Document 150

Letter from Kalinin to Krupskaia on rights of children of disenfranchised persons, 13 December 1934

RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 524, l. 92. Typewritten original.

. . . As for the children of persons who have been stripped of their voting rights, the main question with regard to them was the question of granting them political rights, i.e. the right to vote in elections to soviets. At present our law on the voting rights of children of disenfranchised persons has been resolved in the affirmative for them. In this connection the issue of hiring them for jobs is also resolved. We must only try to see to it that Soviet laws are not distorted in the provinces, and in instances when excesses are committed, these excesses must immediately be eliminated. The most important point is not to allow anybody to be dismissed from their job for the sole reason that one's parents are disenfranchised persons.

With regard to education, children of disenfranchised persons cannot be expelled from the system of compulsory education. As for their admission to higher and specialized educational institutions, in consideration of the generally strong craving for studies, when we are obliged to deny places in higher educational institutions, higher technical institutions and other educational institutions to many children of workers, office clerks and kolkhoz farmers who have not been stripped of their voting rights, it would be wrong to issue a directive that children of disenfranchised persons are to be admitted. This does not preclude the possibility, of course, that in certain instances the most capable children of disenfranchised persons, who have excelled in their jobs, may be placed in a higher educational institution, technicum or the like. I don't think there is any reason to raise this issue in the press.