BAD OMENS
Tatyana Litvinova, Brighton, England: After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, my father found things completely intolerable, and he sent a letter to Stalin asking for an appointment. He was given an office at the People’s Committee for Foreign Affairs — without even a typist! — but they sent Petrova to be his assistant.
Dad sent Mom into evacuation, to Kuibyshev. Mom corresponded with Petrova regularly and once received a postcard: I have a new lover. You’ll never guess who. The woman was writing about my father.
I think their affair began as a result of Dad’s radical isolation. He couldn’t have done it with anyone outside the Commissariat. He was terribly lonely; he felt that he had robbed his children of their mother (because a real mother should be home with the kids instea
