The Ivanovo International Boarding School in Russia, is the only international orphanage for the children of revolutionaries. It was founded in the 1930s, 200 kilometers outside the capital Russia.  Almost five thousand children from 89 countries have attended it.  The first pupils were the children of anti-fascists in Bulgaria and Germany, but over time, political activists from around the world sent their children there, too.

Polishing their dancing moves... before a performance in front of an important Chinese delegation. These girls are pupils at Ivanovo International Boarding School, founded in 1933 to provide a safe home for the children of revolutionaries around the world. It was even build in the shape of a hammer and sickle.

"I didn’t know anything about this place before I came here. But when I arrived and I was told about what kind of a school it was, I was proud to be studying here," Ivanovo School pupil Anastasia Golovina said.

Around 340 pupils live and study here, mostly from Russia. These days, the school has lost its revolutionary significance - but during the Soviet times, the school, known as the Interdom, became a temporary home for the children of Mao Zedong, Josip Broz Tito, Palmiro Togliatti and many others. They learned foreign languages and every pupil studied their native tongue but Russian was the official language spoken at the school and many students took on a Russian name. Ivanovo's director says the school's direction may have moved on but its work to help children in need remains.

"The essence of the Interdom hasn’t changed. In 1933, it was established to help children in difficult situations, and back then the decision was made to help the children who got into difficult situations outside of Russia. In 1992, there were so many Russian children who ended up in very difficult situations. The number of children who were left without parents multiplied," Director of Ivanovo School Galina Shevchenko said.

The educational standards at the Interdom were and are very high, and many graduates ended up as top specialists in their home countries. Some joke that they speak better Russian than their native language and most come back to re-visit what they call their second home.

Children from Germany, Spain, Italy, and Bulgaria were among the first pupils at the Ivanovo boarding school. It also housed children from besieged Leningrad and from Chernobyl. Over its 83 years of existence it became home to some 5,000 foreign children from 89 countries.

Margarita Fedotova is the grand-daughter of one of those children. Her great grandfather was Liu Shaoqi, a Chinese revolutionary and a Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Liu Shaoqi's son ended up at the Ivanovo boarding school, was given a Russian name - Klym, went on to study in Moscow and married a Russian woman with whom he had two children. They were planning to return to China before the ‘Cultural Revolution’ stopped their plans.

"I only learned about Ivanovo when I was 11 years old. Back then, it was a big surprise for me, that I, a small child who was brought up in a Russian family, have Chinese roots. And that my grandfather and my great-aunt lived and were brought up in the Ivanovo Interdom. It was strange but it explained my height and my skin color. I was always different from my classmates," Great-granddaughter of Liu Shaoqi Margarita Fedotova said.

Margarita says she and her grandmother went back to Ivanovo for its 80th anniversary celebrations. The famous Interdom has had a tough time over the past 10 years, losing its international status. But it's starting to accept refugee students from Ukraine and Syria, and hopes it can soon start opening its doors to the world's children once again.