Archive of Alexander N. Yakovlev

The repressions of 1937-1938 affected all segments of the population of the USSR. Accusations of counter-revolutionary activities, organizing terrorist acts, espionage and sabotage were brought against both members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and illiterate peasants who could not even repeat the wording of their accusations. The Great Terror did not miss a single territory of the country, did not spare a single nationality or profession. Before the repressions, everyone was equal, from party and government leaders to ordinary citizens, from newborn children to very old people. The material, prepared jointly with the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia and the Living History magazine, talks about how the punitive machine treated the children of “enemies of the people.”

In ordinary life, well-disguised “enemies of the people,” “foreign spies,” and “traitors to the Motherland” differed little from honest Soviet citizens. They had their own families, and children were born to “criminal” fathers and mothers.

Everyone is well aware of the slogan that appeared in 1936: “Thank you to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!” It quickly came into use, appearing on posters and postcards depicting happy children under the reliable protection of the Soviet state. But not all children were worthy of a cloudless and happy childhood.

They put us in freight cars and drove away...

In the midst Great Terror On August 15, 1937, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov signed the operational order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00486 “On the operation to repress the wives and children of traitors to the Motherland.” According to the document, the wives of those convicted of “counter-revolutionary crimes” were subject to arrest and imprisonment in camps for 5-8 years, and their children aged 1-1.5 to 15 years were sent to orphanages.

In every city where an operation to repress the wives of “traitors to the Motherland” took place, children’s reception centers were created, where the children of those arrested were admitted. A stay in a children's home could last from several days to months. from Leningrad, the daughter of repressed parents, recalls:

They put me in a car. Mom was dropped off at the Kresty prison, and we were taken to the children's reception center. I was 12 years old, my brother was eight. First of all, they shaved our heads, hung a plate with a number on our necks, and took our fingerprints. My brother cried a lot, but they separated us and didn’t allow us to meet or talk. Three months later, we were brought from the children's reception center to the city of Minsk.

From orphanages, children were sent to orphanages. Brothers and sisters had practically no chance of staying together; they were separated and sent to different institutions. From the memoirs of Anna Oskarovna Ramenskaya, whose parents were arrested in 1937 in Khabarovsk:

I was placed in a children's home in Khabarovsk. I will remember the day of our departure for the rest of my life. The children were divided into groups. Little brother and sister getting into different places, cried desperately, clutching each other. And they asked not to separate them. But neither requests nor bitter crying helped... We were put into freight cars and driven away...

Photo: courtesy of the Museum modern history Russia

“Aunt Dina sat on my head”

A huge mass of instantly orphaned children entered overcrowded orphanages.

Nelya Nikolaevna Simonova recalls:

In our orphanage there lived children from infancy to school age. We were fed poorly. I had to climb through garbage dumps and feed myself with berries in the forest. Many children got sick and died. They beat us, forced us to stand on our knees in the corner for a long time for the slightest prank... Once, during a quiet hour, I could not fall asleep. Aunt Dina, the teacher, sat on my head, and if I had not turned around, perhaps I would not be alive.

Widely used in orphanages physical punishment. Natalya Leonidovna Savelyeva from Volgograd recalls her stay in orphanage:

The method of education in the orphanage was fist-based. Before my eyes, the director beat the boys, hit their heads against the wall and punched them in the face because during a search she found bread crumbs in their pockets and suspected that they were preparing bread for their escape. The teachers told us: “Nobody needs you.” When we were taken out for a walk, the children of the nannies and teachers pointed their fingers at us and shouted: “Enemies, they are leading enemies!” And we, probably, actually were like them. Our heads were shaved bald, we were dressed haphazardly.

Children of repressed parents were considered potential “enemies of the people”; they came under severe psychological pressure both from employees of child care institutions and from their peers. In such an environment, the child’s psyche suffered first of all; it was extremely difficult for children to maintain their inner peace, to remain sincere and honest.

Mira Uborevich, daughter of Army Commander I.P., executed in the “Tukhachevsky case” Uborevich, recalled: “We were irritated and embittered. We felt like criminals, everyone started smoking and could no longer imagine ordinary life, school.”

Mira writes about herself and her friends - the children of Red Army commanders executed in 1937: Svetlana Tukhachevskaya (15 years old), Pyotr Yakir (14 years old), Victoria Gamarnik (12 years old) and Giza Steinbrück (15 years old). Mira herself turned 13 in 1937. The fame of their fathers played a fatal role in the fate of these children: in the 1940s, all of them, already adults, were convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“counter-revolutionary crimes”) and served their sentences in forced labor camps.

Do not trust, do not fear, do not ask

The Great Terror gave birth new category criminals: in one of the paragraphs of the NKVD order “On the operation to repress the wives and children of traitors to the Motherland,” the term “socially dangerous children” appears for the first time: “Socially dangerous children of convicts, depending on their age, degree of danger and possibility of correction, are subject to imprisonment in camps or correctional labor colonies of the NKVD or placement in special regime orphanages of the People's Commissariat of Education of the republics.”

