On February 6, 1938, the Soviet political police arrested a Moscow Jew named Solomon Levenson; he was tried, convicted, and shot—a detail his family would not learn until 2009. Levenson was one of hundreds of thousands of victims of Stalin’s Great Terror, which disproportionately targeted Jews even though historians still debate the role played by anti-Semitism in these events. Having traveled to Moscow in search of more information, Dovid Margolin—Levenson’s great-grandson—discovered that the memory of Stalinist crimes is rapidly being repressed:

I hadn’t planned to enter the building [where the Levensons had lived], but the front doors opened with only a slight tug, so I let myself in. I knocked on what I thought was the correct apartment and explained that my grandmother had once lived here and if it was okay, I would love to take a look around. Strictly speaking, Moscow is the last place in the world where strangers allow you into their apartments (Muscovites do not give directions on the street, either, insisting briskly that they have not the slightest knowledge of whatever location you are seeking), but I got lucky. The kind Jewish woman who ended up being on the other side heard me repeat my familiar-sounding name, viewed my Semitic features through the peephole, and, after unlocking multiple chains and deadbolts, finally let me in.

“This is not your grandmother’s apartment, though,” she told me. “Three generations of my husband’s family have lived here.” . . .

The woman was friendly and helpful, pointing out the places where the Soviets had built walls to split up apartments and various landmarks my grandmother had mentioned to me. But each time I brought the conversation to the central thought on my mind, Stalin’s early-morning arrest of my great-grandfather from the same musty apartment building that I found myself in, she waved it off, preferring to focus on the more pressing issues at hand.

“What Stalin?” she dismissed. “Today we have one tsar, we have Putin, that’s all. Everyone has already forgotten all the rest of it.”

I mentioned to her that it seemed to me that Russia had never made a proper reckoning of its past. “Of course. That’s because we all, probably, were caught up in this,” she answered. “I hate the subject. I don’t even like to think about it.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.