Tom Rob Smith sets Child 44 in 1953, the final year of Joseph Stalin’s rule, an era defined by extreme state control, widespread political violence, and ideological rigidity. Stalin rose to power in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution, and it was ultimately his vision that prevailed in the wake of Vladimir Lenin’s death. As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Stalin undertook a program of intensive economic centralization and agricultural collectivization; the latter contributed to widespread famine between 1930 and 1933. The crisis was particularly severe in Ukraine, where it may have reflected a deliberately genocidal policy aimed at quashing the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The degree of intentionality behind the famine, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, remains a subject of dispute, as does the death toll, though it likely killed somewhere between 3.5 and 7 million people (Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. “Holodomor.” University of Minnesota). In Child 44, the extreme deprivation experienced during the Holodomor serves as the origin story of the murderer, Andrei Trofimovich Sidorov.

Stalin’s regime was also marked by a ruthless suppression of dissent, particularly during the era known as the Great Purge or Great Terror. Following the murder of Communist leader Sergei Kirov (possibly on Stalin’s orders) in 1934, Stalin seized the opportunity to purge the Communist Party of both political rivals and ideological disagreement via a series of show trials, as well as more sweeping mass arrests and executions. Among those killed was Nikolai Bukharin, the head of a more conservative faction within the Communist Party, and followers of the more left-wing Leon Trotsky, who had been forced into exile several years earlier. Other groups targeted included kulaks (wealthy peasants), clergy, the military (on charges of plotting a coup), and the Russian intelligentsia. The Great Purge likely resulted in at least 750,000 deaths, and many of those who were not killed were sent to Gulags, forced labor camps where conditions were so brutal that prisoners often died anyway (“Great Terror.” History.com, 2 Dec. 2025). While the Purge ended in approximately 1938, the fear and danger associated with it hang over Child 44, not least because many of the measures instituted at the time—for instance, the law making families liable for their relatives’ crimes—remained on the books.

The fear of “wrongthink” particularly colors Child 44’s depiction of the central murder investigation. As the novel explains, official Marxist-Leninist doctrine held that crime was a social disease born from the inequality and poverty of capitalism. In a theoretically perfect, classless communist society, serious crimes like murder were considered impossible; such offenses would naturally “wither away as poverty and want disappeared” (26). Consequently, acknowledging the existence of a serial killer was an act of political treason, as it directly contradicted the party’s claims of a superior society. In the novel, this doctrine forces Leo Demidov’s investigation underground. Leo’s search for a predator who preys on children becomes a subversive act, a desperate hunt for justice in the face of a state apparatus built on denial.