“Communist Neverland: New Research on a Russian International Children’s Home, 1933-1991”
A talk by Elizabeth McGuire, California State East Bay
From 1933 to 1991, Communist Party leaders from all over the world —including Mao Zedong, Eugene Dennis, Josip Broz Tito, and many more from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East to the Far East —sent their children to be educated in a single boarding school in Ivanovo, Russia. They were raised linguistically and culturally as Russians, often forgetting their native tongue. Many continue to feel enormous affection and nostalgia for the place they consider their true home, and travel across continents to attend reunions every five years. Based on archival documents, the school’s own private archive, and dozens of interviews with alumni across the world, Communist Neverland is the tale of this remarkable school, which tells a new story about the people who dedicated their lives to world revolution.