Tag #135261 - Interview #78133 (Faina Khorunzhenko)

I finished school in 1938. But as they said, we were unlucky, because in 1937, the Stalinist repression started, and many teachers of our school were arrested. [The interviewee is referring to the Great Terror.] [5] We could never get the whole picture and believed everything we were told. All the teachers of the basic subjects at our school had been arrested. Somebody put 'B's' into all our high school certificates, so that we would have some grades, but not be able to get special golden medals [for graduation with honors from high school], which would have enabled us to enter institutes and universities without exams. But in general, all the students who studied well entered institutes, including Jews. Moreover, when I was already a student of the Sumy Teachers' Institute, I was rewarded with Stalin's scholarship, which was introduced in 1939 in honor of Stalin's 60th birthday. This scholarship was worth 700 rubles, while the regular one was only worth 250 rubles.