In her autobiography In the Beginning, which I blogged about yesterday, Irina Ratushinskaya describes an incident during her schooldays in Odessa in the 1960s, living under communism.
A pupil had splashed ink on a wall and Irina, aged 12, and a fellow pupil, a boy called Seryozha, were asked if they knew who the culprit was. Irina relates that “I began to pour out the customary lies; that I didn’t know, I didn’t see anything...” Seryozha simply answered “briefly and to the point: “I’m not going to tell you.””
