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Transcripts from Soviet ArchivesVolume XI - 1931
V. Village ‐ Peasantry
Special certificate of the OGPU STR on the growth of insurgency and defeatist sentiments in the village of the Far Eastern Territory. May 16, 1931
# 5
Top secret
Rising insurgency
Since the beginning of 1931, in a number of regions of the DCK, the facts of the spread of insurrectionary and defeatist sentiments have noticeably increased, capturing more and more new regions. In January‐March 1931, facts of insurrectionary and defeatist sentiments and rumors were recorded in 127 settlements in 26 regions. In 11 settlements in eight districts, insurrectionary sentiments developed into the creation of counter‐revolutionary groups and organizations. The bulk of those spreading rebel‐degenerate rumors and sentiments is a socially alien element to us. Out of 135 members of rebel groups and organizations, 52% are dispossessed, former people and merchants,
27.7% are declassified and alien elements 65, 8.89% are middle peasants, 1.8% are poor, 8.8% ‐ employees and 0.1% ‐ workers.
The comparatively low percentage of participation of the middle peasants in organizationally formed counter‐revolutionary groups and organizations is significantly increasing among persons conducting insurrectionary and defeatist agitation without organizational registration. In this group, the ratio is as follows: kulaks and another socially alien element ‐ 62 people, middle peasants ‐ 61 people, poor people ‐ 7 people, etc. The most prevalent insurgency is in the following areas:
Rukhlovsky district (former Zeysky district)
The Rukhlovsky district, which is mainly a gold‐mining, logging and fishing and hunting area, is inhabited to a large extent by a criminaladventurous and kulak‐runaway element. In some cases, even the identified kulak and anti‐Soviet elements, due to an acute shortage of workers, were not removed from work and were not previously confiscated. The existence of hard‐to‐record earnings from the hunting and hunting business and side earnings created hidden kulak farms. Strengthening the activity of the Soviet apparatus and clarifying the accounting of the profitability of farms, revealing the hidden kulakwealthy farms, caused an increase in insurgent‐defeatist sentiments, which quickly took shape into insurgent organizations. In Rukhlovo (regional center) and at the Urkon mines, two insurgent organizations of 60 people were discovered and liquidated.
One organization of 44 people was headed by: 1) a former party member, a participant in the Civil War, who worked in 19241925. assistant authorized OGPU OO and commandant on duty of the former Amur district department of the OGPU; 2) a forest technician from a kulak family; and 3) a former nobleman who was tried in 1929 for sabotage in the timber industry. The organization was preparing a performance for the spring of 1931. It carried out the procurement of horses and weapons by creating fictitious hunting cells. The funds were collected by means of a 30% deduction from earnings. The slogan of the organization: ʺFor Soviets without Communists.ʺ Also noteworthy is the former Cossack village of Alobazino, where 18 facts of rebeldefeatist agitation and the spread of rumors about the inevitability of war and uprisings are noted. “If only we could wait for spring, and then we’ll go partisan to the hills, and then we’ll see what will come out of the collective farm”. ʺAll the same, in the spring there will be a war, then we will deal with the communists and Komsomol members.ʺ ʺIn the spring, there will inevitably be a war, and then we will deal with the communists ‐ there are more whites than reds.ʺ
Similar facts were noted in eight large villages.
Tyagtinsky district
Rebel‐defeatist sentiments in this area are widespread, in connection with which rebel groups were created in some settlements. In March 1931, an insurgent group of 20 people was liquidated in the village of Alekseevka, which had the programmatic directive: “Raise an uprising, go through another revolution and get freedom. The power must remain Soviet, but dispossession must be abolished, a free market must be opened, and arrests must be stopped. The flag should be red‐green. ʺ The grouping planned to conduct agitation in the Red Army, among the workers of the OGPU and the police in order to prevent the suppression of the uprising. The uprising was supposed to begin with the performance of the bandit group Perelygin (Perelygin ‐ the organizer of the band performance in 1930 ‐ is hiding) and a raid on the village of Tynda. In the village of Chernyaevo (formerly a large Cossack village in the border zone), insurrectionary sentiments began to show a tendency towards organizational development. A group of peasants discussed the need to send someone to Transbaikalia ʺin order to find out how things stand with the uprising there.ʺ The facts of such sentiments were revealed in eight more villages.
Svobodnensky district
Insurrectionary sentiments in individual villages are also taking shape organizationally. In February, a group of 20 people was identified, holding illegal meetings and discussing issues of an armed uprising and the next tasks of the group in relation to relations with other settlements. Separate facts of insurrectionary sentiments were noted in three more villages.
Birobidzhan region
After the liquidation of a large counter‐revolutionary organization in 1930, individual anti‐Soviet elements that remained unexploited from the beginning of 1931 created four insurgent cells that carried out systematic anti‐Soviet agitation, distributed counter‐revolutionary literature and recruited new members.
The liquidated cells included 14 kulaks, 7 middle peasants, two former Cossack chieftains and two former officers. Rebel sentiments were noted in three more villages.
Other areas
In V.‐Bureinsky, Mogochinsky (Amur), Mikhailovsky (Primorye) regions, in Kamchatka and Sakhalin, there is also a widespread rebel and defeatist agitation. Moreover, in Kamchatka and Sakhalin, agitation is clearly Japaneseophile in nature.
In the Tagil region (Kamchatka), rumors of rebel uprisings against Soviet power and the inevitability of the capture of Kamchatka by Japan are widespread by the kulaks.
In the village of Mikhailovskoye (on Sakhalin) in March, five leaflets were found under the slogan: “Down with Soviet power. Long live Japan. ʺ The leaflet states: “Everyone needs to rebel, as one, to make an armed uprising, whoever can arm themselves with what, Japan will respond to this. Japan has long awaited this. Weʹll just start. ʺ
In Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, there were several cases of distribution of leaflets of a monarchical nature of foreign origin calling for the overthrow of Soviet power. The necessary instructions by the PP DVK on the line of the STR are given.
Deputy Head of the SPO OGPU Zaporozhets
Assistant to the head of the 2nd branch of the OGPU SPO Radzivilovsky
Sending to: 1) Menzhinsky; 2) Berry; 3) Messing; 4) Evdokimov; 5) Olsky; 6) Zalina; 7) Prokofiev; 8) Agranov; 9) 1 branch of vocational education; 10) 2 branch of vocational education; 11) 3 branch of vocational education; 12) 4 branch of secondary vocational education. 65 The outside element ‐ outsiders, non‐local people.
