Protocol of a meeting of the Kiev Party Control Committee

The protocol of the meeting of the Party Control Committee during which the party official were discussing the issue of expelling my mother from the Communist Party. My mother, Surah Rapoport, was born in Belaya Tserkov. In 1930 she moved to Kiev, where her sister Vera was living at that time. My mother went to work as a laborer at the Kiev radio plant. In 1931she became a Komsomol member, and in 1932 she became a Communist Party candidate. She also became a Komsomol public propagandist at the radio plant. She propagated the Komsomol among young people, explaining its ideas and goals to them. My mother was a very kind and, at the same time, very active person. She had sincere faith in the communist ideals and loved her official activities. In 1935, after the arrest of her sister's husband, Abram Yankovskiy, she was expelled from her candidateship in the Communist Party at a meeting of the party unit of the plant, where she was working at the time. [There was a Communist Party unit at every enterprise at that time.] She was accused of concealing the activities of Abram Yankovskiy from her party leadership. This was a very serious accusation at that time. It was impossible to prove that a person wasn't guilty. The decision of her party unit was very dramatic for my mother. The Party was her life, and she began to appeal to the Party's higher offices to have her accusations withdrawn. She went to Moscow and her case was reviewed at the Party Control Commission meeting. They cancelled the decision of her party unit, and my mother returned to the plant.