CHILDREN OF THE GULAG

W. Alayne Switzer

Prior to the collapse of the USSR, Western scholars had limited access to official government archives. The right to access the archives was strictly regulated and subject to the whims of Soviet officials. With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, scholarly exploration into the extent of Soviet repression expanded at an astounding rate. The opening of official archives to Westerners during the 1990s has enabled historians to document and analyze information previously unavailable to Western scholars. These newly available documents have begun to shed light on the complex and troubled history of the Soviet era and illustrate the considerable gap between official Soviet ideology-based propaganda and the extent of atrocities suffered by a significant percentage of the population.

Bolshevik Party leaders spread slogans promising power. Communist ideology promised a socially harmonious society based on long-term social reform that would eliminate exploitation of the working class and eventually eliminate social classes altogether. All Soviet citizens would realize the full extent of human freedom through cooperative efforts and Soviet children would realize the happy childhood so eloquently described by Tolstoy in his oft-quoted work, Childhood. But the nascent government inherited a countryside ravaged by years of war, civil unrest, disease, and famine. The euphoric vigor was quickly replaced by confusion and tension as Soviet leaders struggled to tackle insurmountable crises with limited resources and little experience.

By the time Joseph Stalin achieved full party leadership the country was irrevocably on the road to becoming a totalitarian state ruled by an iron fist. The Stalinist government let loose a reign of terror upon the countryside through collectivization; dekulakization;2 deportation and exile; and political purges. Millions of Soviet citizens were victimized by Stalin's policies of political repression and many eventually ended up in Gulag labor camps.

The youngest members of the population were not immune to this wave of terror. Countless children were arrested or born in prison and labor camps to women who were pregnant when they were arrested or who became pregnant through rape or camp relationships. Some children were actually arrested along with their mothers and many more children were sent directly to children's homes when their parents died as a result of starvation or war, or who were executed or sent to the Gulag during Stalin's great purges. Oftentimes juveniles convicted of crimes were subject to the same sentencing standards as adults and were sent to prisons or camps to perform "corrective" labor.

Innocent children were caught up in the waves of atrocities inflicted upon the Soviet people under Stalin's leadership. Poverty, illegitimacy, starvation, and poor health care had long been a problem among the underprivileged classes in pre-Soviet Russia, but the policies of dekulakization, collectivization, and the great purges victimized children who historically had known some sense of security and happiness. Children were not overlooked in Stalin's campaigns designed to rid the country of "socially harmful elements." Orphanages and children's homes quickly became overcrowded and the appalling condition of the homes ensured that many children languished or perished.

This thesis sets out to tell the story of these children. I shall illustrate how millions of children were victimized, either directly or indirectly, by Soviet policies of repression. They were abandoned, neglected, and marginalized. Many were sent to corrective camps, orphanages, special settlements and even prisons. Much of this thesis incorporates the voices of the children survivors as depicted in translations taken from Deti Gulaga;3 1918-1956, a collection of documents that includes letters, diaries, and memoirs of children of the repressed during this period. All translations from this source are the authors unless otherwise indicated.

Millions of children fell victim to Stalin's policies of repression. They were orphaned when their parents were caught up in the waves of oppression; they were abandoned by the state and left to fend for themselves on the streets; they were left to starve in the wake of man-made famines that spawned under collectivization; they were neglected and abused in the camps and orphanages; and some were even killed outright. The state chose to use expedience rather than compassion when attempting to solve the problems of homelessness, abandonment, and orphanage. In keeping with their campaign mentality, authorities rounded up the waifs and herded them into children's homes, orphanages, and colonies. When these children became unwieldy as they struggled to survive, the authorities labeled them "hooligans" and shipped them off to colonies or the Gulag. The state's policies, whether directly or indirectly, were nonetheless responsible for creating the"mutilated generation" so aptly described by AI'dona Volynskaia.

Children who were released from the camps and settlements were not released from their suffering. The fortunate ones were able to stay with family members but the majority were abandoned or sent to state orphanages which were seriously overcrowded, dirty, understaffed, and often lethal. Children of political prisoners who were placed in these homes would frequently find themselves accused of counterrevolutionary activities and wrecking.

Many children ran away from the orphanages and ended up living on the streets in the criminal world. Sooner or later they would be arrested and returned either back to the orphanages or to the prisons and camps. Those who did manage to stay out of the camps after being released had difficulty re-assimilating into society.

For those Gulag survivors who had families, returning to them was complicated and often problematic. Unable to shed the camp culture to which they had become accustomed, returnees struggled to find a place in society. The family was the main point of re-entry into society for the survivors but the familial setting had become a distant memory for most and for the children who grew up in the camps it was a completely unknown entity. Reintegration into normal society was a difficult if not impossible task for individuals who had become so thoroughly segregated from society. Family members who had waited for their loved ones to return often didn't understand how to cope with the changed person who returned to their doorsteps. Couples who had remained married during incarceration often found their marriages crumbled shortly after re-assimilation. Couples where both spouses had shared the experience of the camps had a better chance of surviving since they had both "been there."

For Soviet Gulag survivors, the repression continued throughout the victim's lifetime. Freed from the physical surroundings of their prisons they remained captives psychologically, economically, and socially. The effects of their experience with Soviet repression continued to haunt them throughout their lives and they would never escape their sense of being "second-class" citizens. They were faced with the problem of finding housing and employment in a society that rejected them and they lived in constant fear of being re-arrested.

Fear of re-arrest was often with good reason. Zoia Dmitrievna Marchenko had been arrested three times: in 1931,1937 and 1949. She was arrested first for the possession of ant-Soviet literature in the form of notes she had taken while visiting her brother in prison. Her second arrest came for refusing to sign a false deposition against her husband who had been arrested the year before and she was later accused of counterrevolutionary Trotskyite activity.

Suspicious of everything, survivors were perpetually afraid of committing even minor infractions for fear of reprisal. They had lost their youth and in the case of many women, the ability to bear children. the problem of homelessness was not a new phenomenon to the Russian people when the Soviet Union was formed. But Stalinism represented a significant rupture within society that was driven by terror. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the terror abated and the Khrushchev thaw gave the Russian people a glimmer of hope, but it would take many generations to heal the damage created by Stalin's reign of terror.

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