Conscientious citizens, party members and Komsomol members, brigadmiles and employees of state institutions agreed with authoritative explanations. But the dark, unconscious majority: diggers, special settlers, bourgeoisie, former counts, exiled professors, tsar's cooks, Makhnovists, crowds of women and men, camel people - did not seek clarification either from the newspaper, or from the city party committee, or from the NKVD. A normal, ordinary person talks about incidents with friends, neighbors, acquaintances - in lines for bread and lean butter, at water pipes, in the bazaar. Therefore, exclamations and whispers were in the air...