One of the Oldest Tuvan Village Schools Turns 80

Kochetovo is the homeplace of the Oyuns who are considered the main revolutionaries. They were the first in Tuva to take up the revolutionary ideas. One fourth of the Tuvan squadron of volunteers in the Second World War was made up of the Oyuns. The school in Kochetovo carries from 1995 the name of legendary countryman Soktai Oyun, who father of 4 children, the youngest of which was just 4 months old, volunteerily enrolled into the Army to fight against fascists. In one of the fights he was captured a prisoner, then survived through the tortures in the Maidanek camp, where none of the German interpreters could make him utter an understandable Russian word (he did not speak anything but Tuvan). He was liberated by Americans and met the victory in Berlin in 1945. But when he came back to Russia, he was arrested again as an ex-prisoner and sent to GULAG. Only with the interference of the Tuvan Government he was liberated anew in 1947 and came back to Tuva to his family which in 1943 received an official letter on his death. After this return to homeland he had 3 more children and today his whole family (children, grand and grand-grandchildren) numbers over 200 people.