The age of children falling under this category is not indicated, which means that such an “enemy of the people” could be three year old baby. But most often it was teenagers who became “socially dangerous”. Such a teenager was recognized as Pyotr Yakir, the son of Army Commander I.E., who was executed in 1937. Yakira. 14-year-old Petya was deported with his mother to Astrakhan. After his mother’s arrest, Petya was accused of creating an “anarchist horse gang” and sentenced to five years in prison as a “social dangerous element" The teenager was sent to a children's labor colony. Yakir wrote a memoir about his childhood, “Childhood in Prison,” where he describes in detail the fate of teenagers like him.

The situation of children of repressed parents in orphanages over time required greater regulation. Order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00309 “On the elimination of abnormalities in the maintenance of children of repressed parents” and circular of the NKVD of the USSR No. 106 “On the procedure for placing children of repressed parents over 15 years of age” were signed on May 20, 1938. In these documents, employees of orphanages were required to “establish undercover surveillance of the specified contingent of children of repressed parents, promptly revealing and suppressing anti-Soviet, terrorist sentiments and actions.” If children over 15 years of age showed “anti-Soviet sentiments and actions,” they were put on trial and sent to forced labor camps under special forces of the NKVD.

The minors who ended up in the Gulag were special group prisoners. Before entering the forced labor camp, the “youngsters” went through the same circles of hell as adult prisoners. The arrest and transfer followed the same rules, except that the teenagers were kept in separate carriages (if there were any) and they could not be shot at.

Prison cells for juveniles were the same as those for adult prisoners. Children often found themselves in the same cell with adult criminals, and then there was no limit to torture and abuse. Such children arrived at the camp completely broken, having lost faith in justice.

The “youngsters,” angry at the whole world for their childhood taken away, took revenge on the “adults” for this. L.E. Razgon, a former Gulag prisoner, recalls that the “youngsters” were “terrible in their vindictive cruelty, unbridledness and irresponsibility.” Moreover, “they were not afraid of anyone or anything.” We have practically no memories of teenagers who went through the Gulag camps. Meanwhile, there were tens of thousands of such children, but most of them were never able to return to normal life and joined the criminal world.

Eliminate any possibility of memories

And what kind of torment must mothers forcibly separated from their children have to experience?! Many of them, having gone through forced labor camps and managed to survive in inhuman conditions only for the sake of their children, received news of their death in an orphanage.

Photo from the funds of the Russian Civil Aviation: courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia

Former Gulag prisoner M.K. tells the story. Sandratskaya:

My daughter, Svetlana, died. To my question about the cause of death, the doctor answered me from the hospital: “Your daughter was seriously and seriously ill. Brain functions were impaired, nervous activity. It was extremely difficult for me to endure separation from my parents. Didn't eat. I left it for you. She kept asking: “Where is mom, was there a letter from her? Where's dad? She died quietly. She just plaintively called: “Mom, mom...”

The law allowed the transfer of children into the care of non-repressed relatives. According to the NKVD of the USSR Circular No. 4 of January 7, 1938, “On the procedure for issuing guardianship to relatives of children whose parents were repressed,” future guardians were checked by regional and regional departments NKVD for the presence of “compromising data.” But even after making sure of their trustworthiness, NKVD officers established surveillance over the guardians, the children’s moods, their behavior and acquaintances. Lucky were the children whose relatives, in the first days of their arrest, went through bureaucratic procedures and obtained guardianship. It was much more difficult to find and pick up a child who had already been sent to an orphanage. There were often cases when the child's last name was written down incorrectly or simply changed.

M.I. Nikolaev, the son of repressed parents, who grew up in an orphanage, writes: “The practice was this: in order to exclude any possibility of memories from the child, he was given a different surname. Most likely, they left the name; the child, although small, was already accustomed to the name, but they gave him a different surname... the main objective The authorities who took away the children of those arrested had the idea that they should know nothing at all about their parents and not think about them. So that, God forbid, they do not grow up to be potential opponents of the authorities, avengers for the death of their parents.”

According to the law, a convicted mother of a child under 1.5 years old could leave the baby with relatives or take it with her to prison and camp. If there were no close relatives willing to take care of the baby, women often took the child with them. In many forced labor camps, orphanages were opened for children born in the camp or who arrived with their convicted mother.

The survival of such children depended on many factors - both objective: geographical position camp, its distance from the place of residence and, therefore, the duration of the stage, from the climate; and subjective: the attitude of camp staff, teachers and nurses of the orphanage towards children. The last factor often played main role in a child's life. Poor care for children by orphanage staff led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics and high mortality, which different years varied from 10 to 50 percent.

From the memoirs of former prisoner Chava Volovich:

There was one nanny for a group of 17 children. She had to clean the ward, dress and wash the children, feed them, heat the stoves, go to all sorts of community cleanups in the zone and, most importantly, keep the ward clean. Trying to make her work easier and find some free time for herself, such a nanny invented all sorts of things... For example, feeding... From the kitchen the nanny brought porridge blazing with heat. Having laid it out in bowls, she snatched the first child she came across from the crib, bent his arms back, tied them to his body with a towel and began stuffing him with hot porridge, spoon by spoon, like a turkey, leaving him no time to swallow.”

When a child who survived the camp turned 4 years old, he was given to relatives or sent to an orphanage, where he also had to fight for the right to live.