Certificate of the STR of the OGPU on the political mood of the peasantry and anti‐Soviet manifestations in the countryside in 1931 March 9, 1931
# 4
Top secret
Despite all the incompleteness of the accounting data for a number of districts, the outlined growth of active manifestations of anti‐Soviet struggle in the countryside is quite obvious, especially noticeable in the mass demonstrations in the SVK, the Central Black Earth District and the Moscow Region. At the same time, a number of performances in January and February 1931 were distinguished by a large mass of participants, an aggravated character and duration. The speeches in the Defense Ministry, the Central Black Earth District, the SVK, and the Nemrespublika demanded the introduction of armed detachments for their elimination. Terror in quantitative terms in the Union as a whole in January and February is weaker than the last months of 1930 (here, undoubtedly, the comprehensive information of the PPs, who did not provide final data on terror, will undoubtedly make significant adjustments in the direction of growth), but again for a number of regions (MO, SKK, SVK, Bashkiria, Central Asia), an increase in terror is already being noted. It should be noted that both for the Union as a whole and,
For all the months that followed in November 1930, physical terror again prevailed over property terror.
The number of anti‐Soviet leaflets distributed in the countryside in January 1931 and December last year is almost the same. In January, 38 leaflets (20% of the total) contained a call for an uprising. Recently, provocative rumors about imminent uprisings of the entire peasantry, about an imminent war with Poland, Romania, Western powers and the inevitable fall of Soviet power have become widespread in the NIAC, the National Regions of the CCM, the CCM in general, in Ukraine, in the SVK and a number of areas consuming the strip. ...
In a number of NIAC districts, these rumors, having become widespread, adversely affect the mood of the broad masses. There is a wait and see with the entry into collective farms of the poor and middle peasants, who are afraid of joining collective farms ʺunder fragile powerʺ; there are cases of group exits from the collective farm of the poor and middle peasants, intimidated by their fists. In the national regions of the JCC, rumors about the alleged rebel movement in the mountainous regions disorganize the Soviet activists, inspire uncertainty and uncertainty in the mood of significant masses of the population in a number of mountainous regions. Similar rumors about the revival of the Basmachi and insurgent movements were widespread in the republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Rumors about further dispossession of kulaks, and then “de‐averaging” continue to spread everywhere and widely. In the JCC, the ever‐increasing provocative agitation of counterrevolutionary elements, fueled by very numerous excesses in the conduct of economic campaigns in the Cossack regions, stimulates the ever‐increasing flight and ʺwildʺ migration of the Cossacks. The excesses in the course of grain procurements, and recently especially in the course of cattle procurements in the producing and eastern national regions, continue, in some places they intensify and acquire ugly forms of direct bullying of the poor and middle peasants (Kazakhstan, Central Asia ‐ especially the massive nature of the excesses, CCM, Ukrainian SSR, NVK, SVK and Siberia). Excessive excesses in the course of collectivization in the CCK, NVK, Ukrainian SSR, Kazakhstan and a number of regions of the consuming strip ‐ IPO, LO and others, are noticeably growing, repeating the curvatures of last spring (forced, by intimidation, threats, illegal transfer of middle peasants into kulaks, deliberate imposition of unbearable tasks, etc., the involvement of the middle peasants in collective farms). The mood of the bulk of the individual peasantry has noticeably deteriorated in Kazakhstan, in the SVK, NVK, in the Ukraine and in Central Asia. Among collective farmers, problems in economic life (lack of feed, depletion and burning of livestock, in places unpreparedness for sowing: lack of seeds, food, catastrophic situation (in SKK, Siberia, NVK, SVK) ‐ cause tendencies of unauthorized departure to cities and for permanent residence, reverse trends63(especially significant in the NWC, where, along with a significant influx into collective farms, there is a significant exit from collective farms). Preparations for sowing are clearly unsatisfactory in almost all regions. The firm deadlines set by the operational plan of the USSR Peopleʹs Commissariat of Land for the completion of specific preparatory work for sowing (collection of seed and insurance funds, repair of tractors and agricultural implements, dressing and cleaning of seeds, preparation of a fodder base, bringing the plan to the collective farm, village and individual farm, etc.)) are violated by all regions. Grain supplies are almost dead center, stopping at 95%. Continuing on an insignificant scale in some regions, grain procurements are accompanied by gross and massive excesses. In Kazakhstan, in the Crimea and Central Asia there is a significant aggravation of food difficulties in the countryside. In 9‐10 districts of Kazakhstan, the number of hungry people is estimated at 5‐10 thousand souls. In the KSSR, in the Crimea and Central Asia, there were cases of swelling and illness from hunger, and some facts of starvation. Significant successes should be noted in the field of collectivization. The average level of collectivization in the Union reached by March 1 ‐ 35.3% of all farms eligible to be a member of a collective farm. The largest tide in collective farms in February was observed in the Ukrainian SSR, SKK, Uzbekistan, Central ChO and SVK. The influx into collective farms is increasing.
Mass performances
The number of mass demonstrations in the Union in January 1931 in comparison with December 1930 increased, February does not show a downward trend (if we take into account the incompleteness of information and the number of mass demonstrations in the main, most affected areas, counted for today).
December 1930 January 1931 February 1931
91 mass demonstrations 101 mass demonstrations 77 mass demonstrations
In the presence of a slight decrease or stability in the number of mass demonstrations in the JCC, NVK, Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia, the Leningrad Region, the BSSR, Nizhkrai, Tataria, Crimea, Transcaucasia, the national regions of the JCC especially clearly show an increase in mass demonstrations in January and February ‐ the Ukrainian SSR, SVK, Moscow region, Central Asia, and they are kept at a significant level in the Central Black Earth Region.
The main reason and pretext for the mass demonstrations in January and February 1931 is meat procurement; in February, in addition, tax collection. In the main grain‐growing regions (Central Black Earth Region, SVK, Ukrainian SSR), actions on this basis prevail over all others.
In January, out of 18 performances in the Central Black Earth Region, 12 arose in connection with meat procurement, in the SVK, out of 20 performances ‐ 12 in connection with meat procurement and in Ukraine out of 14 performances ‐ 6 arose on the same basis. In total, 31 performances out of 86 that took place in January (excluding the eastern national regions) were taken into account on the basis of meat procurements.
In February, performances on the basis of meat procurement, while quantitatively decreasing, are nevertheless numerous. In Ukraine, three out of nine were on the basis of meat procurement. There are seven out of 19 in SVK.
In the Central Black Earth District, one mass demonstration that took place was also on the basis of meat procurements.
