Document 147

Letter from special migrant V. Bushmanov to Krupskaia, 23 October 1934

RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 524, l. 98. Typewritten original.

I live in a children's home in the town of Krasno-Vishersk, I want to describe our life how we live at the present time in the northern territory. For now our life here is alright [all right], they feed us well, they give us clothing and shoes and most important they teach us. I, Venia Bushmanov, an occupant of the children's home, am so interested in this life and respect it so much and I really want to learn. I started going to school at seven years of age and finished the fourth group at ten years of age and started going to a FZS [fabrichno-zavodskaia spetsshkola (special factory school), i.e. a school for the children of special migrants] in the fifth group and finished it at eleven years of age. Now, as somebody who is well disciplined, I have been promoted to courses at an editorial office and now I am working although not completely, but all of us are already working with orders and minutes of meetings and so forth. We were all brought to Krasno-Vishersk from the North and none of us has a father or mother, we are all orphans. Our fathers and mothers and we too were banished into exile and dekulakized. Our fathers and mothers died, and we were all brought to the children's home and now we are living here. But there is cheating on the part of the management both by the head of the children's home and by the caregivers. For example I work in the editorial office and every month the head of the general department writes out thirty rubles to me for the month but I never see it, it is credited to the children's home and I need to buy a pencil or some paper and paints and I have nothing to buy it with. If you ask they will not give it to you but we all thank them, except now the one we got[,] the new director of the children's home[,] she takes care of the children and respects them, but the ones we had[,] the old directors[,] they cheated us and sold our food for vodka. Now that is cheating and they insulted us too, but this new director is very nice. Also we are in our second year of living in the children's home it will soon be two years that we have lived in the home without fathers and mothers and have already been re-educated in the new way i.e. Soviet functionaries still call us these special migrants wherever we go it is always special migrant but we are very hurt that we all attend school together, and we are called special migrants. What kind of special migrants are we when we have been re-educated in the new way we go to defend the Soviet Union I repeat to you once again that I want to learn very much and I respect Soviet Rule because they give us enough to drink and eat and most important they teach us. I, Bushmanov, an occupant of a children's home am typing on an Underwood typewriter and ask you to write a letter back to me and send regards to all the caregivers in the children's home and thank our children's home director Baiandina for the fact that they respect the youngsters very well and come to teach us and in short re-educate us in the Soviet way.

For now goodbye Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia I look forward to a letter from you for which I will thank you very much.

I Venia Bushmanov will study and study.