LIFE EXPERIENCE OF A DANISH WOMAN IN THE USSR IN THE CONTEXT OF SOVIET-DANISH RELATIONS OF THE 1920-1950S

This article deals with the transformation of a Danish woman’s perception of the Soviet life through the prism of her personal life experience. The study is based on the analysis of Sigrid Ulrikka Alma Aagaard’s letters addressed to her mother and younger sister from the Soviet Union, the memoirs of her sons and closest associates. All these materials were stored in the author’s personal archive and published for the fi rst time. The study reveals a close connection of the woman’s personal life with foreign political events, changes in the Soviet-Danish relations that directly infl uenced her fate and worldview. Particular attention is paid to the gradual alienation of the woman from her roots, the need to get used to the new reality and master the rules of the game dictated by the Soviet reality. Having understood the work of the Soviet system, she tried to comply fully with all its requirements. She turned from an idealist into a submissive performer of the will of the state. She was aware that she was always under surveillance, “hooked”, and at any time she could be put before a moral choice. Sigrid ceased to be a Dane, she no longer belonged to the world in which she had been born and grown up. What she had learned in thirty years of her life outside her homeland forever alienated her from her compatriots. At the same time, she found faithful friends in the Mordovian camp TEMLAG, where she was from 1937 to 1946, among the wives of appointees, who, like her, went through hardships, arrests and imprisonment.