Soviet Union. The official Communist Party newspaper, Pravda (Truth), features a front-page photo of a smiling Joseph Stalin holding seven-year-old Gelya Marzikova in his arms. In the following months, Gelya’s father is arrested on false charges and executed in 1938. Gelya and her mother are exiled to Kazakhstan, where she dies shortly thereafter under mysterious circumstances. From that moment on, Gelya Marzikova’s name disappears, and the happy Soviet child in the photo is identified as Mamlakat Nakhangova, a 13-year-old Tajik girl who earned membership in the Order of Lenin by diligently collecting large quantities of cotton balls in the fields.