It is characteristic that the majority of speeches in general and speeches on the basis of meat procurement in particular in January and February fall into three regions: Ukraine, SVK, Central ChO. In the other two producing regions (SKK and NVK), the number of mass demonstrations is generally insignificant, and performances on the basis of meat procurements are rare.
January ‐ NVK ‐ there are three performances in total, on the basis of meat procurements ‐ not a single one, CCM ‐ only one performance, on the basis of meat procurements ‐ not a single one. February ‐ NVK ‐ there were 6 performances in total, on the basis of meat procurement ‐ there were no; CCM ‐ only one performance on the basis of meat procurement.
In the NEC in January, demonstrations on the basis of grain procurements (two out of three) and in February on the basis of collectivization (4 out of 6) prevailed. In all other regions, there were no demonstrations on the basis of collectivization either in January or in February. Speeches on the basis of grain procurements are the most numerous after speeches in connection with meat procurements. In January there were 12 and in February 9. [They] took place mainly in the same main grain areas: January: Central Black Earth Region ‐ four, Ukrainian SSR ‐ two, SVK‐one, NVK‐two, in the Leningrad region,
NGOs and Central Asia, one at a time. February: SVK‐two, Ukrainian SSR‐four, NVK‐one, Moscow region ‐ two.
It should be noted in the UCS the increase in performances on religious grounds and in the Moscow region ‐ on the basis of taxation. In January, on religious grounds, three demonstrations were recorded in the UCWU, in February ‐ already 6. This increase is largely due to a number of excesses and bungling committed by grassroots workers when taxing priests and closing churches. PP OGPU SVK, this issue was specifically raised before the regional committee of the CPSU (b).
In the Moscow region, the growth of tax‐related performances is especially noteworthy. In January, out of 9 performances, there were 7 on tax grounds, and in February, out of 25 ‐ 20 performances.
The main reason is the sharp resistance of the kulaks and the anti‐Soviet element of the ongoing fundraising campaign.
In most cases, the demonstrations began by women at the time of repression of the malicious non‐donors of cattle and grain ‐ the kulaks and the wealthy, resulted in stubborn resistance and opposition to the representatives of the authorities, accompanied by beatings of them and the active poor, pogrom actions and were very stubborn in nature.
In the Moscow region, the Central Black Earth District, the SVK and the NVK, individual performances were held with a very significant mass of participants ‐ in the Central Black Earth District (Shchigrovsky District) and in the SVK (Kuchko‐Elansky District) up to 1000 people, in the Moscow Region and NVK up to 400‐600 people.
In the Moscow region, SVK, NVK and TsChO speakers were armed with stakes, pitchforks, guns; In the SVK and CChO, operational groups of the OGPU bodies and local activists that arrived at the scene were met with shots (P. Kurakino ‐ SVK, the village of Sukhodol ‐ SVK, Shchigrovsky district ‐ CChO).
Several villages took part in the performance in the Shchigrovsky district of the Central Black Earth District, including those from the neighboring Kolpnyansky District; several villages also took part in the performance in the village of Telegino, Kuchko‐Elansky district, SVK.
In a speech in Kazakhstan (Chingistay district of the former
Semipalatinsk district), 12 auls, who refused to fulfill the plan of cattle procurement, are participating. The speakers smashed cooperatives, slaughterhouses, distribution points (details of the speech are unknown).
Terror
The kulak terror is still at a high level, but lower than in the corresponding months of the last year.
The slight decrease in terror in January and February 1931 compared with December last year should be largely attributed to the incompleteness of information on the Union (due to the failure to provide comprehensive information on a number of PP).
The regions most affected by terror were: in January: Western Siberia ‐ 57 terrorist attacks, the Ukrainian SSR ‐ 50, the Moscow region ‐ 48, the Central Black Region ‐ 39, the Urals ‐ 35, the SVK and the Western Region ‐ 34 each, Central Asia ‐ 35; in February: Moscow region ‐ 52, Ukrainian SSR ‐ 34, Leningrad region ‐ 14, Bashkiria ‐ 14, SKK ‐ 13, Central Asia ‐ 12 (information incomplete).
The fiercest terror (a large number of murders, atrocities) is observed in Central Asia, Bashkiria, Transcaucasia, Western Siberia, the Ukrainian SSR and the Leningrad region.
In the Moscow region, where in December last year there were no murders, in January there were four. In the Leningrad region consistently from December: one‐three‐five.
The kulak terror with its edge is directed against social workers and village activists (soil ‐ public work in general, grain procurement, meat procurement, self‐taxation, taxation, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, against collective farmers. A relatively small number of terrorist attacks were committed against workers of the lower Soviet apparatus.
Kulak and counterrevolutionary elements terrorize (beatings, murders, arson) not so much the representatives of the Soviet government ‐ members of the village councils, but rather active elements of the poor, representatives of the village community.
The reasons and grounds for committing terrorist acts were: in January ‐ active social work in 249 cases, collectivization ‐ in 111, grain procurement ‐ in 49, dispossession and infringement of the anti‐Soviet element ‐ in 15, meat procurement ‐ in 11, etc.; in February: active social work ‐ at 102, collectivization ‐ at 43, grain procurement ‐ at 15, dispossession and meat procurement ‐ 10 each, taxation ‐ at 6, etc.
Basically, as in January, terrorist acts motivated by active public work prevail. In five districts (SVK, Ukraine, Moscow region, LVO, Bashkiria) 63 terrorist attacks were recorded on this basis. Among the direct perpetrators of terrorist acts, the kulaks still prevail, accounting for 178 out of 368 identified terrorists in January. A significant part are former people and anti‐Soviet elements ‐ 72 people. The number of the criminal element used by the kulaks to commit terrorist acts in January is half as much as in December 1930 (44 versus 83). Participation in the terror of the poor and collective farmers is insignificant: in January there were 7 poor and 2 collective farmers.
Along with the increase in the killings of active poor people and Soviet activists, attempts with the use of explosives (bombs), almost open attacks on assemblies, shelling of assemblies and demonstrators (West Siberian Territory, Nizhny Krai, East Siberian Territory, SVK, NVK) have become more frequent.
Anti‐Soviet leaflets
In January 1931, 199 leaflets and anonymous letters were found, in February (according to incomplete data) ‐ 21.
