Vinniki, a suburb of Lviv.
Inside a recently vacated two-story house, Anlina stood before a full-length mirror in the bedroom, humming an unfamiliar tune as she adjusted the white fitted shirt she was wearing.
The shirt was a little tight, especially around the chest, where her full breasts stretched the fabric so much that one of the buttons looked ready to pop off.
But Anlina didn’t mind.
She loved the outfit Valenka had specially brought her today—or, more precisely, the uniform of a female soldier in the Soviet Red Army.
She could swear that ever since childhood, she had admired those valiant women in uniform, though she had never imagined she would one day wear one herself.
Outside the half-open bedroom door, her mother’s constant complaints and her father’s grumbling curses drifted in from time to time.
Her mother was complaining about how untidy the previous owners had been, saying everything was filthy and making the cleaning far more troublesome than it should have been.
Her father, meanwhile, was cursing the Poles who had attacked the town’s supply depot the previous night, insisting that anyone who dared oppose the Soviet regime deserved to be hanged.
Thinking about it now, the whole situation felt rather ironic.
In Anlina’s memory, her mother had never been particularly fond of cleanliness.
Back in Shevchenko, although she wasn’t lazy, she disliked household chores.
Her favorite pastime had been sitting beneath the eaves, basking in the sun.
As for her father, he still enjoyed cursing people behind their backs, just as he always had.
The difference was that in those days, his targets had been the People’s Militia and the Border Guard soldiers.
He had often hoped the guerrillas would attack Shevchenko and hang every man in uniform.
Now, however, everything had changed.
After leaving Shevchenko and settling in Lviv…
after receiving a two-story house with six rooms…
after both he and Anlina’s mother found work at the Demidov Sugar Factory…
the elderly couple, who had spent nearly half their lives in exile, seemed to have changed overnight.
The very first thing they did after cleaning the living room was hang portraits of Lenin and Stalin on the wall directly opposite the front door.
Within an astonishingly short time, they had forgotten the bitterness of the past decade and transformed into unwavering supporters of the Soviet Union.
To Anlina, everything that had happened over the past month felt like a dream.
First, Viktor—the man who had sheltered her family and quietly helped them time and again—had suddenly left Shevchenko without any warning, and someone else had taken over his position.
Just as Anlina had fallen into despair, convinced that her future was doomed, Shevchenko suddenly began reviewing a large number of old cases.
The official explanation was that the authorities intended to clear the names of people who had been wrongfully convicted.
Her family was among the very first to have their sentences overturned.
From that day on, they were no longer prisoners.
They had become ordinary Soviet citizens, free to choose whether to work on a collective farm.
A few days later, Anlina’s father received a notice stating that, in consideration of his past experiences, the authorities intended to assign him a suitable position in Lviv.
Overjoyed, he accepted the offer without hesitation and eagerly brought his family to the city.
Everything appeared perfectly ordinary.
After all, they were not the only family to have their convictions overturned, nor were Anlina’s parents the only former exiles who had relocated to Lviv for work.
But deep down, both Anlina and her parents understood what had really happened.
Anlina herself had also been assigned a job. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
She was posted to the Lviv Main Directorate of Automobile Inspection—or, as it was now called, the Main Directorate of Transport Troops—where she was responsible for organizing and maintaining archival documents.
Outside the open window, the sound of a car engine gradually grew louder.
It seemed to pull up downstairs before the engine fell silent.
Anlina’s heart skipped a beat.
She felt her breathing quicken, and a faint blush spread across her cheeks.
She studied herself in the mirror.
Over the past month, she seemed to have put on a little weight.
Her oval face had filled out, and the pale, hollow cheeks she once had now carried a touch of youthful softness.
For some reason, she suddenly felt nervous, wondering whether that man would like how she looked now.
In the living room, her mother’s constant complaints and her father’s grumbling suddenly stopped.
The two seemed to be speaking softly and respectfully to someone.
A moment later, the sound of leather boots echoed across the wooden floor, drawing closer until it reached her bedroom.
The person who entered was indeed Viktor.
He wasn’t wearing his military uniform today, but civilian clothes.
As soon as he stepped into the room, he saw Anlina standing before the mirror.
