history and about what happened to him after Stalin’s death : “I was fifteen years old when the 20th Congress took place and Khrushchev gave his secret speech about the cult of personality and its consequences and about all the people who had suffered under Stalin. The speech was no revelation for me. Many of my mother ’s friends had spent time in prison camps. She herself was constantly under threat of arrest. I knew about all this and I had the same attitude as any other normal person to it. But after Khrushchev’s speech many people abandoned us. For them we were only Stalin’s relatives. Nobody came to visit us. The headmistress of our school began to pick on my sister and me. We had to move to another school. Later , thank goodness, I met somebody who behaved differently towards me. I was studying drama with Oleg Efremov but I wanted to be a director. Oleg Efremov recommended me to a wonderful teacher , Maria Osipovna Knebel’. She became my mentor, my friend , a