The largest number of leaflets in January‐February were found in the Ukrainian SSR ‐ 40, in the NVK ‐ 27, in the Urals ‐ 19, in the ZSK ‐ 19 and in the Moscow Region ‐ 18. Of the 220 leaflets in January and February, 42 (19%) contained an appeal to the uprising. Here are the most typical excerpts and slogans (including those of a provocative nature) from the leaflets found:
ʺPeasant‐workersʹ government and free labor, free market, free prices, forward to humanity, down with dictatorship, the law of the beast ‐ slavery.ʺ
“Down with the five‐year plan, down with sheer collectivization. Long live volgota 64 ‐ humanity; everyone must sell the products of his labor on a free market and at a free price. Give free rein ʺ(Chernoyarsk district of the NVK).
ʺWe declare the Kremlin commissar power and all its leaders outside the law of God and human, and we call on all Russian citizens to start a merciless terror against the representatives of the red government.ʺ (Mechetinsky district of the SKK).
“Take up arms before itʹs too late, [...] long live the Russian land, long live freedom and will” (N. Udinsky district of the VSK).
“Long live the five‐year plan with an empty store, a collective farm and famine. Long live the ruin of the national economy. Long live the 12hour working day” (Ibid.).
“Down with the soviets, long live the democratic republic. Down with collective farms” (SVK).
“Long live the dispossession of the middle peasant and the poor and their elimination in the SVK as a class” (Borsky District).
“We have conquered Soviet power, and let it be. The soul of every peasant should be like this ‐ to free himself from the communists, to restore the real Soviet power, which would give full will to the peasant. We can only talk with weapons in our hands, listen to the signal and get ready for an armed uprising” (Bashkiria).
Deputy Head of the SPO OGPU Zaporozhets
Application
Summary of facts of mass demonstrations
Middle Volga region. On the night of January 15‐16, a crowd of up to 400 people gathered in the village of I. Kurakino, Chaadaevsky district, on the basis of provocative rumors about the closure of the church. Separate groups from the crowd attacked party members, trying to beat them. On the morning of January 16, the crowd tried to destroy the premises of the Trudovik artel. Anti‐Soviet shouts were heard from the crowd all the time. The performance lasted four days. The crowd was organized, observation ʺheadquartersʺ were allocated, commissioners were set up for gathering, a constant watch near the church in certain shifts. Specially assigned people monitored the activities of the village council and the apartments of the communists. On January 18, an armed detachment of 80 Communards arrived in the village to eliminate the demonstration, several shots were fired at it. By the measures taken, the crowd was dispersed,
On January 9, in the village of Telegino, Kuchko‐Elansky District, a mass protest broke out on the basis of meat procurement (when a cow was taken from a wealthy one). The gathered crowd of 200 people did not allow the cattle to be taken and drove the representatives of the village council, throwing stones, sticks, etc. at them. On January 10, at the second attempt by the village council to start work, a crowd of 300 people gathered again and did not allow the seizure. On January 11, a rumor about the arrival of the police spread throughout the village. A crowd of up to 400 people was again gathered by blows into the iron screen and buckets. From the latter, anti‐Soviet shouts and threats were heard all the time. The crowd increased due to those who arrived from the neighboring village of Tuluzakovka and the settlement of Svobodny, where couriers were sent for help. On the night of January 11, straw was set on fire in the village as a signal to call the population of the nearby villages.
On the morning of January 12, active participants in the speech were arrested. Upon learning of this, the crowd again gathered up to 1000 people, demanding their release. At the same time, the crowd tore down the school doors and severely beat one of the police officers conducting the searches. In view of the situation, those arrested were released. The performance was finally eliminated by the evening of January 12.
On February 13, in the village of Sukhodol, Sengileevsky district, a mass demonstration took place on the basis of meat procurements. The crowd gathered three times, attended by up to 400 people. The crowd disassembled the cattle, the collective farmer and his family were beaten, the house was destroyed. When the ringleaders were arrested, the crowd resisted, and there were shots. One of the instigators of the speech was killed, the crowd did not allow the other to be arrested. The speech was liquidated by measures of the Chekist order.
Moscow region. On February 19, in the village of Tormasovka, Efremovsky District, a crowd of 300 people did not allow the seizure of property from the kulak for non‐payment of tax. On February 21, after learning about the arrest of the initiators of the protest, a crowd of 400 gathered again to demand the release of those arrested. The crowd, armed with stakes and pitchforks, came to the collective farm, smashed the barn there and conducted searches, and then dispersed. Two hours later, a crowd was again gathered by the alarm bell, which went to the Golubokinsky plant located five miles away and carried out searches there. Shouts were heard from the crowd: ʺBeat the Communistsʺ, ʺDown with Soviet power.ʺ Not finding those arrested, the crowd dispersed.
Lower Volga region. On February 6, in the village of Solenoe Zaymishche, Chernoyarsk District, a mass demonstration with the participation of 600 people took place. The next day, performances took place in the nearby villages of Staritsa, Kamenny Yar and in the very regional center of Cherny Yar. The basis [for] the speech was the RIKʹs order to stop issuing goods from cooperation to individual farmers. The performance was terminated by the satisfaction of the crowdʹs demand and the cancellation of the RIKʹs order.
Kazakhstan. In the Chingistovsky district of the former Semipalatinsk district, due to massive excesses and pressure mainly on the poor and middle peasant farms, 12 auls in an organized manner refused to fulfill the February plan, demanding its reduction. Under the influence of the agitation of the bais and the kulaks, the population of these auls plundered and destroyed cooperatives, slaughterhouses, and Soviet settlements.
Lower Volga region. On March 2, in the village of Norka, Balcerovsky canton, ASSRNP, a crowd of 1000 people gathered during the eviction of kulaks and demanded to suspend dispossession and eviction. Many of the crowd were armed with pitchforks and clubs. The speakers beat up two members of the presidium of the village council. With the arrival of the task force, the performance was eliminated.
Central Black Earth Region. On February 25, a crowd of 200 people from the villages of Chizhovka, Konoplyanka and Zarechye came to the building of the Zmeinetsky village council, where a trial was taking place over the kulaks who refused to surrender the cows and dispersed the court. General meetings appointed by the agitation brigade that arrived on February 26 in three villages were disrupted. On the same day, at one oʹclock in the afternoon in the village of Bolshoy Zmeinets, a crowd of 200 people gathered again from the indicated villages, which soon increased due to peasants from the villages of the Kochetovsky, Nikolsky, Katorzhansky and Netrebovsky village councils of the Kolpnyansky district who appeared on the alarm bell. The crowd demanded to stop the meat procurement, the collection of the seed fund and the giving of solid assignments. After the explanatory work, the crowd dispersed in a few hours. On this day, three fists were removed,
On February 27, at the alarm bell in the village of Bolshoy Zmeinets, a crowd of 500 people gathered again, trying to surround the regional propaganda brigade. The latter, due to the threatening behavior of the crowd, was forced to leave for the Nikolsky state farm, located three kilometers from Zmeinets. By one oʹclock in the afternoon, the collective farmer Leonov was sent to the state farm to the brigade, demanding the release of three kulaks arrested on February 26 from the village of Chizhovki. The brigade drove back to the village of Zmeinets.
