Tag #147807 - Interview #78423 (Mikhail Plotkin )

By 1929 I had finished only five grades: four grades of elementary school and one grade of high school. I had to continue my studies or find a job. There was unemployment at that time. Nobody waited for such a ‘responsible employee’ as me, nobody kept a place for me. In August I went to the labor registry office. It was located on Maxim Gorky Prospekt. I came there and told them that I was 14. They replied, ‘Grow up.’ I came back in two days and said, ‘I am 15.’ ‘Well, a 15-year-old is fine. We are taking on apprentices for the FWS [i. e. factory and works school] located in Malaya Okhta [industrial district north-east of Leningrad]. There is a cooperative of the reinforcement trust. They train metal workers, lathe operators. Do you want to go for this training?’ I said, ‘If you accept me, I will go.’ So they put me on the list. I went to the FWS with an assignment and became an apprentice. 

When I came to the FWS with an assignment from the labor registry office, I found out that it wasn’t just a high school. Working personnel was being trained there for industry; they were dealing with sanitary engineering and taps. I was considered a worker and had to study at the FWS for three years in order to acquire the qualification of a metal worker and a lathe operator.