In total, from August 15, 1937 to October 1938, 25,342 children were seized from repressed parents. Of these, 22,427 children were transferred to the orphanages of the People's Commissariat for Education and local nurseries. Transferred to the care of relatives and returned to mothers - 2915.

,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, senior Researcher State Museum history of the Gulag

First they took my father. , born in 1904, worked as an operator of the main switchboard of the Administration of the Shakhtinskaya State District Power Plant named after Artyom. His wife, Tatyana Konstantinovna, worked as a cleaner in Shakhty. They lived together and raised two daughters - six-year-old Ninochka and two-year-old Galya. It all ended in January 1937, when a “black funnel” stopped at their door.

“I grabbed my dad with a death grip, crying and screaming - for God’s sake, don’t take him. They couldn't drag me away for a long time. Then one security officer grabbed me and threw me to the side, I hit my back hard on the radiator - Nina Shalneva remembered the terrible day of her father’s arrest forever.”

Yakov Sidorovich and his seventeen comrades were declared members of the terrorist Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization, accused of intending to kill the “father of all nations.” In June of the same year, the entire group of accused would be shot.

A few days later the “funnel” came for my mother. “I remember how they took us into a small room. Lattice, desk, black leather sofa. One employee was talking with my mother, and Galya and I were playing. I didn’t hear what he talked to her about. Then she was told to go into the next room and sign. She went. We never saw my mother again. And the security officer started talking to me. He asked who came to visit dad. But I just told him that I wanted to go to my mother. I didn’t want to answer them anything about dad, I loved him so much,” Nina Yakovlevna shows me a photograph of her father - the photograph, removed from the case, was taken shortly before the execution. Her mother, as a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland, was sentenced to 8 years. After her release, she died in exile.

The Korolenko sisters were separated. Nina found herself in Tambov orphanage No. 6. The institution was located within the walls of the Chicherins' house-museum (Tambov).

Looking from the portrait former owner estate, an old clock ticks on the wall, antique furniture around. “37” didn’t have all this, but there was a bedroom for girls. By the way, already in the eighties, Nina Yakovlevna got a job as a caretaker at the Chicherins Museum, where two difficult years of her childhood passed.

Nina, as the daughter of the “enemy,” was greatly disliked by one of the teachers. They didn’t give her a chance to speak at the matinees, which was very disappointing. They didn’t take me to dance either. But the wardrobemaid felt sorry for the unfortunate child. When the girl was transferred from this orphanage in another, she secretly slipped a small photograph into her hand from the teacher, which she secretly stole from the documents. “Remember how you were brought here and that you have a sister, Galya,” the kind woman managed to whisper.

Letter to Comrade Stalin

In the school orphanage she was never reproached. But when Nina was about to join the Komsomol, the following story happened. “I will never forget the face of the woman who accepted me into Komsomol. Her mouth was twisted, her eyes were scary, she bent low towards me and hissed - “Do you want to join the Komsomol? You can't study, you can't do anything. Your father is an “enemy of the people”! It's clear?". But they still took me to Komsomol,” says Nina Yakovlevna.

Thoughts about my beloved father did not leave all these years. When she was 14 years old, she decided to take a desperate step - she wrote a letter to Comrade Stalin asking him to restore justice. But the answer came from one of the Tambov authorities. The letter said that her dad was alive and well and that he would return soon. Much later, chance brought Nina together with this man. “He told me that if my letter had gone further, I could have been sent after my parents. It was impossible to remind about yourself,” the woman is sure. Occasionally, Nina received news from her mother. “She constantly cursed her father and regretted that she had married an “enemy of the people.” She believed them. But it was unpleasant for me to read this, I loved my dad so much,” says Nina Yakovlevna.

It was hard in the orphanage, especially during the war. His students continually worked in the fields, peat extraction. It wasn’t easy for Nina Yakovlevna even after - at the age of 14 she was “released from the orphanage on all four sides.” With difficulty she managed to get a job at a pedagogical school. I had to huddle in a dorm room with 26 of the same students, and in the summer I had to sleep on benches on Lenin Square. Nina Yakovlevna recalls the hungry fainting spells of 1947, how she lived in rented apartments for 17 years and how already in the eighties she went to the city of Shakhty, where she met with her father’s former boss.

The previous post aroused the justified anger of FB users and was deleted. In a link to a LJ post about camps for repressed children of the USSR, an unknown author used photographs of malnourished children from other…

hy pages of the history of Soviet power (in particular, the famine in the Volga region and the blockade of Leningrad. Let’s leave out the question of whether the famine in the Volga region is a consequence of the actions of the authorities. I will not ask questions about the blockade. Not because there are none, but because I foresee an additional holivar ). The question arose: isn’t this a slander against Comrade Stalin? Maybe there were no camps for children? And the children were not imprisoned for political reasons? Where are the facts? I answer.

In the midst of the great “Yezhov” terror, instructions appear on how to behave with the families of “enemies of the people” - operational Order people's commissar Internal Affairs of the USSR Yezhov No. 00486 dated August 15, 1937. We read.

13) Socially dangerous children of convicts, depending on their age, degree of danger and possibility of correction, are subject to imprisonment in camps or correctional labor colonies of the NKVD, or placement in special regime orphanages of the People's Commissariat of Education of the republics.”