On February 28, until 12 noon, the village was calm. At 12 oʹclock on the alarm bell, a crowd of 1,600 people gathered again from the villages of Chizhovka, Konoplyanka, Shchigrovsky district and the village of Netbezh, Kolpnyansky district.
The agitation group of the district committee and the task force of the OGPU, under the pressure of the crowd, were forced to leave Bolshoi Zmeinets and go to the Nikolsky state farm. The crowd beat the deputy chairman of the RIK, the director of the state farm and the chairman of the district committee, and the first of them was still disarmed by the crowd.
On February 28, at night, a reinforced task force arrived in the village of Bolshoi Zmeinets, which took the bell tower, but under the pressure of the crowd was forced to leave its position, cutting the rope and breaking the ladder. On the morning of March 1, when the task force began to remove the anti‐Soviet element in the villages of Chizhovka and Konoplyanka, the group was greeted with shots (10‐15), which wounded one carrier.
Having instructions not to use weapons, the task force stopped the removal of the anti‐Soviet element. Attempts to carry out mass work by the forces of local and district party assets have yielded no results. An agitation brigade of 10 who arrived in the village of Bolshoy Zmeinets was expelled from the village, and the driver was beaten. On this day (March 1), meetings were held in neighboring villages, at which resolutions were passed condemning the speeches.
In the village of Pozhidalovka, Katorzhansky village council, the meeting was disrupted by fists. An extremely excited mood was observed that day in the villages of Netbezhnoye and Krasnoye, Kolpnyansky District, where the alarm was sounded for several hours during the day.
In the morning of March 2, a specially arrived commission of the regional executive committee began work. At the same time, the task force carried out the seizure of kulaks in the villages of Bolshoy Zmeinets, Chizhovka and Konoplyanka. In the village of Bolshoy Zmeinets, a group of kulaks was identified, which had connections in neighboring villages, and up to 10 units of various firearms were seized there. The owners of the weapons confessed to shooting at our task force on the night of March 1.
As a result of the extensive mass work carried out and operational measures, the mood in the villages that took part in the speeches sharply changed in a positive direction. By the measures taken, 12 people were detained in transport.
At meetings of collective farmers and poor people, resolutions were passed condemning the actions and approving operational measures against the kulaks. Terror Fact Sheet
West Siberian region. On January 8, in the Suslovsky district, an attack was made on a meeting dedicated to the anniversary of the commune; two people were killed, three were wounded. On January 21, 1931, in the village of Zerkalakh, a group of 9 kulaks attacked the activists, of whom three were severely beaten. When arrested, one of the kulaks put up armed resistance, firing back from a Berdank.
Nizhny. On February 5, in the village of Grokhovo, Votskaya oblast, during a demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the oblast, a shot was fired at the demonstrators, which wounded three people.
East Siberian Territory. On January 22, in the village of Kharuz, Mukhorshibir district, a bomb was thrown in the room where the morning session dedicated to the memory of Lenin was taking place. The chairman of the village council, member of the CPSU (b) Mikhailov was wounded.
Middle Volga region. On January 19, in the village of Lopatino, Samara region, a log filled with explosives was thrown into the firewood of an activist paramedic. When the furnace was fired, a strong explosion occurred, by which the furnace was destroyed. On February 7, in the village of Shtebeikino, an explosion occurred in the house of the secretary of the local party cell Dyudyukin, which destroyed the oven, part of the house, and wounded Dyudyukinʹs wife. The explosion happened due to the fact that a log with a primer from an English bomb was thrown into the wood by Dyudyukin.
West Siberian region. On January 11, in the village of Ostrovnoye, Mamontovsky district, a log filled with gunpowder exploded during a furnace in the house of the secretary of the VKP (b) Shakhov cell. Shakhovʹs four‐year‐old son was wounded. The next day, January 12, there was a second explosion, which threw out a tin tube filled with gunpowder. The 19‐year‐old daughter of the cell secretary was injured. On January 7, in the village of Shugaevka, Ubinsky district, by agreement of the kulaks, several podkulachnikov beat an activist in the afternoon, in the evening they tried to kill one poor man, and on the same day, while driving down the street, they deliberately beat the poor man with horses.
Lower Volga region. On January 5, in the village of Tatiha, Rtishchevsky district, a group of bandit kulaks attacked the house of the middle peasant‐activist Rozhkov. The attackers brutally hacked Rozhkov, his wife and 8‐year‐old daughter with an ax, doused him with kerosene and set fire to the house.
Ivanovo‐Industrial region. In the village of Sergeevo, Ermakovsky district, a group of hooligans beat up four collective farmers for the fact that the latter worked during the Maslenitsa at logging. One of the injured collective farmers is in a very grave condition.
Middle Asia. On January 28 of this year, in the village of Gandzhirovan, Buvaida district of the former Fergana district, a Komsomol member Nurali Batyraliev was killed in a teahouse. The murder was carried out by a group of six persons armed with hunting rifles, who came to the teahouse with half‐veiled faces and began to question those sitting about the whereabouts of local party and Soviet workers. Having received no positive response, the group killed the Komsomol member and fled. On January 8, in the Ak‐Bazar area of the Margelan region of Uzbekistan, a group of unknown persons attacked four collective farmers. A horse was taken from the latter, and all four were seriously wounded. One collective farmer died of his wounds.
Middle Volga region. February 6 in the village of St. Selyanov, during the inventory of property for non‐fulfillment of tasks but for meat procurement by members of the village council and the Komsomol member of the middle peasant Vybornov, the latter, together with his son, pounced on the Komsomol member and began to beat and pull him by the hair. At the same time Vybornov shouted: ʺGive me an ax, Iʹll hack it down.ʺ When the Komsomol member broke free, Vybornov rushed after him and hit him with an iron shovel.
Bashkiria. On January 4, a member of the village council, activist Valiuliyev, was killed in the village of Nizhneye, Kunashak district. The mastermind of the murder was a kulak group, and the physical perpetrator was a criminal horse thief.
Western region. On January 7, 1931, in the village of Tishino of the former Yartsevsky district, the house of the poor man was set on fire, where the teacher‐activist lived; the poor man received two anonymous letters with the threat of arson if she did not expel the teacher from the apartment.
