Document 154

Letter of Boris Trapezontsev to Presidium of Supreme Soviet requesting release of his mother from exile, 8 December 1938

GARF, f. 7523, op. 23, d. 200, ll. 1-2. Original manuscript.

To the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet

cc: Procurator of the Union of the USSR [sic]

From Boris Trapezontsev, a resident of Leningrad on Mytnikovskaia Embankment, 3, apt. 5.

Pupil in the 7th grade at school No. 14 in Petrograd Raion

Petition

I am a pupil in the 7th grade at school No. 14 in Petrograd Raion, Leningrad, I request that you consider my petition.

On 17 January 1938 my mama Anna Pavlovna Trapezontseva was exiled from Leningrad to Liski in Voronezh Oblast in the case of my father Gavriil Borisovich Trapezontsev, who was arrested in Leningrad on 27 October 1937, and in January 1938 he was exiled to the Far East. My mother's sister, who works at the State Hermitage, became my guardian. I spent last summer with my mother in her place of exile. I found her in very grave condition, destroyed by grief and her separation from me. True, she is now working in her vocation--as a teacher at a first-stage school on a kolkhoz at Pykhovo station (Voronezh Oblast). Mama writes me in her letters that the youngsters have come to love her and the school administration values her as an experienced educator, yet she gets no peace thinking of the school that she was forced to leave in Leningrad. She is suffering a lot. I am only fourteen years old. I lived my whole life with my parents. I don't know what my father was guilty of--nobody has given us any answers, even though mama stubbornly tried to get some. I only know that my mama is not guilty of anything. I ask you to review the case and return mama, since it is very painful for me to live and study by myself.

Please, I beg you, answer my letter. I can hardly wait. I am enclosing a character reference from her former job.

Boria Trapezontsev

8 December 1938