How did the slogan “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood” come about?
It became popular thanks to a little Buryat girl named Gela. But, she did not have a happy childhood.
These words became extremely popular in the USSR in the 1930s. They could be seen on posters, postcards, certificates of honor and even on boxes of candy.
The phrase was first used on July 6, 1936, during the physical education parade on the Red Square in Moscow. It was on one of the posters that the participants were carrying.
However, the slogan became truly popular thanks to a photograph of Stalin and an eight-year-old Buryat girl named Gela (Engelsina) Markizova, published in newspapers that same year. A smiling Gela, holding a huge bouquet of flowers, was sitting on the lap of the ‘Father of Nations’.
The words served as a caption under the photograph.
The photo spread throughout the Union. It hung in schools and pioneer camps and Gela became an idol for Soviet schoolchildren.
But, she did not have a happy childhood. In 1937, her father, the People's Commissar of Agriculture of the Buryat-Mongol ASSR Ardan Markizov, was arrested on charges of "organizing an anti-Soviet pan-Mongolian conspiracy" and was soon executed.
Gela's mother, meanwhile, ended up in exile in Central Asia, where she worked as a pediatrician. Several years later, she died under unclear circumstances.
Markizova found a new home with her aunt in Moscow. She changed her last name to Dorbeeva and devoted her life to studying the history of Southeast Asia. Gela, once famous throughout the country, died quietly in 2004.
