Full Details

Thursday, September 27

Communist Neverland: New Research on a Russian International Children's Home, 1933-1991
Time:
12:00 pm
Presenter:
Elizabeth McGuire, California State East Bay
Location:
4130 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Sponsored by:
Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies and Global Studies Center along with World History Center, Children’s Literature Program and Cultural Studies Program
Contact Phone:
412-648-7407
Contact Email:
crees@pitt.edu

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.