We can say that during the cycle of terror of 1936-1938, children were convicted under political charges. (I wonder how many children went straight from orphanages to a colony for “socially dangerous” behavior? The stigma of being a son/daughter of an enemy of the people, presumably, is not very conducive to healthy social behavior. Unfortunately, such statistics have not yet been found).

The comments to the order contain a clarification, humanistic for those times, that, following their parents, only children who had reached the age of 15 were supposed to be judged as enemies of the people. Moreover, developments for the entire family, including children, should have been carried out before the arrest. Apparently, even then it should have been clear how “dangerous” the child was. What fits into the general logic of repression: first, placing an order on a person, then extracting a confession on a given topic, since according to Vyshinsky, “confession is the queen of evidence.”

Nevertheless, in the memoirs of prisoners there are stories about children more younger age, convicted under a political article. (As for Article 58, it had no age restrictions).

What is important is that the children were kept in camps for adults, enduring all the hardships and hardships adult life. Hunger, humiliation, hard labor. In Norilsk, for example, children's colonies began to be separated from adults only in 1940.

It is also worth noting that even children who were not formally repressed were kept in camps for adults with their mothers, practically as prisoners. (in 1936-1937, the stay of children in the camps was recognized as a factor reducing the discipline and productivity of female prisoners. The official period of stay of a child with his mother was reduced to 12 months (in 1934 it was 4 years, later - 2 years).

In the memoirs, children from a family of kulaks, dispossessed back in 28-29 and sent into exile in 33, actually lived with their parents in camp barracks in conditions close to camp ones. De jure these children were not repressed, but de facto who were they and how did they live?

Now, as for convicted children in general - not under political charges. I think we shouldn’t forget about the introduction here death penalty for children from 12 years of age in accordance with the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of April 7, 1935. The range of execution offenses is wide - from theft to murder. I do not have figures - how many children were shot, and although it can be assumed that this measure was not found wide application, it nevertheless testifies to the situation with the “protection of childhood” in the USSR.

What can you say to those whose grandfather, say, was repressed, but whose mother was not touched? Not only weren’t they imprisoned, but they weren’t even taken to an orphanage? Yes, not all children fell into this mechanism. To a certain extent, the decision on the fate of the children was left to the discretion of the NKVD officers leading the case.

“children left unattended after their mother’s arrest are placed in orphanages,
“if other relatives (not repressed) wish to take in the remaining orphans
at your full expense - do not interfere with this,” - directive of the NKVD in pursuance of the Order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Yezhov No. 00486 dated August 15, 1937.

Can you imagine NKVD officers calling relatives with the question: “Would you like to take your children with you?” Of course, no one asked the relatives anything. We managed to pick up the children after the parents were arrested - good. If they didn’t have time, the guys in uniform might send craters for the children, or they might forget. Or score.

Nevertheless, only in the period from August to October 1937, “The Administrative and Economic Department did the following work: In total, 25,342 children were removed throughout the Union. Of these: a) 22,427 people were sent to the orphanages of the People's Commissariat for Education and local nurseries. Of these, Moscow - 1909 people. b) Transferred to care and returned to mothers. 2915 people.”

I will give an example from the memoirs of the wife of the “enemy of the people,” the daughter of K.I. Chukovsky, Lydia Chukovskaya (“Dash”).

L.Ch. I noticed that the wives of those who were given 10 years without the right to correspondence in the years 36-38 (which in reality secretly meant execution) were arrested. And they were sent to colonies for the wives of repressed people. Next or in parallel they came for the children. Chukovskaya believes that this happened within the framework of the unspoken doctrine of “revenge,” which stated that the families of the repressed would definitely take revenge, so “for prevention” it is better to isolate them. But! If women left and hid their children, no one would look for them. That is, there was a certain glitch in the system, a loophole - the system did its main bloody work and was not distracted by the search for secondary citizens - “traitors to the motherland”. Lidia Korneevna left St. Petersburg, the children were taken by relatives - thus they avoided the most bitter fate. (Although they came for her and the children, they only found an empty room). If the husband was given less than 10 years, women and children most likely were not touched at all. Chukovskaya made this conclusion based on observations of the families of those arrested. The text of Yezhov’s secret order and the subsequent directive with clarifications was, of course, unknown to her. But, as is now clear, her observations turned out to be correct.

Jacques Rossi, a French political scientist and linguist who came to the USSR on a Comintern voucher, spent in Stalin’s camps, prisons and exile from 1937 to 1961. In his extensive work “Handbook of the Gulag,” Jacques Rossi notes groups of children who found themselves in the Russian Gulag: 1) camp children (children born in custody); 2) kulak children (peasant children who managed to escape deportation during the forced collectivization of the village, but who were later caught, convicted and sent to camps); 3) children of enemies of the people (those whose parents were arrested under Article 58); 4) Spanish children; they most often ended up in orphanages; during the purge of 1947-1949. Some of these children, already grown up, were sent to camps with sentences of 10-15 years - for “anti-Soviet agitation.”

If we talk about crimes against childhood, to this list compiled by Jacques Rossi, we can probably add children who were not themselves imprisoned, but experienced similar experiences of deprivation, hunger, and camp life. These are the children of special settlers; children who lived near the camps and observed camp life every day. All of them, in one way or another, were involved in the Russian Gulag...

