From ‘Children of War´ to Soviet Youth: Education, Acculturation and paternalism, 1939-1945

Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which the nearly 3000 children who fled the Spanish Civil War in 1937-38 emerged from the special schools opened for them in the Soviet Union and entered higher education and the labor force. Spanish scholars have collected numerous oral histories, but no one has extensively mined the copious archival material in Moscow. Using Russian sources and Spanish oral histories, this paper will show how the Soviet schools failed to prepare students for independent adult lives. Russian language skills were poorly developed, and the close care within the boarding schools failed to develop a sense of independence or provide the niños with a clear picture of how privileged their lives had become relative to the average Soviet citizens alongside whom they would be working.