The Children of Russia () were the 2,895 children evacuated to the Soviet Union by the authorities of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. During 1937 and 1938, the children were sent from the Republican zone to the Soviet Union to avoid the rigours of war. Spanish children were sent to several other countries as well as Russia during this period and they are more widely referred to as Children of War ().
At first, the Niños enjoyed a warm welcome and decent treatment from the Soviet authorities, as the Spanish Civil War raged on. However, when the Soviet Union entered into World War II and the Nazis invaded the areas where the Niños had been housed, they had to endure the harsh reality and deprivations of the war once more. The Niños were not able to leave the USSR during the war, and due to the political differences between the countries, the right-wing Francoist regime in Spain treated those who finally returned with suspicion.
The first of the Niños to be repatriated was Celestino Fernández-Miranda Tuñón, who arrived in Spain on 7 January 1942. He had fought in the Soviet army and been taken prisoner by the Finns in Karelia.
Some of the Niños de Rusia returned to Spain between 1956 and 1959 and others moved to Cuba during the 1960s, but a significant number remained in the USSR.
According to the archives of the Centro Español de Moscú (Spanish Center in Moscow), 239 Niños de Rusia of Spanish origin were still resident in the territories of the former Soviet Union in February 2004.Colomina Limonero, Immaculada (2005). Breve historia de los niños de la guerra de España en Rusia. Biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Moscú.
The evacuations As the Spanish civil war (1936–1939) progressed, conditions became very harsh in the Republican controlled areas, so children at risk from the conflict were evacuated to other countries. The evacuations were organised through the National Council for Evacuated Children, created for this purpose by the Popular Front government. France took c. 20,000 children, Belgium 5,000. The United Kingdom took 4,000, Switzerland took 800, Mexico took 455 and Denmark took 100 evacuee children.Alted Vigil, Alicia (2005). «El “instante congelado” del exilio de los niños de la guerra civil española» , revista Deportate, Esuli, Prófughe, n.º 3, págs. 263–281.
Four transports of evacuees (Niños), totalling 2,895 children were sent to the Soviet Union between 1937 and 1938, 1,197 girls and 1,676 boys.Devillard, María José; Pazos, Álvaro; Castillo, Susana; y Medina, Nuria (2001). Los niños españoles en la URSS (1937–1977): narración y memoria. Barcelona: Ariel. ; pág. 12. The evacuations from Valencia and Barcelona were made up of children or relatives of pilots or the military.Castillo Rodríguez, Susana (1999). Memoria, educación e historia: el caso de los niños españoles evacuados a la Unión Soviética durante la Guerra Civil Española. Tesis doctoral. Madrid, pág. 43. The evacuations were organised through the government of the Spanish Republic, the Soviet Union and the International Red Cross, with the selection of the children and their adult companions made through calls to the public. The evacuations were sometimes undertaken with great urgency because of the proximity of Francoist Nationalist troops. This led to a number of cases of confusion and loss of children (lost on the journey from one province to another, or where parents who thought that their children were going to France and not to the Soviet Union). +Spanish children evacuated to the USSR between 1937 and 1939 *Sources: Russian Red Cross / Fundación Francisco Largo CaballeroNumber of childrenDeparture dateOriginPort of departure72March 1937 / 21/03/37Madrid and ValenciaValencia1765 / 149512/06/37 / 13/06/37País Vasco (Basque Country)Bilbao (Santurce).800 / 110023/09/37 / 24/09/37AsturiasGijón (El Musel).76 / approx. 300October 1938 / end of 1938BarcelonaBarcelona1301939n/an/a52Post warn/an/a * The data in black is confirmed by both sources, otherwise they differ or only appear in the source in which they are coloured. The total number of 2895 children is that given by the Red Cross, endorsed by historians Alted Vigil, Nicolás Marín and González MartellAlted Vigil, A. Nicolás Marín, E. González Martell, R. (1999): Los Niños de España en la Unión Soviética; De la evacuación al retorno, 1937–1999. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero , Madrid, 1999.La diferencia en las cifras podría deberse a la confusión reinante los días previos al embarque en los diferentes transportes. Así, en Castillo Rodríguez, Susana. Memoria, Educación e Historia: el caso de los niños españoles evacuados a la Unión Soviética durante la Guerra Civil Española. Tesis doctoral. Madrid, 1999. Página 85, se lee:
Most of the child evacuees came from the Basque Country, Asturias and Cantabria, areas that had been isolated from the rest of the Republic by the Francoist advance.Exposición: El exilio español de la Guerra Civil: Los niños de la guerra. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero. Several of the transfers were made on merchant ships, in which the children travelled crowded in the holds. According to the agreement with the Soviet Union, the children were to be between five and twelve years old, although there is evidence of cases of concealment or falsification of some of the Niños children's real ages, with some sources indicating that the actual ages ranged from 3 to 14 years.Colomina Molinero, Inmaculada. El Rusiñol. Adaptación cultural y lingüística de los exiliados españoles en la antigua Unión Soviética. En Congreso Internacional "La Guerra Civil Española". Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales.Informe de la Dirección General de Inmigración de 11/05/06. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración, Gobierno de España. A small group of adults (aged between 19 and 50) accompanied them to take care of them and to continue their education.
