Within a few months and not long before census day Mikhail is a new member of the Komsomol. He puts himself forward for every task, he can’t do too much — although he needs to be careful, there are whispers, jibes, about the young, pushy Jew. Not that he’s aware, he’s happier than he’s ever been. He plans to take on leadership responsibilities at the first opportunity, and while he is not in the top academic level at school, he consoles himself with the thought that Stalin wasn’t a top student either while the traitor Trotsky was. Mikhail is planning his future. Stalin has surrounded himself with powerful people, many of whom have been drawn from the military or the NKVD, so there’s much to recommend both options. Most of his friends want to be mechanical engineers attached to industry, or construction engineers involved in Stalin’s massive building projects, but Mikhail wants a bigger canvas: he wants to take part in shaping the entire country.

Lidiya has been a member of the Octobrists since she was seven. She doesn’t want to recite the rhymes they’re forced to learn, she doesn’t care for the games they’re told to play, and she doesn’t like the songs that make up the Octobrist musical canon. She says it’s all too childish. With another eighteen months before she’s old enough for the Pioneers, she is refusing to attend her Octobrist group. While Vera, more than Yuri, has some sympathy for her daughter’s position, she knows there’s no place for defiance or independence in today’s Russia.

‘How can our children be so different?’ she says to Yuri one evening after a particularly trying day with Lidiya. ‘Misha could be a poster boy for Soviet youth.’ She sees Yuri is about to interrupt, and quickly continues. ‘He’ll be fine, he wants to fit in, he wants to do everything his country tells him. It’s far more difficult for our daughter, with a mind of her own and an imagination that owes more to Krylov and H.G. Wells — ’

And now Yuri does interrupt. ‘Our eight-year-old daughter is reading H.G. Wells?’

Vera laughs. ‘Not yet, but it won’t be long. She took my English copy of The Time Machine from the shelf and was curious about the script. After I explained about Cyrillic and Latin scripts, she wanted me to tell her the story of the novel.’ Vera shrugs. ‘What could I do?’

Census day is now just weeks away. Everything is in place. Printing presses across the nation are clacking away, and forms are stacked and packed, ready to be sent to far-flung regions. An army of enumerators has been trained to conduct the census, tens of thousands of staff have been recruited to tabulate the answers, and hundreds of statisticians are on hand to analyse the data. Everything is running to schedule, yet now Yuri is worried. He’s more worried than he’s ever been.