Fiery captivity

It is not known how the life of the surgeon Alexander Kasardin would have developed, if he had not been accidentally in Smolny on the day of Kirov’s murder. Having become an involuntary witness to a bloody political act, Kasardin for the rest of his life turned into a target of the NKVD. The Chekists pursued him everywhere: both in the flaming Uman "Cauline" in July 1941 and in the cold front of Moscow. Shoulder to shoulder, executioners and victims, had to experience all the horror of the first months of the war and the nightmare of German captivity. And all due to the fact that the surgeon, faithful to this word, refused to call the name of the man who was with him in Smolny on that fatal day of 1934