Gulag kilde: Memorandum til statsanklager Vyshinsky om indespærring af mindreårige, 1932

Memorandum to Vyshinsky on incarceration of minors, 14 July 1932.

To the Procurator of the Republic, Comrade Vyshinsky.

In addition to our correspondence no. 7k5/365 of 28 May and no. 7k2/517 of 23 June regarding the question of minors, fifty-six in number, sent out of Moscow under guard, I write once again with the object of directing your attention to the abomination that has been committed against these children. 

Briefly about the course of events: the Moscow joint committee that classifies underage lawbreakers, having considered the question of dispatching this group of children, according to its own resolution of 20 April decided to despatch them all to GUITU (Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel’no-Trudovykh Uchrezhdenii, chief directorate of penal labor institutions) of NKYu (Narodnyi Komissariat Yustisii, Peoples Commissariat of Justice). In the month of April, GUITU sent all fifty-six under guard to Arzamas. Arzamas was not given advance notice of the dispatch of this party. At the Arzamas ITD (Ispravitel’no-Trudovoi Dom, reformatory) at this moment repairs were being done, and for this reason the children could not be domiciled and had to be sent to the Nizhni Novgorod FZTK (Fabrichno-Zavodskaia Trudovaia Koloniia, factory and workshop labor colony), which was already filled beyond capacity.

But the situation was made considerably more complicated by the fact that, except for the 20 April resolution, no documents and decisions had been sent saying why the minors had been taken into custody and how long their term was.

The KUITU (Kraevoe Upravlenie Ispravitel’no-Trudovykh Uchrezhdenii, krai directorate of corrective institutions) head and the krai procurator’s office during the first half of May wrote and sent telegrams to NKYu asking that the documents for the children in custody be sent. In their telegrams they threatened to release all the children if the documents were not sent. From the Office of the Procurator of the Republic they received the answer that they should refrain from releasing the children and send them on instead in compliance with the resolution, but in the resolution, I repeat once again, it was specified, “Send them to GUITU NKYu.” Once again they received notification that the matter would be cleared up quickly.
The minors meanwhile began to starve and knife one another, bored with being in FZTK, (and) not waiting for the “quick” decision in the matter we, in spite of the Office of the Procurator of the Republic’s prohibition, on our own began distributing the children, to the FZU (Fabrichno-Zavodskoe Uchilishche, factory workshop school), the Trudkommuna (Trudovaia kommuna, work commune), some we returned to their parents as having been illegally held, a few we released.

And, finally, in the first days of July we received from the Office of the Procurator of the Republic the 19 June resolution of the Standing Committee (Dezhurnaia Komissia) regarding the minors. According to this resolution, twenty-four of the fifty-six by committee decision were to be sent to work assigned by the Labor Board (Otdel Truda).
Comrade Vyshinsky, in our memorandum of 28 May we asked that suitable measures be taken against persons guilty of procrastination, but this matter has turned out to be considerably worse…

Who thought it necessary to bring in twenty-four persons, fifteen- and sixteen-year-old children, send them under guard to Arzamas, then under guard to Nizhni-Novogorod, keep them as prisoners for several months, and all this so that they be sent to work by the Labor Board?

Since when in the USSR has there been a procedure established for sending minors off to work in this way?

I request that this matter be investigated and a report drawn up of measures taken.

- Deputy Krai Procurator Ovoshchnikov
(On the document is a handwritten postscript)

To the deputy secretary of VtsIK, Comrade N. Novikov

I am forwarding a copy of the krai procurator’s memorandum. I ask that you take appropriate measures quickly. I report that as of (date undecipherable) the young children still had not been taken from the reformatory and have contact with adult criminal types. During visits with prisoners, I had occasion to see these children. They do not know why they in particular were sent, for there were many others. Report the results.

2 August 1932

VtsIK Instructor Novikov.