Voice From the Past

About the Book

In 1971, when a scandal shook Soviet Belarus and threatened to bring down the highest-level leaders of the state, a new phrase began to circulate among the Belarusian people: Soon everyone knew the definition of a “Boroda Case”—a secret pool of money and goods, siphoned from Consumer Union warehouses and used by senior officials, who didn’t hesitate to spend the embezzled money on extravagances at a time when the average citizen was forced to stand in line just to buy bread. But what of the “Boroda Case” namesake? When the scandal broke, Matvey Boroda, a Consumer Union Chairman, found himself at the center of a trial that dominated headlines, destroyed lives, and, ultimately, sent Boroda to jail for ten years. From a KGB prison cell, Boroda pleaded with secretaries of the Communist Party to reexamine his role in what would become known as “Case 92”: While higher ranking officials had escaped prosecution, Boroda had become a scapegoat, serving time for the crimes of his superiors. The so-called “first Godfather of the USSR,” or a great but humble man who only wanted to be successful in his work—who was Matvey Boroda? The answer lies not in the files of Case 92, nor in the government workers’ testimonies, nor in the stories created by the media. The answer lies in these pages, where myth and truth intersect to create a Voice From the Past.

About the Author

Dmitri Bobkov was born on January 6, 1972, in Minsk, Belarus, into a family of physicians—and into a mystery that would haunt his family for decades. As an adult, Dmitri found himself reading newspaper articles about his grandfather, Matvey Boroda; he found endless accounts of his grandfather’s reputation as “the first Godfather of the USSR” in articles that had bombarded state and local newspapers last years. Forty years after the events that heralded change for an entire country, Dmitri Bobkov opened a notebook given to him by his grandmother and discovered another version of his grandfather’s story—one narrated by Boroda himself. Sifting through letters and notes, conducting interviews with long-silent relatives and reluctant strangers, Dmitri pieced together the mystery behind the Boroda case, embarking on a search for truth in a forest of lies, deceit, governmental cover-ups, and media-created myth. In 1971, when a scandal shook Soviet Belarus and threatened to bring down the highest-level leaders of the state, a new phrase began to circulate among the Belarusian people: Soon everyone knew the definition of a “Boroda Case”—a secret pool of money and goods, siphoned from Consumer Union warehouses and used by senior officials, who didn’t hesitate to spend the embezzled money on extravagances at a time when the average citizen was forced to stand in line just to buy bread. But what of the “Boroda Case” namesake? When the scandal broke, Matvey Boroda, a Consumer Union Chairman, found himself at the center of a trial that dominated headlines, destroyed lives, and, ultimately, sent Boroda to jail for ten years. From a KGB prison cell, Boroda pleaded with secretaries of the Communist Party to reexamine his role in what would become known as “Case 92”: While higher ranking officials had escaped prosecution, Boroda had become a scapegoat, serving time for the crimes of his superiors. The so-called “first Godfather of the USSR,” or a great but humble man who only wanted to be successful in his work—who was Matvey Boroda? The answer lies not in the files of Case 92, nor in the government workers’ testimonies, nor in the stories created by the media. The answer lies in these pages, where myth and truth intersect to create a Voice From the Past.