If there are any clarifications, welcome.

February 8th, 2016

Original (website "Your Tambov"): http://tmb.news/exclusive/reportage/zhertvy_rezhima_chtoby_ne_povtorilos_chast_vtoraya/
The repressive policies of the communist government made tens of thousands of children orphans. Fathers and mothers left without care, shot or perished in camps, were sent to orphanages. There, children of “enemies of the people” with a dash in the “parents” column often faced a mocking attitude from both teachers and peers.
In this article we will tell you real stories Tambov residents whose parents were repressed. What it was like to live with the stigma of being the son or daughter of an “enemy of the people”, what the fate of the children of murdered parents was, and what types of punishment were applied to minors at that time, you will learn from this material.

Deprived of a happy childhood
First they took my father. Yakov Sidorovich Korolenko, born in 1904, worked as an operator of the main switchboard of the Administration of the Shakhty State District Power Plant named after Artyom. His wife, Tatyana Konstantinovna, worked as a cleaner in Shakhty. They lived together and raised two daughters - six-year-old Ninochka and two-year-old Galya. It all ended in January 1937, when a “black funnel” stopped at their door.

“I clung to my dad with a death grip, crying and screaming - “for God’s sake, don’t take him.” They couldn't drag me away for a long time. Then one security officer grabbed me and threw me to the side, I hit my back hard on the battery,” - Nina Shalneva remembered the terrible day of her father’s arrest forever. Yakov Sidorovich and his seventeen comrades were declared members of the terrorist Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization, accused of intending to kill the “father of all nations.” In June of the same year, the entire group of accused would be shot.

A few days later the “funnel” came for my mother. “I remember how they took us into a small room. Lattice, desk, black leather sofa. One employee was talking with my mother, and Galya and I were playing. I didn’t hear what he talked to her about. Then she was told to go into the next room and sign. She went. We never saw my mother again. And the security officer started talking to me. He asked who came to visit dad. But I just told him that I wanted to go to my mother. I didn’t want to answer them anything about dad, I loved him so much,” Nina Yakovlevna shows me a photograph of her father - a photograph removed from the file was taken shortly before the execution. Her mother, as a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland, was sentenced to 8 years. After her release, she died in exile.

Signed: Yakov Korolenko a few days before the execution

The Korolenko sisters were separated. Nina found herself in Tambov orphanage No. 6. The institution was located within the walls of the Chicherins’ house-museum, well known to Tambov residents, where Nina Yakovlevna gave me a short tour.

The former owner of the estate looks out from the portrait, an old clock is ticking on the wall, and antique furniture is all around. “37” didn’t have all this, but there was a bedroom for girls. By the way, already in the eighties, Nina Yakovlevna got a job as a caretaker at the Chicherins Museum, where two difficult years of her childhood passed.

Nina, as the daughter of the “enemy,” was greatly disliked by one of the teachers. They didn’t give her a chance to speak at the matinees, which was very disappointing. They didn’t take me to dance either. But the wardrobemaid felt sorry for the unfortunate child. When the girl was transferred from this orphanage to another, she secretly slipped a small photograph into her hand from the teacher, which she secretly stole from the documents. “Remember what you were brought here and that you have a sister, Galya.”, - the kind woman managed to whisper.

Letter to Comrade Stalin
In the school orphanage she was never reproached. But when Nina was about to join the Komsomol, the following story happened. “I will never forget the face of the woman who accepted me into Komsomol. Her mouth was twisted, her eyes were scary, she bent low towards me and hissed - “Do you want to join the Komsomol? You can't study, you can't do anything. Your father is an “enemy of the people”! It's clear?". But they still took me to Komsomol,”- says Nina Yakovlevna.

Thoughts about my beloved father did not leave all these years. When she was 14 years old, she decided to take a desperate step - she wrote a letter to Comrade Stalin asking him to restore justice. But the answer came from one of the Tambov authorities. The letter said that her dad was alive and well and that he would return soon. Much later, chance brought Nina together with this man. “He told me that if my letter had gone further, I could have been sent after my parents. It was impossible to remind about yourself,” confident woman.

Occasionally, Nina received news from her mother. “She constantly cursed her father and regretted that she had married an “enemy of the people.” She believed them. But it was unpleasant for me to read this, I loved my dad so much,” says Nina Yakovlevna.
It was hard in the orphanage, especially during the war. His students continually worked in the fields, peat extraction. It wasn’t easy for Nina Yakovlevna even after - at the age of 14 she was “released from the orphanage on all four sides.” With difficulty she managed to get a job at a pedagogical school. I had to huddle in a dorm room with 26 of the same students, and in the summer I had to sleep on benches on Lenin Square. Nina Yakovlevna recalls the hungry fainting spells of 1947, how she lived in rented apartments for 17 years and how already in the eighties she went to the city of Shakhty, where she met with her father’s former boss.

