THE MUTE ONES
The son of a butcher — or, according to information we received in exchange for two hundred dollars, the son of a small-time retailer — Erik Rikhardovich Wendt was born on the 29th of August 1902 in Leipzig. He worked as a type-setter at a printing house and joined the communist youth union when he was sixteen. Subsequently, he was arrested for involvement in plotting a coup. Fleeing persecution, in June 1931 he came to Moscow. There, he became deputy chairman of the board at the Publishing Guild of Foreign Workers; Anastasia Petrova at the time was one of the editors at the same publishing house. She worked on the translations of Lenin’s and Stalin’s works, including Marxism and the National-colonial Question, and participated in the meetings of the Party committee. In Augu
