Children in Conditions of “Peasant Exile” in Kazakhstan in the First Half of the 1930s

Abstract

In the early 1930s, “dispossessed” peasants, along with their families, were evicted from their places of residence to remote regions of the USSR without any court proceedings. A significant number of the exiled peasants was sent to territories that are now part of the Karaganda region. The forced relocation of former kulaks to Kazakhstan was accompanied by the formation of a children’s contingent in special settlements. The socioclass principle determined the policy of the Stalinist leadership in relation to the children of dispossessed parents. A review of historiography suggests that the situation of children in special settlements in Kazakhstan during the first half of the 1930s has not been the subject of special study, and the publications that appeared have addressed only some of its problems. Therefore, the current study is relevant. A holistic view of the history of the “Kulak exile” is impossible without studying the children’s contingent in special settlements. The article analyzes the situation of children living under conditions of “peasant exile” in Kazakhstan in the first half of the 1930s. The key aspects of the stay of the children’s contingent in a special settlement are revealed: daily life, accommodation, housing and household arrangements, food and health care, fertility and mortality. The dramatic fates of children with the social label “children of the kulaks” are shown. The authors found out that the children perceived the expulsion to foreign lands as a tragedy, the collapse of their former lives. In 1930–1933, children in “peasant exile” in Kazakhstan were doomed to a miserable existence and starvation. By the mid-1930s, relatively acceptable living conditions had been formed for them.