“I believe that Stalin is responsible for everything. Yezhov is just a performer who did his job and was also destroyed. God forbid these horrors happen again in the future.” , - Shalneva is sure.
Nina Yakovlevna married twice. The first husband, a sailor, died. The second, also from a family of repressed people, died several years ago. She has a daughter, granddaughter and great-grandson.
By decision Supreme Court The USSR case against Y.S. Korolenko was discontinued due to lack of corpus delicti. Korolenko Y.S. rehabilitated posthumously.

Child of Terror
Vasily Mikhailovich Pryakhin was born with the stigma of being the son of an “enemy of the people.” A few black and white photographs and a death certificate are all he has left of his father, whom he has never seen. Arrested at the end of January 1938 on trumped-up charges of spying for imperialist Japan, he, like hundreds of thousands of others, was executed by decision of the Troika.

Mikhail Pryakhin, born in 1894 in the village of Pokrovo-Prigorodnoye. He graduated from a rural school, studied during the First World War, and then taught at a school for non-commissioned officers. After the revolution, he became the first chairman of the local village council.

Repressions affected his family back in 1933. True, then the Pryakhins got off with confiscation of their property. After dispossession they were forced to move to Tambov. Mikhail Romanovich got a job as a supply agent at the Revtrud plant, and life began to improve. There were five children growing up in the family, the wife was expecting a sixth - that was my interlocutor Vasily Mikhailovich.

“My mother told me about the arrest. My father was sent a summons from the police. He left and none of his relatives saw him again. They were only told that their father was given 10 years without the right to correspondence. But in fact, a few days later he was shot,” - says Vasily Pryakhin. Their neighbor, Boris Yakovlevich, then worked in the Tambov NKVD department as a driver, taking the bodies of those executed to the Peter and Paul Cemetery. During one of these flights, he noticed Mikhail among the corpses, which he secretly shared with his wife. But the heartbroken woman is still long years believed that her husband was alive - the next ten years passed in painful anticipation of a miracle.

“Some neighbors pointed their fingers at me and said, “Here he is, the enemy of the people.” The boys I played with on the street also teased me. Although there was no hatred in their words. But this is all nonsense. The main thing is that we are left with six children with one mother. It was very difficult. This can only be understood by those who have experienced it all,” - Vasily Mikhailovich sighs, remembering his difficult childhood.

The neighbor reported
Naturally, with such a biography, he was barred from joining both the pioneers and the Komsomol. Little Vasya understood this perfectly, taking it for granted.
Ten years passed and my father did not return. The faint hope for a miracle has dried up. Vasily Mikhailovich shows me two death certificates. One, a hoax, dated 1957, states that his father died in custody in 1944 from a stomach ulcer. In another, from 1997, in the column “cause of death” there is “execution”.

“During perestroika, my wife and I went to our KGB department, where we were allowed to familiarize ourselves with my father’s personal file. Only then did we learn that he had been accused of spying for Japan. The case included testimony from four witnesses. These are all my father’s comrades, they worked with him. They were, of course, forced. By the way, my wife and I then signed a subscription that we would not take revenge on them and their relatives. But the informers did not appear anywhere in the case,” says Vasily Mikhailovich.

But he still knows the name of the man who killed his father. Vasily Mikhailovich opens a photo album - two women are smiling in the picture. One of them is his mother. The other is their neighbor down the street. It was her husband who wrote a false denunciation against Mikhail Pryakhin. “Many years have passed since my dad’s arrest. One day, the children of this neighbor, Uncle Misha, come to see their mother. A month before his death. They come and say that it was he who denounced my father and that he sent them to ask my mother for forgiveness. And my mother only answered: “God will forgive.” But I don’t have the authority to forgive and I wouldn’t want to have it,” Vasily Mikhailovich raises a very painful topic for himself.

“First of all, this is the fault of the head of the 1917 coup, Lenin. You always need to go back to the roots. Remember his letters - “poison, hang, shoot, the more the better.” And the cannibal Stalin continued his work" , - Vasily Pryakhin is sure.

The fate of Vasily Mikhailovich himself turned out quite favorably. He entered the railway school, for a long time worked at the Tambov boiler and mechanical plant, in Soviet years was a member of the CPSU. Now on a well-deserved rest.

By the resolution of the Presidium of the Tambov Regional Court of June 5, 1957, the resolution of the NKVD Troika on Tambov region dated February 2, 1938 against Pryakhin M.R. was canceled and the case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence collected.

Were minors executed?
April 7 1935 The resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 3/598 “On measures to combat crime among minors” was adopted, which introduced the application of any criminal penalties to minors, up to and including the death penalty. But was the death sentence carried out? There are conflicting opinions on this matter. But teenagers were sent to camps and prisons.

Tambov artist and local historian Nina Fedorovna Peregud was 16 years old at the time of her arrest. Her father, Fyodor Ivanovich, a master of the TVRZ tool shop, was arrested on November 2, 1941. He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to ten years in the camps. He became a victim of his tenant Mikhail, whom he helped to get a job at the factory and sheltered him at home. He denounced his benefactor for praising German technology. During a search in Peregudov's apartment, security officers discovered the diary of his daughter, a schoolgirl. For these lines she received seven years in the camps:
“For the school to be bombed -
We’re too lazy to learn anything!”
« And, as the pinnacle of joy for those seeking sedition in a modest house on Engels Street, my ill-fated poem, written back in July, was found, forgotten in a cupboard drawer... I will not forget the expressions on the faces of those who conducted the search. They were almost happy... This is what rewarded them for 6 hours of fruitless searching! Eureka!” says Nina Fedorovna’s memoirs.

