“Children’s Friend”, a photo that depicts a beaming Joseph Stalin receiving a hug from a cute little girl, was for years one of Soviet Union’s most popular images. It went viral, and throughout the Stalinist period was reproduced and reprinted many times in newspapers and magazines, and appeared in many propaganda posters and leaflets. As seen below, the wholesome photo had a tragic aftermath that only a precious few knew of.
A Great Honor for a Midlevel Bureaucrat
Ardan Markizov was an official in the remote Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Siberia. He was so committed to communism, that he named his daughter Engelsina after Friedrich Engels, and his son Vladlen, after Vladimir Lenin. In 1936, Markizov was selected as a member of a delegation that was to travel to Moscow and meet. He took his seven-year-old daughter, Engelsina “Gelya” Markizova, with him to see the Soviet capital. However, she wanted to see not just the capital city, but the Soviet leader as well. As she recalled decades later: “I also wanted to go see Stalin and I begged my father to take me with him, but he objected”. Her father told that as she was not an official member of the invited delegation, she would not be allowed entry to the Kremlin.
As it turned out, however, children did not require a special permit to enter. Between that discovery, Gelya’s pleas, and her mother’s support, Markizov finally relented and took Gelya with him to the meeting. For a Soviet official of Markizov’s relatively low stature, it was a great honor to have been selected as a member of the delegation that was to meet Stalin himself. However, it was his daughter Gelya who stole the show. Soviet officials were given to long speeches, and it did not take long before the seven-year-old girl was bored to distraction by bureaucrat after bureaucrat prattling about the progress of their collective farms. At some point, she had a spur of the moment idea: she would hug Stalin.
A Viral Photo’s Tragic Aftermath
Gelya took two bouquets of flowers, and walked up to the presidium to hand them to the Soviet dictator. Surprised, but pleased, Stalin picked her up and placed her on the table. When she gave him the flowers and hugged him, photographers snapped pictures. One of the photos of Gelya hugging Stalin became a sensation. The editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper enthused: “God himself sent us this little Buryat girl. We’ll make her an icon of happy childhood”. The photo, nicknamed “Children’s Friend”, went viral. After its publication, the hotel lobby was filled with toys and other presents gifted to Gelya. Upon her return to Buryat, she was greeted like cosmonauts were later. A famous sculptor even created a monument to Stalin and Gelya.
Unfortunately, neither the photo nor fame saved Gelya’s family from the horrors of Stalinism. In 1937, her father was arrested by the NKVD amidst the Great Purge, accused of being a spy, a Trotskyite, and a subversive plotter. Gelya wrote Stalin, begging for mercy, but to no avail. Her father was executed in 1938. Her mother was also arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan, never to return, probably killed by the NKVD. Once a celebrity, Gelya was now shunned as the daughter of an “enemy of the people”. The images and sculptures of Stalin with the daughter of an enemy of the people were awkward. Too many to destroy, officials simply changed the girl’s name from Gelya Markizova to Mamlakat Nakhangova.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
History Halls – The Story Behind an Iconic Photo: Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag
Washington Post, March 9th, 1995 – From a Ruler’s Embrace to a Life in Disgrace
