A Soviet schoolboy, a student of the Gerasimov school of the Tavdinsky district of the Ural region, in Soviet times became famous as a pioneer hero who opposed the kulaks in the person of his father and paid for it with his life
Pavel Moroz: biography
A family
He was born on November 14, 1918 in the village of Gerasimovka of the Turin district of the Tobolsk province in the family of Trofim Sergeyevich Morozov, a red partisan, then the chairman of the village council, and Tatyana Semenovna Morozova, nee Baydakova. Father, like all the villagers, was an ethnic Belarusian (a family of Stolypin migrants, in Gerasimovka since 1910). Subsequently, the father abandoned the family (wife with four sons) and healed the second family with Antonina Amosova; as a result of his departure, all worries about peasant farming fell on his eldest son Pavel. According to the recollections of the teacher Pavel, his father regularly drank and beat his wife and children both before and after leaving the family. Pavlik’s grandfather also hated her daughter-in-law because she didn’t want to live with him on the same household, but insisted on sharing.
In 1931, the father, who was no longer the chairman of the village council, was sentenced to 10 years for "being the chairman of the village council, friends with his fists, hiding their households from taxation, and upon leaving the village council facilitated the flight of special settlers by selling documents." Specifically, he was charged with the work of issuing fake certificates to the dispossessed of their membership in the Gerasimov Village Council, which enabled them to leave the place of exile. Moreover, the only certificate appearing as material evidence was made in the village council after Morozov left. According to some sources, Trofim Morozov was shot in the camp in 1932; in the case of the murder of Pavlik Morozov, he did not pass. At the same time, there are allegations in other sources that Trofim Morozov, being in custody, participated in the construction of the Belomorkanal and, after serving three years, returned home with an order for striking labor, and then settled in Tyumen. In this regard, fearing a meeting with her ex-husband, Tatyana Morozova for many years did not dare to visit her native places.
Brothers Paul: Grisha - died in infancy; Fedor - killed at the age of 8 years with Paul; Roman - fought against the Nazis, returned from the front as an invalid, died young; Aleksey - during the war he was slandered as an “enemy of the people”, spent ten years in the camps, then was rehabilitated, suffered greatly from the perestroika campaign of persecuting Pavlik.
Pioneer Hero
Official Soviet history says that at the end of 1931 the famous Pavlik convicted his father Trofim Morozov, then the chairman of the village council, that he was selling special immigrants from among the dispossessed blank forms with stamps. Based on the testimony of a teenager, Morozov Sr. was sentenced to ten years. Following this, Pavlik announced the bread hidden from a neighbor, accused the husband of his own aunt of stealing state grain, and stated that part of the stolen grain was from his own grandfather, Sergey Morozov. He talked about property sheltered from confiscation by the same uncle, actively participated in actions, looking for hidden good together with representatives of the village council.
According to the official version, Pavlik was killed in the forest on September 3, 1932, when his mother left the village for a short while. The killers, as the investigation determined, were Pavlik’s cousin - 19-year-old Danila - and Pavlik’s 81-year-old grandfather, Sergey Morozov. Pavlik’s grandmother, 79-year-old Ksenia Morozova, was declared an accomplice in the crime, and uncle Pavlik, 70-year-old Arseny Kulukanov, was recognized as its organizer. At a show trial in the district club, they were all sentenced to death. The father of Pavlik, Trofim, was also shot, although at that time he was far in the North.
After the death of the boy, his mother, Tatyana Morozova, received an apartment in the Crimea as compensation for her son, part of which she rented to guests. The woman traveled a lot around the country with stories about the feat of Pavlik. She died in 1983 in her apartment, lined with bronze busts of Pavlik.
The decision of the Supreme Court of Russia
In the spring of 1999, members of the Kurgan Memorial Society sent a motion to the Prosecutor General to review the decision of the Ural Regional Court, which sentenced the teenager’s relatives to be shot. The Prosecutor General of Russia came to the following conclusion:
The verdict of the Ural Regional Court of November 28, 1932 and the determination of the judicial cassation collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR of February 28, 1933 with respect to Kulukanov Arseniy Ignatievich and Morozova Ksenia Ilinichna change: retrain their actions from Art. 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR at st. Art. 17 and 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, leaving the previous sentence. Recognize Sergey Sergeyevich Morozov and Daniil Ivanovich Morozov justifiably convicted in the present case for committing a counter-revolutionary crime and not subject to rehabilitation.
The General Prosecutor's Office, which is engaged in the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, concluded that the murder of Pavlik Morozov is criminal in nature and that killers cannot be rehabilitated for political reasons. This conclusion, together with materials from an additional audit of case No. 374, was sent to the Supreme Court of Russia, which in 1999 decided not to rehabilitate the alleged killers Pavlik Morozov and his brother Fedor.