Tambov historian Vladimir Dyachkov, who studies political repression on the territory of the Tambov region, does not know cases of use capital punishment punishments towards children. At the same time, Vladimir Lvovich gives an example when in 1943, for anti-Soviet poetry, a 14-year-old student of the Uvarov secondary school was sentenced to 7 years of labor camp and 3 years of loss of rights with confiscation of property.
To be continued
Alexander Smoleev.
Part one http://tmb.news/exclusive/reportage/zhertvy_rezhima_chtoby_ne_povtorilos_chast_pervaya/?sphrase_id=203
Original (Site "Your Tambov"): http://tmb.news/exclusive/reportage/zhertvy_rezhima_chtoby_ne_povtorilos_chast_vtoraya/

The word GULAG - an abbreviation of the Main Directorate of Camps OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR - has long become synonymous with long-term cruel tragedy, immeasurable suffering and death of innocent people.

In the 40-volume series “Russia. XX century Documents" published the book "Children of the Gulag. 1918–1956" (Moscow, 2002), dedicated to children who find themselves without parental care in the world of adults. Its publishers are International Foundation"Democracy" and the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace. As stated in the preface to this publication, the book “documents the fate of children who became victims of Soviet power.”
Theoretically, the punitive policy of the Bolsheviks in the first years of Soviet power was based on the distinction between representatives of the working masses, among whom offenders were given extremely lenient punishments, and class-hostile elements who did not deserve leniency. Thus, the Correctional Labor Code of the RSFSR of 1924 states: “The regime in labor colonies, primarily for offenders from among the working people who accidentally or out of necessity fell into a crime, should be closer to the working conditions and routine for free citizens.” The rules for the detention of teenagers from 14 to 16 years old sentenced to imprisonment by the court and “minors from worker and peasant youth - from 16 to 20 years old” look even more lenient in it.
This ideological justification for the emerging Soviet penitentiary system in practice came down to the fact that criminal elements were considered for many decades as “socially close”, in contrast to those convicted under Article 58 - political. The above fully applies to colonies for minors.
The Bolshevik policy led to the destruction of families that were socially alien to them, to the separation of children from their parents in order to give these children a “correct” collectivist education. In practice, orphaned, hungry children from broken morally healthy families, convicted of theft and vagrancy, for collecting ears of corn, running away from factory schools, for being late for work, for speaking the truth, qualified as anti-Soviet agitation, found themselves at the mercy of ignorant, thieving “educators.” ", who encouraged denunciation and the cult of power. All this, of course, was accompanied by propaganda rhetoric. Defenseless children were abused by both “educators” and criminals. The fact that this was, as a rule, the case is evidenced by the recollections of people who passed through orphanages, orphanages and colonies, as well as the reports of the Gulag inspection commissions.
It has long been noted that if you punish not for something, but in the name of something, you cannot stop. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks began to look at children from socially alien strata of society as political opponents. They were taken hostage, tortured, killed. Thus, in the concentration camps of the Tambov province in July 1921, even after the campaign to “unload” them, there were over 450 child hostages aged from one to 10 years.
Then came dispossession, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of peasant children. The bulk peasant families were evicted in full force to remote areas of the country. They were transported under escort, in brutal conditions. One of the letters cited in the collection to the Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee Kalinin about the expulsion of families from Ukraine and Kursk said: “They sent them into terrible frosts - infants and pregnant women who rode in calf cars on top of each other, and immediately the women gave birth to their children ( Isn’t this a mockery); then they were thrown out of the carriages like dogs, and then placed in churches and dirty, cold barns, where there was no room to move. They are kept half-starved, in dirt, covered in lice, cold and hunger, and here are thousands abandoned to the mercy of fate, like dogs, to whom no one wants to pay attention...”
Being in a special settlement, in disastrous places unsuitable for life, in conditions of constant hunger, the children of the special settlers were doomed to extinction. During a survey of the living conditions of special settlers in the special settlement of Bushuyka, it was found that out of 3,306 people living there, 1,415 were children under 14 years of age, of whom “in 8 months, 184 children under 5 years of age died, which amounted to 55% of all mortality in the village... The so-called orphanage, in which the vast majority of children live isolated from their parents... is a barracks with double bunks.”

