“Sofia Petrovna blushed and it was a long time before she dared to raise her eyes again. When she at last decided to look around, she thought everyone seemed extraordinarily kind and attractive, and she found the statistics unexpectedly interesting.”

Zakharov’s praise of Sofia in the company meeting makes her blush for two reasons: She is infatuated with him, and she’s proud of the good work she does. Instances like this establish how well Sofia fits in at the office and in Soviet life at large; in light of this conformity, her later ostracism becomes all the more striking.

But, Mama, would it really be fair for Degtyarenko and his children to live in a basement? Would it!”

The policeman Degtyarenko’s family is one of those the state moved into Sofia’s apartment. The difference in opinion between Kolya and Sofia on communal living is generational: Kolya is too young to remember what it was like having a bigger apartment, whereas Sofia’s memory makes her resentful of having to cede what was formerly hers. This exchange also demonstrates how easily Sofia’s opinion is swayed: After Kolya says this she immediately admits that it wouldn’t be fair.

“Sofia Petrovna even wrote to Kolya about the injustice Natasha had suffered. But Kolya replied that injustice was a class concept and vigilance was essential. Natasha did after all come from a bourgeois, landowning family. Vile fascist hirelings, of the kind that had murdered comrade Kirov, had still not been entirely eradicated from the country. The class struggle was still going on, and therefore it was essential to exercise the utmost vigilance when admitting people to the Party and the Komsomol.”

Kolya’s callous response to the injustice of Natasha being denied membership to the Komsomol demonstrates just how dogmatic of a Stalinist he is. His letter is a mishmash of standard party lines, from his mention of the necessity of political vigilance to his talk of the omnipresent danger of fascist saboteurs. His argument that injustice is a class concept—absurd in its own right—becomes particularly ironic after he himself suffers injustice at the hands of the state.