Document 133

Letter from Komsomol'skaia Pravda correspondent Finogenov to deputy editor

Porel'shtein, 14 November 1937

TsKhDMO, f. 1, op. 23, d. 1267, ll. 44-45. Typewritten original.

The story of this infuriating case was the same in the rest of the schools as well. After ascertaining these facts, the obkom of the VKP(b) censured Comrade Liubin, secretary of the Leningrad Obkom and City Committee of the Komsomol for unacceptable conduct. But the Komsomol obkom and city committee are not checking even now to see how the correction of outrages that have occurred is proceeding on site. At some schools, such as School No. 21 in October Raion, instead of immediately returning the kerchiefs and badges to the Pioneers, Komsomol organizers and Pioneer leaders are conferring on how best to do this in an educational sense, and they have yet to communicate anything to the youngsters.

Today [Leningrad's] Mosraiono [Moscow Raion Board of Public Education] distributed the following directive to schools and kindergartens: remove pictures of Comrade Stalin with Young Pioneer Markizova from the walls, since her father is an enemy of the people. Rather than expose this vile provocation, the raion's kindergarten and school functionaries immediately began to carry out the directive. People at the Mosraiono say that they were told to do this by the Moscow Raikom of the Komsomol and the department of schools of the VKP(b) raikom. Only late in the evening did someone telephone from the party's city committee to the raiono and demand immediate cancellation of this absurd and patently counterrevolutionary order.

The new directive from the party's city committee canceling this provocative order has not yet reached some schools, so what took place at many other schools is now happening there. Certain people seized on the counterrevolutionary directive to advise youngsters to burn their kerchiefs, which several youngsters did.