‘There were certain rules of listening and talking that we children had to learn,’ recalls the daugher of a middle-ranking Bolshevik official who grew up in the 1930s:

‘What we overheard the adults say in a whisper, or what we heard them say behind our backs, we knew we could not repeat to anyone. We would be in trouble if we even let them know that we had heard what they had said. Sometimes the adults would say something and then would tell us, ‘The walls have ears,’ or ‘Watch your tongue,’ or some other expression, which we understood to mean that what they had just said was not meant for us to hear.’