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Dreams and Realities of a Soviet Childhood in 1933
Dear grandfather Kalinin ...
My family is large, there are four children. We don't have a father - he died, fighting
for the worker's cause, and my mother ... is ailing ... I want to study very much, but
cannot go to school. I had some old boots, but they are completely torn and no
one can mend them. My mother is sick, we have no money and no bread, but I want
to study very much. ...there stands before us the task of studying, studying and
studying. That is what Vladimir Ilich Lenin said. But I have to stop going to school.
We have no relatives and there is no one to help us, so I have to go to work in a
Vactory, to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, I am 13, I study wel
and have no bad reports. I am in Class 5 ...
Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker to Kalinin, Soviet President
the from: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody (Moscow, 1997).
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Answers
Answer:
It was a cold and grey afternoon in early November, 1984, when I, a first grader in Kharkiv—a city in what was then Soviet Ukraine—walked home after school with high spirits and feeling ready to conquer the world. In a solemn ceremony on the eve of the anniversary of the Great October Revolution, I, together with my fellow classmates, had just been admitted to the Little Octobrist organization—the gateway for all young, aspiring Soviet communists.
Despite the wind and freezing cold, I unbuttoned my coat for everyone on the street to see my new, shiny, little red star badge, emblazoned in its center with a golden portrait of Vladimir Lenin as a child. It was pinned to the left side of my chest, closer to my heart. I imagined that the little star shone, as if luminescent; an enchanted beacon. I took off my hat so that a sparkly barrette in my hair would complement the glow of the little red star. I hoped someone would ask me about it. But no one did.