By modern standards, she was still little more than a girl.
She wore a white blouse and a blue skirt.
Her hair was tied into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, while her blue side cap rested on the bed behind her.
After some time apart, she was no longer as thin as before.
Her delicate face, innocent yet carrying the distinctive beauty of Belarusian women, naturally drew the eye.
Viktor quietly closed the door behind him and walked toward her.
As he approached, he removed his coat.
To be honest, what he felt for Anlina was not love.
It was a mixture of pity, possessiveness, and a desire that even he recognized as deeply distorted.
Standing before the full-length mirror, Anlina silently endured his rough and domineering advances once again.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but Anlina, lying across the desk, finally endured the ordeal.
She wrapped her legs tightly around the man’s waist and gently cradled his head against her chest.
Listening to his heavy breathing, she found herself feeling an unexpected sense of peace.
When Viktor left Anlina’s new home, he paused beside the car and glanced back at the upstairs window.
Behind the floor-to-ceiling window, the beautiful, delicate girl stood half-hidden behind the curtain, watching him quietly.
When their eyes met, she timidly raised a hand to wave, but quickly lowered it again.
Viktor did not wave back.
He simply got into the jeep and told Valenka, who was behind the wheel, to start the engine.
Viktor knew very well that there was no future between him and Anlina; that outcome had long been predetermined.
Even so, he had no intention—no, he was unwilling—to sever ties with her now.
It was the mindset of a scoundrel, and Viktor knew it. Get faster updates on g.com.
But he no longer cared.
Having been reborn into such a damned world, where even his own life and death were beyond his control, why should he worry about whether he was a scoundrel?
The jeep rolled slowly through the streets of the town, heading not toward the center of Lviv, but toward Daliychia.
Before long, it left the town and joined a dirt road five or six meters wide.
This road connected Lviv with Ternopil.
At that moment, a long column of ragged men was trudging eastward along it.
They were all Polish soldiers who had fallen into the hands of the Soviet Red Army.
Over the past two days, they had been transferred from prisoner-of-war camps throughout West Ukraine, assembled in Lviv, and were now being moved onward toward Kiev.
According to orders from higher headquarters, the vast majority of these men would eventually be sent to Stalino (present-day Donetsk) and other industrial centers to work as miners.
Compared with the officers—even junior lieutenants or non-commissioned officers—the fate of these ordinary soldiers was considerably better.
The officers were being separated and grouped according to their regions of origin.
The order issued by the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs State Security Main Directorate was to execute them all.
The directive also explained the reasoning behind the decision.
First, the continued existence of these officers would encourage false hopes of restoring Poland and fuel the so-called Polish restoration movement.
Second, the executions were presented as retaliation for Poland’s mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war during the 1919–1920 conflict.
One sentence from the order stood out in particular:
“The Poles believe they have washed the blood from their hands, but we have carved that scar into our own chests.”
Why had Merkulov suddenly come to Lviv?
He hadn’t come to inspect the work of the State Security Directorate.
His sole purpose in West Ukraine was to supervise these executions.
Of course, those being sent to the execution sites were not only military officers.
A number of Polish landowners, intellectuals, social activists, and government officials were also included.
None of them would receive any form of trial before their execution.
They would be gathered together, shot in batches, and buried in pits they had been forced to dig themselves.
That was the entire process of the liquidation operation.
To avoid causing public panic and attracting international condemnation, these executions had to remain strictly confidential.
Those assigned to carry them out were not regular army troops, but security personnel from the State Security Main Directorate.
Viktor was the officer responsible for overseeing the operation in the Lviv region.
Sitting in the back seat of the jeep, Viktor silently watched the ragged Polish prisoners of war marching past outside the window.
His expression remained cold and unreadable.
More accurately, he no longer believed he was in any position to sympathize with anyone.
Ever since his rebirth, he himself had been walking on the edge of a knife.
It felt as though disaster was always waiting somewhere ahead, ready to strike the moment he took another step.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out half a pack of cigarettes.
Looking closely, the entire cigarette pack was printed in German, and the cigarette he took out looked rather unusual.
Instead of being perfectly round, its cross-section was oval, as though it had been flattened.
They were cigarettes issued to German troops.