Document 156

Letter from M. I. Simenova to G. M. Dmitrov, 10 May 1938

RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 61, l. 18. Typewritten copy.

Comrade Dimitrov!

It will seem odd to you why I am writing to you rather than to Comrade Stalin. I wrote to him too and more than one letter, but apparently they don't pass along letters to him from such little and illiterate [people], and that is wrong: we learned to read and write under Soviet rule and we write the best we can. He himself called on us to give reports on disturbances, of which we still have quite a few in our country, and the truth about the situation is being kept from him.

I work in a plant, a Stakhanovite, and I sympathize with the party. A week ago, during the five-day workweek [five rather than the normal six, evidently because of the May Day holiday], my little boy comes home from school and says that all the boys are preparing a pogrom and will beat the other nationalities, the Poles, Latvians and Germans, because all their parents are spies. When I questioned him about who says this, he said one boy's brother is a Komsomol member and works in the NKVD and said that all the foreign spies who live in Moscow will be put on trial, and their families and children in school will be beaten up like the yids were under the tsar. I went to see the principal at school, and he says the parents are to blame for this, I [he] can't keep track of all the talk that goes on . . . .