With the advent of the Great Depression, collectivization of farming, anti-kulak campaign and purges of the 1930s, the family were forcibly separated and their movable goods redistributed. Pankratia, as "the son of a kulak", was able to keep the ancestral land to feed his family, but had to move to various villages around Tobolsk, while Ekaterina cared for the younger children in Kharmpavyl. The family would not be reunited until 1943, when Ekaterina died. In 1933, Vakhrusheva and Andrei moved to Ostyako-Vogulsk, so that she could study at the newly established normal school. Encouraged by her instructors, Victoria Senkevich and Ilya Gudkov, she joined a group of students who actively worked write literary works and collect folklore and ethnographic material for publication in the newspaper "Советский Север" (Soviet North).