Tag #145710 - Interview #78185 (Osip Hotinskiy)

Many of my schoolmates were children of the party officials who resided in the so-called 'House on the Embankment' in Moscow. I was a Komsomol [19] member already. We frequently had meetings where reports of the schoolchildren whose fathers were arrested were discussed. This even became a standard procedure at some point of time. Each student was asked: 'How could you not notice that your father was against the Soviet power?' There was also a common answer: 'I don't believe that my father acted consciously, he was probably drawn into this. Or maybe, it's a mistake...' To give credit to our teachers, none of the children was expelled from school or the Komsomol, but they were reprimanded for relaxing their vigilance. Neither teachers nor children changed their attitude towards these children. Everybody tried to support and help them while in other schools they were expelled from the Komsomol and the children declared a boycott of the 'son of an enemy of the people.'

It also happened that a student reported that his father was arrested and later that his mother was arrested as well. Once, a terrible incident happened. My schoolmate Zelinskiy's father was arrested. Newspapers published materials about the trial of Zelinskiy and the group of people with him. Zelinskiy confessed that he had arranged train crashes by adding glass bits into grease. Even we, teenagers, understood that this was crap and couldn't be true. We reprimanded Zelinskiy's son like we did the others, when all of a sudden he disappeared. The others continued attending school even if both of their parents were arrested, but he disappeared... This was a fearful time.