Las Casas de Niños (The Children's Houses)
The reception given to some of the evacuees in Leningrad was akin to a party. The Niños children were seen as demonstrating Soviet support for the fight against fascism in Spain. The Soviet authorities were concerned with children's hygiene, food and health. They were distributed to different reception centers, the "Casas de Niños" (Children's Houses) or "Casas Infantiles para Niños Españoles" (Children's Houses for Spanish Children), some of which were small palaces that had been expropriated during the October Revolution. In these houses, the Niños were cared for and educated, taught mostly in Spanish, and by Spanish teachers (mostly women), but following the Soviet educational model. Communist propaganda portrayed them as the future political elite in a Spanish socialist republic which would emerge from victory in the Civil War. The children and their families believed that their time in Russia would be short, and in their later testimonies they confirm that they were happy with the adventure of travelling to a foreign country.
At the end of 1938 there were a total of sixteen Niños houses in the Soviet Union. Eleven of them were located in the current Russian Federation: one in the center of Moscow (known as Pirogóvskaya),Castillo Rodríguez, Susana. Memoria, Educación e Historia: el caso de los niños españoles evacuados a la Unión Soviética durante la Guerra Civil Española. Tesis doctoral. Madrid, 1999. Página 40. two in the Leningrad area (one in Pushkin, current Tsárskoye Seló, 24 kilometers south of the city; one in Óbninsk) and 5 in Ukraine (including one in Odessa, one in Kiev and one in Yevpatoria). Life in the Children's Houses is generally remembered by the surviving Niños as a happy interlude during which they received a decent education.
Second World War The Niños's fate changed with the start of the Second World War. Soviet interest in the Niños decreased after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and with the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in August 1939, which assured non aggression between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Soon after Germany, and then the Soviet Union invaded Poland, creating a new boundary between the two powers. The pact was fully terminated in June 1941. The Niños houses were dismantled due to the dangers of Nazi invasion. When the German army besieged Leningrad, and moved towards Moscow, and into Ukraine in the south, all the areas where the Spanish children had been placed were compromised. The Niños children in the two houses of Leningrad endured the blockade of the city by the German army during the harsh winter of 1941 to 1942. 300 Niños children were evacuated once the fence could be opened, crossing the frozen lake Ladoga in trucks.Testimonio de dos 'niñas de Rusia' en Jaca El sueño igualitario. Boletín del Coloquio "El republicanismo en la historia de Teruel n.º 13. Grupo de Estudios Masinos. Ayuntamiento de Mas de las Matas. Ed. Cuadernos de Cazarabet, pág 21 (Fuente: Diario del Altoaragón). Gradually, and with the agreement of the Communist Party of Spain, the different Niños houses were evacuated to areas considered safer, in some cases quite remote, near the Ural Mountains and Central Asia.
Living conditions in the "second exile" worsened markedly. Many children died or fell ill. Tuberculosis and typhus, together with the extreme temperatures of the Soviet winter and a poor diet, claimed numerous victims. Many of the older boys enlisted in the Red Army. Many chose to fight against fascism in Russia just as their parents did in Spain, and to repay the people who had received them and cared for them until the arrival of war. However, there were also cases of retaliation by the Soviet Union itself when there were challenges to communism. Dr. Juan Bote García, who had accompanied the children as a teacher, was arrested and was interned in the Karagandá concentration camp for refusing to educate the children in a Soviet way, wanting "less Marxism and more mathematics".The tragedy or Karaganda De libcom.org (en inglés).
130 Niños enlisted in the Red Army and served in the defense of the main cities of the country, especially in the battles for the defense of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, some were decorated for their military service. Seventy Spaniards died in the Siege of Leningrad, 46 were children or teenagers.
The rest of the Niños were no luckier. The transfers across the Soviet Union took them to remote places such as Samarkand or Kokand (present-day Uzbekistan), Tbilisi (present-day Georgia), or Krasnoarmeysk (in present-day Saratov Oblast, Russia).
The most shocking testimonies come from this period: hunger, disease, crime, rape and prostitution.Vidal, César. Los juguetes rotos de Stalin y . Artículo en la "Revista del Domingo" del Diario La Vanguardia. 14/06/98: Various sources refer to the existence of Niños gangs dedicated to stealing. The Republican military commander Valentín González El Campesino refers to the existence of a gang of Spanish children in Kokand, who refused to mix with Russian children, and who used the flag of the Spanish Republic as an emblem. González said that when one of those children was captured and executed, it was not in his role as a bandit, but as a supposed "Falangist".González González, Valentín. Vida y muerte en la URSS (1939–1949). Texto completo (en inglés) de la edición de International Press Alliance Corporation. Nueva York, 1952. Páginas 95–96.