63 Reverse tendencies ‐ leaving collective farms, leaving for cities.
64 Volgota is freedom.
Information message of the PP of the OGPU in the BSSR on the fight against kulak banditry. July 16, 1931
No. 6
Top secret
Deputy Chairman of the OGPU Yagoda
Head of SOU OGPU Evdokimov
Assistant to the head of the SDU and the head of the OGPU Olsky
Moscow
On the results of the operation to combat banditry in the Lelchitsy and Borodino regions of the BSSR
The political situation in the Lelchitsa region has not been particularly stable in recent years. The May‐June (this year) eviction of the kulaks was carried out as an administrative measure and without any political support. The district leadership thus highlighted the expediency of the participation of the district organization in the eviction: “We have more important things to do, what will the GPU bodies do then if we are going to be engaged in the eviction” (chairman of the REC and member of the Donetsk district committee bureau). As a result, the poor and middle peasants and collective farmers not only were not united for a more successful implementation of the tasks set by the Soviet government, but in part were frightened by this operation, and were convenient material for the perception of the kulak and Polish intelligence agencies of agitation. If we add, for example, another such method of eviction, as dispersal from the street with a revolver in the hands of a local party member of the population, and such things quickly become the property of many villages, it will become clear what negative political effect the last eviction of kulaks had on a part of the population of the Lelchitsy region. It is also impossible not to take into account the season that facilitated the kulak agitation: to go into the woods, organize gangs, break into Poland.
But the lack of political support for the eviction of the kulaks is not the only ʺmeritʺ of the district leadership, which in June brought the district to a ʺclearly threateningʺ state, as it was estimated on June 7 this year by a joint meeting of the RK Bureau, RKK Presidium, RIK faction and the Central Committee and Central Control Commission commissions.
The explanatory work on the new agricultural tax was carried out unsatisfactorily, both among the population and among grassroots workers. As a result, this led to incorrect accounting of taxable objects and to serious excesses in terms of individual taxation of middle peasant farms. ʺThe facts of the wrong approach in giving firm assignments to middle peasant farms, weak work to identify the really kulak‐prosperous part of the village and the unreality of hard assignments, and hence the practice of unbearable fines, led to the ruin of a number of middle peasant farmsʺ (from the same resolution). All this: the lack of mass political work with the poor and middle peasant mass of the peasantry,
And all this is taking place, despite the fact that the village has adopted the line of the party and the Soviet government on collectivization, understands its necessity and inevitability, and on the whole is determined to ʺgo to collective farms.ʺ Moreover, we have cases of willing assistance by individual farms to collective farms: ʺHow could it be otherwise, this is our own collective farm, it needed help, and we went and helped, but the collective farm never helps us,ʺ the peasants say. This is true, and this is the fault of the district leadership. Moreover, such an event as the removal of hayfields from individual farms without any replacement (cattle are doomed to perish) and handing it over to the collective farm, and the latter cannot use it, causes understandable indignation among individuals. Or such an example: when meadows were used by individual farms since 1917, and this year the timber industry enterprise takes them away,
Dozens of the ugliest examples from the Lelchitsa practice can be cited: attribution of land without measurement, individual tax for the sale of vodka; there was also a case when one peasant had an independent farm for 9 years, he was united with his father’s farm to create a kulak farm, etc. This is how the ugly leadership of the district led to undesirable and dangerous political consequences, despite the fact that there are absolutely all the necessary elements for the most successful and full implementation of the party line.
The district organization did not carry out any work among national minorities and especially among the Poles, despite the proximity of the district to Poland. It is enough to cite the following statements of the Polish peasants: ʺWhat can we do, they donʹt like all the Poles and will still be expelled.ʺ And the Poles ‐ middle and poor ‐ are preparing for deportation (they have prepared crackers), and no one explains to them the purely class essence of this issue. Moreover, they are afraid to say that they are Poles. A certain intimidation is felt among them.
But intimidation is not only among them. At a village meeting, a party member ‐ a representative of the district declares: ʺWe have enough lead for youʺ ‐ this is in relation to those who do not join the collective farm.
Tens and hundreds of peasants know these phrases, they understand that we may have individual bunglers, and they expect that they will be expelled from the party and brought to justice for this, but they are waiting in vain, since ʺthese unimportantʺ issues, like the eviction kulaks, could not occupy the district leadership. And then the masses of peasants begin to attribute the ugliness of individual party members and regional workers to the expense of the Soviet government and the party as a whole. The mood among the population (individual farmers) of a number of village councils was nervous and tense, labor discipline fell, anti‐Soviet rumors spread en masse, and the situation among a part of the peasantry was somehow expectant. The seeds of the agitation of the kulaks and the Polish intelligence agencies fell on such soil.
The kulaks who fled from exile and the old accomplices of various gangs (including Garasia) were the main personnel for organizing the kulak counter‐revolutionary action in the region, in part of its gangster and having a tendency to develop into an insurrectionary one. The intelligence agencies used the old bandits, as well as the kulaks who fled beyond the cordon.
These cadres were guided by the part of the rural population offended by the Soviet power. The approach was as follows: a) the war with Poland is close, they even called ʺPeterʹs Dayʺ; b) there is a lot of everything in Poland and itʹs cheap; c) there you can safely work on the ground; d) all peasants who managed to visit Poland, after their return to the USSR, enjoy the protection of the Polish authorities. The Polish government will order the USSR not to impose firm assignments, taxes, fines, etc.; e) today the kulaks are being evicted, and tomorrow the middle peasants, today you, tomorrow his, etc.
No matter how naive the data in point ʺdʺ may seem, they had great success among a huge number of peasants. And they believed all this agitation. The flight into the forest began massively and spontaneously. This phenomenon finally took on the character of some kind of psychosis. Among those who fled to the forest and marshes there are individually taxed, received a solid task, fined, there are those who cannot name what the Soviet government offended, there are former Red partisans, former Red Army soldiers, the former commander of the Red Army department, the former chairman of the village council. They ran with and without their wives. They often left children, livestock, economy to the mercy of fate. They took only food with them.
The mistakes made by the regional leadership were used by the kulak and his agents in the direction of increasing their influence on the poor and middle peasants of the village, which led to the fact that social groups close to us in the countryside were thrown into the ranks of the enemies of Soviet power. A number of villages made the most depressing impression: there are no men to be seen, there are no young women either, there are a lot of children in the house without any supervision. In those villages from which the peasants did not flee into the forest, when a soldier appeared, everyone rushed to flee.
