Everything I know about the children of Russia comes from what a neighbor once told me. He was one of those kids who came from the Spanish Republican side to the Soviet Union. But what my neighbor told me one day as a simple anecodtha, was summed up in childhood experiences of the trip and the reception in the distant country. A few bad memories sifted through the imagination of a 6 or 7 year old kid.
Fundamental motivations are something that you now know more deeply but are not in the least interested in. He lived what he had to live and said, he does not pretend to know more about the historical context in its most committed aspect.
In this book Children of Russia you can know everything that surrounded those particular circumstances of childhood exile. My neighbor was lucky and came back soon. But the truth is that there were those who already stayed out there, now completely integrated and accustomed, although then it was simply by circumstantial imperative.
Because the circumstances of these children were very unique. They were warmly welcomed in the late 30s. But with shortages and the unleashed violence of World War II, Russia became an especially inhospitable place for all of them.
And there came a time when the stay of Spaniards in the USSR was used by Franco as a system of espionage from within. What those Spaniards could come to know could be translated into useful information for Hitler. Bringing those Spaniards back as an atonement for leftist sins in exchange for information was a compromising task in which even the CIA got involved.
A real odyssey for some kids who, without knowing anything about their destiny, were constantly walking a tightrope. Their lives were transformed into currency of exchange, currency of useful information. After the Second World War, with its cold war remnants between the US and the USSR, once again those circumstantial inhabitants of Russia were used to obtain information.
You can now buy the book Children of Russia, the latest by Rafael Moreno Izquierdo, here: