ancient tribe remembered for its treachery, as depicted in both the Christian tradition and the Mercurian stereotype, and closely associated with the cosmopolitan phase of the Bolshevik Revolution (which had always been seen by some Russians and Ukrainians as deliberately anti-Russian and anti- Ukrainian). The result was a rapid spread of anti-Semitic rumors, insults, leaflets, threats, and assaults culminating in the hysterical unmasking of “murderer physicians.” 150 For the first time, the Soviet state had turned on some of its loyal and privileged subjects according to a clear—and apparently non-Soviet—principle. For the first time, Hodl and her children found themselves among the aliens. For the first time, many of them began to doubt their Soviet faith—and the culpability of previous aliens. As Ester Markish put it, Only our own grief made us realize the horror of our lives in general: not only the suffering of the Jews or the suffering of the intelligentsia, but the suffering of the whole country and all the social groups and peoples that lived in it. After the arrest of [Perets] Markish, our maid, who had lived in our house for more than fifteen years and had, in effect, become a member of our family, said to me: “You are crying now, but you did not mind when my father was being dekulakized, martyred for no reason at all, and my whole family thrown out in the street?” 151 Even Pavel Sudoplatov, an ethnic Slav, top secret police official, and faithful Party warrior, was confused and dismayed by the attack on the Jews. As the head of the security ministry department in charge of assassinations and sabotage, he had participated in numerous political “liquidations,” but the only murder he unequivocally condemns in his memoirs is the murder of Mikhoels (with which, as he points out, he—“fortunately”—had nothing to do). During his thirty-year service in the secret police, he had seen many of his comrades purged, but the only arrest he claims to have opposed was the arrest of N. I. Eitingon, one of the Soviet Union’s most accomplished assassination experts (also known for his mischievous sense of irony and his ability to “recite Pushkin from memory”). One reason for Sudoplatov’s scruples was the fact that this was the first purge of his friends and colleagues that had a discernible pattern which was both unmistakable and offensive to a true believer of the civil war generation. The other reason was the fact (not surprising to most true believers of the civil war generation) that some of Sudoplatov’s best friends were Jews. The best of them all was his wife, Emma Kaganova, a professional agent provocateur who had