Images of refugee children in cages, on capsizing boats, and in overpacked camps fill our news and social media; yet scholars know that none of this is new and that many liberal democracies continue to fail in the most basic task of acting humanely. Democracies prevent refugees’ entry, push back boats, isolate the displaced on small islands, and prevent people from the dignity of learning and working. Assimilating refugees to a new land often leads to “cleansing” them physically, culturally, and linguistically. However, one of the most brutal dictatorships in human history requestedshiploads of children and provided housing, food, education, and job training all while preserving their native tongue and much of their cultural heritage.

In 1937-38 nearly 3000 Spanish children, mostly Basque and Asturian, fled their country in advance of the Nazi Luftwaffe and the Spanish military coup that sought to topple the democratically elected Republic. Great Britain, for example, refused to provide any aid to the children, leaving it to trade unions, local organizations, and churches. Joseph Stalin, amid the Great Terror in which his regime arrested, tortured, and murdered political rivals, military officers and everyday citizens, prioritized evacuating Spanish children, transporting them by sea to Yalta and Leningrad, and raising them in special boarding schools for fourteen years.

So, what can we learn from the Stalinist period? First, it must be noted that the story I tell in my book Stalin’s Niños is exceptional. Not all refugee children were treated well, particularly Polish children who suffered terribly as adult Poles were purged in a broader destruction of the Communist International (Comintern). The niños, however, were called “little heroes,” presumed future fighters against fascism, and Soviet aid to vulnerable children stood in stark contrast to the silence of liberal democracies and their inaction in the fight against fascism.  

Now well fed and with frequent medical attention, many of the refugee children were initially housed in the luxurious Hotel October in Leningrad. The twenty-two new boarding schools for them were in former palaces and noble estates, some with marble staircases and fishponds. The younger children were sent to the suburbs where the forests and rivers provided fresh air and leisure opportunities.

Soviet education for these refugee children shared some aspects of modern disciplinary education. The boarding schools taught Soviet notions of hygiene and cleanliness, time discipline, and respect for teachers and each other. This was all part of a kul’turnost campaign to create new Soviet men and women who had habits of mind and body good for themselves and the state. The boarding schools embedded this in the vospitanie (upbringing) for the niños so they too could contribute to the USSR, Latin America, or a Spain free from fascism. Rather than replace their hispanidad, Soviet schools taught all subjects in Spanish with Russian as a second language. Spanish literature was read alongside Russian and Soviet literature and students were encouraged to embrace their Basque, Asturian, and Galician cultures and perform for each other and Soviet audiences. This was not the erasure of culture seen among the adoption of Jewish children who were then raised in Christian households or Spanish children stolen and given to Franco’s supporters. Certainly, some culture was erased. Religion was not allowed in the boarding schools and all students were taught to reject such superstition and instead embrace reason. 

Although older students took courses in Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism and learned the heroes of the Russian and Soviet past, patriotic education is also common in democracies at the time and since. Children are not given the opportunity to learn multiple perspectives; they are told their heroes, presented with a selective history, and raised to defend their country and culture. In the Spanish boarding schools, however, the niños learned to love their “two homelands” as the Soviets constructed a Hispano-Soviet identification among the children. Both languages, both cultures, and both histories were taught. Even in the 1970s, growing up in the Midwest of the United States, I did not learn about slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, Indian removal, Vietnam, and all the other dark moments of the American past. So too the Soviet schools highlighted only the positive.

Soviet educators, not Spanish ones, insisted on the humanities, fostered students’ talents, and provided a more balanced education. Despite the Spanish Communist Party’s leader Dolores Ibárruri demanding labourers and engineers for the future Spain, music, drama, and art were common as were field trips to museums, the Bolshoi, and more. The director of the Bolshoi even gave private harmony lessons to a precocious Ángel Gutiérrez. The older children were taught labour skills that, with their language training, allowed them to earn a living in adulthood and merge with their Soviet neighbors, many even marrying Soviet citizens. It wasn’t perfect or even efficient, but it was much better than the warehousing of refugees we still see too much today. 

So why does Stalin, in this instance, look more humanitarian than many leaders today? He realized that children, including refugees, were the state’s responsibility and could contribute to the Soviet Union, Spain, and Spanish-speaking countries. Liberal democracies then and now often claim the moral high ground, but their actions are often limited as refugee fatigue, popular opinion, or budgetary constraints quickly end whatever support they have given to displaced people. The Soviet Union was the only European country to devote state resources for the niños entire childhood and adolescence. In fact, Soviet per capita spending on the niños, even during a second evacuation during World War II, exceeded spending on their own children, thus creating lifelong goodwill. Most countries abandoned Spanish children to the good intentions of civic groups and returned the children to the violence of Franco’s Spain after two years. Although there is little else to like about Stalin, this might be one instance from which we can learn something positive. We cannot rush to return children to sites of violence. They demand our care and attention so that they can become contributing adults to their communities in their original or new homelands. Rather than viewing refugees as vectors of infection and potential economic competition, host countries should celebrate their cultures, skills, and possibilities. Restoring dignity and self-hood to refugees and providing long-term assistance, if necessary, can be positive for the host country and the displaced. 

In the banner image, a group of children sit and lie around a poster that they are designing, laid out on the ground among them. España. Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte. Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica. PS-FOTOGRAFIAS, carpeta 36, folio 2924. You can find this and other open source maps and photographs to accompany Prof Qualls’s book at https://scholar.dickinson.edu/stalinsninos/