Stalinist terror not only killed and destroyed lives of innumerable innocent prisoners, but deeply affected also their closest relatives, wives and children’s. Nowadays, there are many books published in Russian from those who suffered excruciating pains during Stalin's purges, being members of families labelled "enemies of the people". The term appeared in 1926 and called for the punishment, not only for the perpetrator (or falsely accused of it), but for his wife and children. In August 15, 1937 there was an NKVD operational order number 00486: "On operations repression of wives and children of traitors". One wonders what happened to children who were in apartments after their parents had been arrested? For a few of them (see my family …show more content…
"There was very severe hunger and beatings, lack of suitable clothing and very poor heating. Even worse was the fate of those children in periods of collectivization and expulsions. They went with their parents to so-called special settlement areas. These settlements were in godforsaken places unsuitable for life. Facing conditions of constant hunger, the children of these exile areas were genuinely doomed for extinction. In a survey of living conditions in one such village (these villages numbered well over a thousand in inhospitable Siberia), Bushuyka, the starting population was 3,306 inhabitants. Among them, 1,415 were children under 14 years old (of which 184 children up to 5 years). All the fragile children had died within 8 months giving a death rate of over 40%. In the village, the so-called children's home in which they were forced to live, isolated from their parents, were just wooden barracks with double bunks". ----------------------------------------------------------- Here is a small but tragic episode of my family history. Note that such families stories exist in almost every family of