Russia’s Children

This documentary, made in 2022 for the 85th anniversary of the departure of children from Gijón on 23 September 1927, tells the story of “Russia’s children”. (The narration is only in Spanish, but the movie footage and still images alone have an impact.)

In 1937, the Republic sent 2,895 children, mostly from the Basque Country and Asturias, to the Soviet Union. A few hundred more arrived after the end of the conflict. 

The Soviet Union was not the sole country to receive Spanish children. The Republican authorities transported approximately 32,000 children to friendly countries to spare them the horrors of the war. In most recipient countries: France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Denmark, the operation was paid for by local non-governmental organizations, unions, churches, charities, and volunteers. In stark contrast, the government of the Soviet Union, as well as that of Mexico, financed the cost of taking the refugees itself. 

By the end the 1940s, two thirds of all the children sent abroad had returned to Spain. However, those who went to the Soviet Union were not amongst the returnees. While the Francoist regime was keen to have them return for propaganda reasons, both the Soviet government and the Spanish Communist Party wanted to keep in the Soviet Union to prepare them to become the vanguard of a future “democratic” Spain. 

“Russia´s children” were housed in “Children’s Homes”, eleven in what is today Russia and five in Ukraine. Most were set up in repurposed institutional buildings located in parks and natural settings on the outskirts of cities. 

The children received privileges that ordinary Soviet citizens could only dream of. Their temporary new country also offered them educational opportunities, that were inaccessible in Spain, especially for girls. One in four of the children went on to receive a higher education. At the same time, the Soviet authorities made great efforts to preserve the children’s Spanish heritage.

Things changed dramatically for the worse with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Like tens of millions of other Soviet citizens, these young Spaniards became refugees again as they and their teachers were sent to Republics in the south and east. Some ended up fighting on the front, others entered the workforce, and they all suffered hunger, witnessed death, and more than a few resorted to criminality.

In spite of all the initial privileges and opportunities, nobody could repair the fact that, for the most part, the children grew up far away from their families. When hundreds of them were finally allowed to return to Spain in 1957, they often felt alien to both the country and their families. Moreover, by then, many of them also had spouses and children in the Soviet Union who could not travel with them. 

Today, only a few dozen elderly Spaniards still live in what once was the mighty Soviet Union, most of them in or around Moscow. Their situation, in the middle of the economic difficulties of their adoptive country, is partly alleviated thanks to laws to help them passed in democratic Spain.