Top Secret

To the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian, Belo-russian, and Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republics

To the Commissars of Autonomous Republics

To Chiefs of the Offices of the NKVD in the districts and regions of the RSFSR

In the system of orphanages run by the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, where children of repressed enemies of the people are accommodated, the grossest political perversions are taking place in the business of maintaining and reeducating the children of repressed parents. These perversions result from the fact that the People's Commissariats of Enlightenment are not involved in running these orphanages, and the People's Committees of Internal Affairs of the Union Republics have, in the most inadmissible manner, omitted these most important objectives from their purview.

Virtually no attention is being paid to the business of giving these children a correct political upbringing and preserving a healthy Soviet environment, with the result that in a number of orphanages there occur hostile attitudes towards the children of repressed [parents] that extend, on occasion, to direct insults.

At the same time, in a number of orphanages, children of repressed parents are given unusual, privileged treatment with respect to other children in orphanages in terms of food, clothing, routine etc. [and] supplementary allocations above and beyond the budget are earmarked for these purposes, which is completely inadmissible.

Anti-Soviet, terrorist manifestations occur among the children of repressed parents. Weiskopf, Kellerman, and Zbinevich, wards of the Gorbatov orphanage in the Gorky district, have been arrested for the manifestation of terrorist and diversionary attitudes, as acts of vengeance for the repression of their parents [ . . . ]

In the Fedorovsk orphanage of the Kustanaisk district in the Kazakh SSR mass escapes of children of repressed parents are occurring. The children do not study, because they are beaten up by hooligans [among the other] schoolchildren. Mass debauchery is being observed. Kuchina and Stepanova, children of repressed parents, were raped by the older wards. In the orphanage dining hall, 212 children have a total of twelve spoons and twenty plates. In the bedrooms, there is one mattress for every three persons. Children sleep in their clothes and shoes.

In the Borkovsk orphanage of Kalinin region, wards in the older group raped two eight-year-old [female] wards of the orphanage. As a form of punishment, the teachers of this orphanage force the wards to beat each other up.

In many orphanages, children of the repressed are called Trotskyists, they are persecuted and viewed as enemies [ . . . ]