Camel from Kyzylkum

In the fall of 1983, students in Zarafshan were sent to harvest cotton in the fields of Uzbekistan. As I mentioned before, three cities in the Republic of Uzbekistan—Navoi, Zarafshan, and Uchkuduk—reported directly to Moscow and were not under the jurisdiction of Tashkent. For this reason, our school children had never before been sent to harvest cotton, even though it was a common practice with all other city schools of Uzbekistan. I do not know why it was different in the fall of 1983, but our local city government gave schools an order to send students from grades seven to ten to the cotton fields for two months instead of attending school.

A group of mothers revolted against this order. We sent a letter to Moscow with demands to stop the practice of using our children as slaves for labor on Soviet plantations. In response to our letter, a group of representatives soon arrived in Zarafshan from Moscow. They invited those mothers who signed the letter. They tried to tell us it was absolutely normal that our children be forcibly sent to pick up cotton instead of going to school; it was normal for these kids to work from sunrise to sunset for free; it was normal for them to live in poor and unhealthy conditions with the supervision of only one or two adults for over thirty teenagers. I remember how I asked the members of the commission from Moscow where their children were and why they did not send them to the cotton fields if it was so normal. I was furious and so were all of the other mothers. But we could not change the ways of our government.

Later on, I went to visit my daughter in the cotton fields. I worried about her. I do not remember the exact location, but it was many hours of driving from Zarafshan. Imagine four long huts standing parallel to each other, among the cotton fields in the hungry steppe of Uzbekistan. On the one side, there was a road beyond which there were cotton fields, and on the other side, there were just cotton fields. A small patch between the fields and the huts was the place of the “everyday life” of the students. Beds (Нары) in the barracks were made of slabs. The lower tier was for girls, while the upper one was for boys. The food they cooked was of poor quality. The labor was hard; after all, it was slave labor. There were cases when students committed suicide. I felt relief when my daughter, as well as other children, came back home safe, and life returned to its normal routine.