Document 149

Letter from A. Sol'ts of Party Control Commisssion to Vyshinsky, 5 January 1932

RGASPI, f. 613, op. 3, d.86, l. 5. Certified, typewritten copy.

Esteemed comrade!

In November I received an appeal from citizen Nikulina, a nanny at a children's home in Moscow, concerning the exile of her children--eighteen-year-old Gavriil, who graduated from school last year and afterwards worked independently of his parents in the town of Maloarkhangel'sk on a state vegetable farm, and thirteen-year-old Vasily, a pupil in a seven-year school. According to her, these youngsters were suddenly arrested last summer and exiled to Kazakhstan as kulaks.

I asked the local procurator to investigate this case and, if the report is confirmed, to determine who issued this muddleheaded resolution and who carried it out.

To this I received a reply, a copy of which is enclosed, in which Comrade Razoryonov, the raion procurator, justifies the exile of these youngsters by pointing out that their parents (with whom they do not live) used to have--prior to 1925--a kulak farm. Incidentally, the dekulakization of the Nikulins was rescinded in 1930. It is clear from the 1929 inventory that all of their property was appraised at 790 rubles--and this raises doubts, of course, about whether the classification of the farms belonging to the old Nikulins as kulak enterprises was correct.

But irrespective of this, I believe that exiling youngsters for their parents' old sins, youngsters who have been reared or are being reared already in our Soviet school, and, on top of that, exiling them without any connection with the exile of their parents, is the height of muddleheadedness and absurdity, which demonstrates a total lack of understanding of our policy toward young people. It turns out that the procurator, who should have prevented this outrage at the proper time, rubber-stamped it, and is now defending it, thinking that everything, as he says, was correct.

Since I believe that this interpretation by Comrade Razoryonov of his tasks with regard to overseeing revolutionary legality carries the risk of further excesses in the raion, I deemed it my duty to report this to you.