Document 153

Letter of K. Ya. Chekina to Kalinin requesting return of passport, 1937

GARF, f. 7523, op. 23, d. 202, ll. 96-96ob. Original manuscript.

M. I. Kalinin! Please take notice of the outrage that is being perpetrated against us. There is a limit to such outrages. I have already appealed five times to government bodies to look into my case, but to this day for some reason they have kept silent or have brushed me off with some little notes. I ask you to return my passport, which the Leningrad Passport Department took away from me on 6 July 1937, and give me an opportunity to graduate from the institute, or to go back to my child, who is now in the Western Oblast at Seshcha station.

I have been without a job, without shelter, without a piece of bread for seven months already. Am I supposed to drop dead just because I have a child from somebody who was sentenced to five years under Article 58? Children are not responsible for their fathers. I am a medical student, I was torn away from my studies, why? I consider my exile absolutely wrong, so I ask you to return my passport and allow me to graduate from the institute and have an opportunity to bring up my child. Innocent people should not be so cruelly punished. Leningrad procurator Rozanov tricked me when he told me that I have a right to study. Where is that right? I know the Constitution, and somehow this is not working out that way. I ask you to take an interest in the case of Ivan Yakovlevich Chekin, he was convicted on 23 February 1937, and put an end to my suffering.

My address is the village of Riga, Cheliabinsk Oblast, Galkinsky Raion. Ksenia Yakovlevna Chekina.