All this applied only to the individual sector. The collective farms stood apart from this, but did not oppose anything. The party organization in the regional center and in the localities was also inactive. And even when the counter‐revolutionary action took on a massive and serious character, the district leadership not only did nothing about mobilizing the organization and information about its situation, but actually dismissed the activists: the chairman of the RIK went on vacation at the end of June, the secretary of the district committee went to Minsk to The Central Committee of the CP (b) for a report on the issue of personnel and was returned to Lelchitsy from Kalinovich by the commission of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, a member of the bureau, a newspaper editor from Lelchitsy left for paint, almost all the secretaries of the cells were sent on leave and business trips.
The bandit group, which was organized in April, was headed by S. Khomutovsky, the Baranovsky brothers, the father and two sons of Zalan. Baranovskiy and Zalany are kulaks with family ties with Poland, and one son of Zadan serves in the Vilna political police; Khomutovsky is a middle peasant who knows the blacksmithing and locksmith trade, at one time associated with the Garasʹ gang. The gang began to show activity in early June this year: on the night of June 8‐9, it attacked the house of the forester Filiptsev, which is two kilometers north of the village of Sinitskoe‐Pole, taking the latterʹs guns. On June 9, a gang killed a collective farmer ‐ Komsomol member Chechko Aleksey, who actively participated in dispossession of the Baranovskys and Zalanov. On June 10, she attacked the carriers traveling from Lelchitsy to the Yelsk station. On June 17, she attacked a group of local workers of the Kormyansky village council of the Karolinsky region, and the latter, having escaped, left a rifle to the gang. On June 23, the gang began to concentrate in the Olokhovsky bog, north of the town of Lelchitsy. On the night of June 24‐25, a gang set fire to the collective farm ʺChervone Lyadoʺ of the Lelchitsa village council, where up to 30 heads of cattle and various agricultural implements were destroyed.
By this time, the leaders of the gang are sending threatening letters to the village councils and making inscriptions on trees, poles and buildings calling for an uprising.
On June 27, a bandit‐kulak group of 80 people from Olokhov swamp headed towards the border. She walked through completely uninhabited places through swamps and forests. Ahead of the group was reconnaissance of 10 people, 7 of them armed with rifles. In total, the bandit group had 7 rifles and the same number of hunting shotguns. The kulak bandit group had a firm intention to break through to Poland by force of arms. By this time, there were up to 200 people who fled from their farms. But even among the part of the peasants who had not yet fled, the mood was such that if the group of 80s had succeeded in leaving the cordon, it would have been an infectious example for others with the most unexpected and dangerous consequences.
The activities of the Central Committee and Central Control
Commission can be seen from the resolutions of the regional committee bureau, the RKK presidium and the RIC faction of June 30 and July 7, which basically boil down to the following:
1) the Secretary of the RK, the Chairman of the REC and the Chairman of the RKK were relieved of their duties;
2) the party and Komsomol organizations were mobilized to fight the situation;
3) the broadest mass political work was carried out among collective farmers, middle peasants and poor peasants, trade unions using the organized measures;
4) the reception of complaints and their resolution was organized, mainly on issues of individual taxation, hard assignments and fines;
5) the widest campaign was carried out on the voluntary turnout of those who fled to the forests and swamps from 2 to 7 July;
6) the work on the fulfillment of the immediate tasks has been intensified: the organization of new collective farms and the influx into the old ones, the harvesting campaign, the loan of the third decisive year of the five‐year plan;
7) through the RKK, the party members who were guilty of excesses and intimidation of the population were brought to justice;
8) a clear and clear assessment of the state of the region and recent events was given, and on this basis educational work was carried out, starting from the leadership of the region, including the widest masses. Activities under the GPU, basically, boiled down to the following:
1) an operational group of workers from the SO PP, UPO, OO of the Gomel operational sector and the 18th border detachment under the leadership of the head of the UPO comrade Chernobyl;
2) border security was strengthened;
3) operational and fighter groups were organized on all possible routes of movement from the border to the rear;
4) increased protection of the border and rear roads made it impossible for the movement of bandit groups and individual kulaks;
5) operational work was brought to maximum stress, and the special agent was implanted during the operation itself (both internal and for overseas work);
6) local activists were involved in the operation during certain periods of it in the Zhitkovichi and Turov regions, which also became possible in the Lelchitsy region during the last five days;
7) from 2 to 7 July, a massive voluntary return of those who fled to forests and swamps was ensured;
8) from 7 to 10 July, a thorough search of the forests and swamps of the section of the 18th border detachment was carried out;
9) organized and, basically, carried out investigative work on the case.
As a result of all measures of a party‐political, operational and military nature, we have:
On June 12, the gang, reaching four and a half kilometers from the border line, shouting ʺhurrayʺ attacked an ambush set up one and a half kilometers south of the Zhaden farm, as a result of a firefight between the ambush and the gang, [gang members] having lost 16 people killed, rushed to retreat into rear, three people were additionally killed while trying to break through in another place abroad ‐ in the sector of the 10th outpost.
2. As a result of the pursuit and operational‐military measures, 59 people were subsequently captured, 44 people volunteered, and one person was killed in the rear.
3. Total for the operation: killed ‐ 21 people, captured ‐ 75 people, voluntarily appeared ‐ 44 people. Total: 140 people.
It is also necessary to take into account that the number of those killed in fact should be higher than the quoted one, since there is no doubt that uncounted corpses and dead wounded remained in the swamps.
4. Among those captured are the leaders of the gang ‐ Khomutovsky S., father, and one of Zalanʹs sons.
5. Of the 14‐15 units of weapons that were in the gang, 8 units were captured, some were thrown into the swamp by the bandits.
6. Leaving into the forest and swamp has finally stopped.
7. The mass of complaints against the actions of local authorities to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission about those who fled to the forest and swamps is one of the clearest evidence of a sharp change in the mood of the population for the better and a manifestation of confidence in the Soviet government.
8. Three new collective farms and 84 farms have been organized; 85 farms have arrived in the old collective farms. The practical solution of the tasks set by the party in the countryside has moved forward. The political situation in the region requires further intensified political and KGB work, since relapses of counter‐revolutionary actions and, in particular, sabotage because of the cordon are not excluded.
In the near future, a question will be raised about the state of the region at the Bureau of the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, where the question of the head of the region and the necessary measures for the region will be resolved. No. 6650.
Deputy PP OGPU in the BSSR Grodis
Head of the OO PP OGPU in the BSSR Nauiokaitis
Memorandum of the STR of the OGPU on anti‐Soviet activity in the countryside and the results of agent‐operational work in 1931 January 26, 1932
No. 8
Top secret
Anti‐Soviet activity in the countryside in 1931 took place in an environment that was fundamentally different from the political situation and the alignment of class forces in 1930.
