One Night in Winter

Moscow, 1945. As Stalin and the Soviet leadership celebrate victory over Nazi Germany, a teenage boy and girl from the city’s privileged political elite are found dead after shots are heard on a bridge. What might have remained a private tragedy is transformed into a state-security case, and children from the same exclusive school are arrested and pressured to testify about one another and about their parents.

The investigation exposes love affairs, family secrets and the vulnerability of even the most powerful households under Stalin. Montefiore based the novel on a real post-war case involving children of the Soviet elite, but the central characters and private stories are fictionalised. Stalin and senior figures such as Lavrentiy Beria are represented under their historical identities, with invented dialogue and interactions used to dramatise the atmosphere of late Stalinism.