Rakhmiel Vainshtein, had been Samuil Agursky’s rival at the helm of the Party’s Jewish Section. And among those who—in the late 1950s—had introduced the young Mikhail to modern Western art and Moscow’s bohemian scene was the first Soviet abstract expressionist, Vladimir Slepian. Slepian’s Jewish father had been the head of the Smolensk province secret police directorate. 194 The conversion from Communism to anti-Communism might lead to a trenchant mea culpa (like Kopelev’s or Orlova’s), mild bemusement (like Ulanovskaia’s), or labored obfuscation (like Gefter’s). But it almost never led to a sense of collective responsibility—on anyone’s part. The USSR’s most celebrated achievements—the revolution, industrialization, victory over the Nazis, the welfare state—were largely (if inconsistently) represented as supranationally Soviet in inspiration and selflessly global in spirit. They were carried out in the name of a common future, and they could be cheered, furthered, and treasured by anyone who shared the dream. The same uncertainty (generosity) of both authorship and target was true of other things—the Red Terror, the Great Terror, forced labor, “dekulakization”—that were now seen by the aging regime as dubious accomplishments and by the new antiregime intelligentsia as terrible crimes. 195 Acts of violence that are not committed by one tribe against another tribe cast a very short shadow. Unlike genocides, they produce no legitimate heirs—for either the victims or the perpetrators. “Germans” as actual or metaphoric children of the Nazis may be urged to repent and to atone; “Jews” as the actual or metaphoric children of the Holocaust may be entitled to compensation and apology. Communists (like animists, Calvinists, or any other nonethnic group) have no children other than those who choose to be adopted. The only identifiable collective descendants of the victims of Stalinist violence are nations: primarily the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet empire (including the Jews) but also, in some accounts, the Russians (as the main target of the Bolshevik war against rural backwardness and religion). The only identifiable collective descendants of the initiators and perpetrators of Stalinist violence are nations too: primarily the Russians but also, in some accounts, the Jews (as the most enthusiastic ethnically defined supporters of the Soviet state). The claim to ethnic victimhood is utterly convincing but—considering the overall scale and nature of Stalinist violence—relatively marginal; the identification of alleged victimizers appears dubious. The concept of ethnic responsibility is as inescapable (what is a “nation” if one is not responsible for the acts of one’s “fathers”?) as it is morally uncertain (what is repentance or atonement if there is no priestly or divine authority to provide absolution?). It is even more uncertain