In Yagoda’s report on the situation of special settlers dated October 26, 1931, the chairman of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Rudzutak, noted: “The morbidity and mortality rate of settlers is high... The monthly mortality rate is 1.3% of the population per month in Northern Kazakhstan and 0. 8% in the Narym region. Among the dead, especially many children junior groups. Thus, under the age of 3 years, 8–12% of this group die per month, and in Magnitogorsk even more, up to 15% per month.”
Unresponsive children, old people and women switched to taiga pasture. Before the fact of mass child mortality from starvation, village commandants were made to understand that they should not strictly adhere to the instructions on exile, which prohibited leaving the place of detention. The commandants were verbally instructed not to prevent children (only children!) from going into the forest and tundra in search of food and attempting to escape to their native lands. And the exiled childhood went into the winter taiga, only to get lost, die from exhaustion or become a victim of predators. In the spring, local authorities in the northern towns of the Urals reported with alarm that many thousands of hungry street children were emerging from the forests. Child homelessness was common in “kulak exile.” In the labor settlements of Zapadlesa alone, at the end of 1934, 2,850 homeless children were identified, whose parents had died or fled. The archives of the Commission under the President of Russia for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression contain letters that indicate tragic fate minor “members of peasant households” who became victims of political repression.
“In 1931, on April 12, my husband was arrested... On May 15, I was deported... They didn’t give me anything with me. Naked, barefoot and hungry, with small children. They sent six children to Narym and she herself was 8 months pregnant. To the north, Narym region, Novovasyugan region along Vasyugan on barges. They unloaded it into a swamp; there was no building. There, children and people died like flies from hunger and cold. My children died there too. For what, and who will answer this question?” These are lines from a letter from M.L. Bazih.
And in 1937–1938. the turn came to the families of ordinary and nomenklatura communists, declared enemies of the people. Their wives and children were scattered among camps and colonies.
Not only individuals, but also entire nations were declared traitors. They were deported, and children died again.
Let the reader not be misled by the category of children referred to in documents as street children. The vast majority are children from destroyed families, their parents were shot, thrown into camps, or they were victims of famines or dispossession. No serious research has been conducted into where the huge number of street children came from. And the children themselves, if they were asked whose they were, would hardly say that their fathers were nobles, priests, officials, industrialists, officers, police officers... The children understood what this threatened them with. They all called themselves victims of famine or children of workers and peasants. This was the situation in the 20s, before collectivization.
Having orphaned millions of children, the Soviet government filled orphanages and children's colonies to capacity with them, and began to “reforge” and “re-educate” them.
In 1921, a Commission was created under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to improve the lives of children, headed by the chief security officer Felix Dzerzhinsky and A.G., who soon replaced him. Beloborodov, who was the chairman of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council in 1918 and was directly related to the execution royal family. The People's Commissariat for Education, the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Justice, and provincial and local authorities dealt with street children. The Politburo of the Party Central Committee has repeatedly dealt with this issue. Stalin pointed out the need to eliminate homelessness. And despite all this, during the entire period of Soviet power they were unable to eliminate homelessness. It was generated by the living conditions created by the Soviet regime. Periodically, the capital and southern cities, but a little time passed and they appeared there again.

The Bolshevik “leaders” not only rewrote history at their own discretion, but also destroyed the memory of those repressed. There are many known cases where young children in orphanages had their surnames changed. And these days, these already old people are still looking for their parents.
The annual reports on the number of minors in GULAG correctional institutions stored in the archives do not reflect the real state of affairs. Numbers in the tens of thousands are just the tip of the iceberg. There is no generalized data about the millions of adults and children who became victims of the “Red Terror”, famines provoked by the Bolsheviks, dispossession and transfer of peasant families to uninhabited areas of the Northern Urals and Siberia, deportation of families from Bessarabia, the Baltic states, the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in 1939-1941 years, deportation of entire peoples in the years Patriotic War. For obvious reasons, such summary reports were unlikely to be requested by senior Soviet leadership, especially after the Nuremberg Tribunal. And even if they existed in single copies, they were not subject to storage. But the surviving documents also testify to the catastrophe that befell the peoples of the USSR. Its consequences are felt to this day.
Of course, there were honest, conscientious people who could not look indifferently at the suffering and death of children. Usually intercessors suffered the same fate as those for whom they tried to intercede. But there were rare exceptions.
In 1933, during passportization (collective farmers were not given passports!), cities were cleared of “declassed elements.” During its course, more than six thousand people were transported from Moscow and Leningrad to Western Siberia and in barges along the Ob River they were “floated” to the North, to Narym, to the island of Nazino, where in the very first days most of them died.
The fact that these exiles did not receive a single gram of bread, about the abuse of them, adults and children, about cases of cannibalism, was written to Stalin and his associates by V.A., who holds the modest position of instructor of the Narym District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Velichko, and a commission was sent to Narym.
“... Set out in the well-known Central Committee and the regional letter to Comrade. Great... the facts were basically confirmed, - we read in the commission's report, - ... we discovered a group of 682 people. labor settlers sent on 14/IX from the Tomsk transit commandant's office for placement in the Kolpashevo commandant's office. The group consisted of children under 14 years old - 250 people, teenagers - 24 people, men - 185 and women - 213 people. This group was housed partly in a cold, semi-enclosed barn, and partly directly under open air near the fires. There were many sick people among them, and in 13 days 38 people had already died... We visited the island of Nazino. When examining it, we found 31 there mass grave. According to local workers of the commandant's office and the district party committee, from 50 to 70 corpses are buried in each of these graves. In general, there is no record of exactly how many people are buried on Nazino Island and who by last name.”
In the book"Children of the Gulag. 1918–1956" published directive documents reflecting the goals pursued by Soviet leaders during the Bolshevik experiment over the country, declassified Gulag and other official documents related to the implementation of these directives, as well as testimonies of private individuals and the victims of repressions themselves - at that time minors .
Some of these documents are presented in the almanac “Russia. XX century. Documentation".