Soviet Historians- How common was the practice of sending the children of Terror victims to KGB orphanages?

by [deleted]

Reposting because I lacked the foresight to avoid April Fool's Day

This is my first AskHistorians, so I hope I'm doing it right! I am currently an undergraduate studying history, and don't really know where to start on this one, seeing as I do not speak/read Russian. I had come across the mention that after Nikolai Bukharin was executed, his son was taken away from Bukharin's surviving wife. He was subsequently raised without knowledge of his father in a KGB orphanage. This brought a few questions to mind:

  1. How much truth to this is there, and are there any good books discussing the specific case?
  2. I've heard the phrase "children of the enemies of the people"- was this a term used specifically for cases such as this, or was it more of a blanket term?
  3. Finally, like the title asks- how common was the practice of taking children of formerly prominent party members and raising them unawares of their parents' political role?

Thank you in advance for any/all responses, I'll be keeping an eye on this and commenting when I can! :)

Mazius

Son of Bukharin was one year old, when he was taken to orphanage (regular orphanage, not some sort of KGB-orphanage, moreover KGB haven't existed for 17 more years after Bukharin's death). His father was arrested, sentenced and executed, his mother was arrested and sentenced to prison term, he had no living grandparents and in this situation it was reasonable to take him to the orphanage (what other alternative would you propose?)

He was later adopted from said orphanage by his great-aunt (from mother's side) and it was her choice to not let him know who were his parents. Btw his mother re-married and gave birth to two more children after her prison term.

Also Bukharin was married three times, had 2 children with different women, and his daughter Svetlana (was born in 1924 in his second marriage) lived with her mother during 30's and 40's.

Answering to your last question - it was quite rare. It was quite rare in general to assign infant child of "enemy of the state" to orphanage. In most cases, children who had lost legal guardians, and lived in orphanages were older, and could perfectly remember their lives with their families. Also if they were old enough (16 years old AFAIK, but I'm not sure), they could've got real prison sentence, and get into GULAG, instead of orphanage.