Even during the spring sowing campaign, complete collectivization in the main grain regions was completed, and by April 1, 1931, the collective farm sector throughout the country absolutely exceeded the individual sector of agriculture. At the end of the year, a number of regions of special cultures came close to the level of complete collectivization. The collective farmer became the central figure in agriculture in the first half of the year.
On the basis of complete collectivization, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the most important grain‐producing regions of the Union was completed, and the kulaks in all other regions of the Union were mainly destroyed economically and politically.
The above changes in the socio‐economic appearance of the countryside largely knocked out the ground for the kulaks and other counterrevolutionary elements for the development of a broad anti‐Soviet movement in the countryside.
However, the presence in a number of districts of a still significant mass of non‐collectivized peasantry, the predominance of cadres of a new spring reception among the collective farmers, the presence of contamination of collective farms with a class alien element that penetrated there during the period of mass influx into collective farms with the connivance, and in some cases with the assistance of the opportunistic leadership of individual collective farms and rural councils ‐ all this, taken together, created to a certain extent the ground for the anti‐Soviet activities of the kulaks in certain areas of socialist construction in the countryside. The changed socio‐economic conditions and a fundamentally different alignment of class forces forced the kulak and other counter‐revolutionary elements in the countryside to change their anti‐Soviet struggle tactics. Where the percentage of collectivization is still low, where the village is the most lagging behind, where the grassroots party‐Soviet apparatus is weak, the kulak is still trying to organize a struggle against the very organization of collective farms, while in areas with a high percentage of collectivization, where the bulk of the poor and middle peasant farms have entered the collective farms, the kulak transfers the struggle inside the collective farms. The kulak is counting on penetrating the collective farms to raise against us the remnants of the petty‐bourgeois element in the collective farm itself. Playing on difficulties and failures, using the backwardness and small‐property instincts of individual groups, the kulak became, in a number of collective farms, especially organizationally weak, the organizing center of resistance of these groups to the socialist reorganization of forces.
The rural counter‐revolutionary element, not yet completely defeated, disguised and retained part of its cadres, enriched by the experience of a long struggle against the Soviet regime, acted throughout the past year with more flexible methods than in previous years, combined illegal work to prepare uprisings with demoralizing work within the collective farms. The kulak and other counter‐revolutionary elements, having penetrated the collective farms, at first try in every possible way to deceive the class vigilance of the poor and middle peasants, trying to gain a reputation for themselves as a diligent collective farmer. Then, having consolidated its position on the collective farm, it activates, organizing anti‐Soviet formations both outside and inside the collective farm. Applying all the methods of struggle known to us from the experience of the struggle of past years,
The counterrevolutionary kulak formations in 1931 in the bulk have a pronounced insurrectionary character.
If in previous years the kulak, forming anti‐Soviet groups, did not always come to the conclusion about the need for an armed uprising, without losing hope for a possible change in the policy of the party and the soviet government in another way (grain strike, organization of an anti‐collective farm movement, etc.), then in In recent years (1930‐31), it (the kulaks) in the mass is increasingly aware of the impossibility of changing the course of Soviet policy without overthrowing Soviet power itself.
Therefore, with a sharp absolute decrease in anti‐Soviet groups and counterrevolutionary organizations throughout the Union, in 1931, compared to 1930, the percentage of insurgent formations among them that went deeper into the underground (five‐fold organization structure, chain link to conspiratorial leadership, refraining from local speeches, attempts at a wide territorial coverage of the activities of counter‐revolutionary organizations, etc.) ‐ has noticeably increased.
At the same time, it should be noted that most of the uncovered and liquidated insurgent formations emerged in the first half of 1931 and in 1930. independent peasant party. Such organizations have been discovered in Ukraine, LVO, TsChO, Tataria and VSK, and, moreover, they have formalized platforms reflecting, in the main, populist attitudes towards ʺpeopleʹs ruleʺ. Compared to 1930, for all types of active manifestations of the anti‐Soviet movement in the countryside, there is a significant decrease:
Nevertheless, the anti‐Soviet activity of the kulaks and other counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside stood at a high level in 1931 (especially in the first half of the year) ‐ in terms of mass demonstrations at a higher level than in 1929, and in terms of terror and distribution of leaflets, almost at the same level since 1929.
The remnants of the old anti‐Soviet parties, the bourgeois intelligentsia and other capitalist elements, blocking among themselves, tried during the last years of the intensified class struggle in the country to organize a kulak and, with its help, lead the backward elements of the countryside against us to help the planned intervention. Having suffered a severe defeat in the fight against us, some of them (from bourgeois specialists) take the path of business cooperation with us, while individual groups are trying to find new ways and forms of struggle against us, trying to create new counter‐revolutionary formations based on the changed situation in the countryside. In the process of undercover probing of the old cadres of agricultural specialists, recently, attempts have been revealed by individual groups of rural specialists to outline new tactical guidelines for the anti‐Soviet struggle, using opportunist elements in the leadership of the collective farms, stirring up and directly introducing into the collective farms kulak‐leveling tendencies, deliberately distorting the directives of the party and the collective farm center in order to arouse discontent among the broad collective farm masses. The most far‐sighted part of the Socialist‐Revolutionaries, these typical kulak ideologists, have recently noticeably changed their previous attitudes, trying to adapt
them to the changed socio‐economic image of the modern village. Leader of the leftists Spiridonova says: “In general, the issue of work in the countryside should be thoroughly thought out. I don’t know if a peasant union is needed now. The organization of collective farmers is another matter. This is a completely new socio‐political category. These are not peasants, but they will never become workers either. In the end, some kind of professional organization of collective farmers should be created, which, uniting them, and will achieve their complete political and economic equalization with the working class. I personally thought about this issue and talked to someone. ʺ
In accordance with the tasks set by the party for the socialist reorganization of the countryside and the organizational and economic consolidation of the collective farms, the operational work of the OGPU bodies in the countryside proceeded. For the successful solution of these tasks, first of all, it was necessary to decisively crush and isolate the kulaks. Therefore, in the first half of the year (in some areas, the operation captured part of the second half of the year), 2,165,795 kulak families were resettled from the regions of the Unionʹs producing zone to the northern regions of the USSR and the village anti‐Soviet asset was promptly confiscated in the amount of: 1 square [artal] 1931 ‐ 49,112 people and in the 2nd quarter [artal] ‐ 42,205 people.
On these operational tasks in the countryside, the attention of the organs of the OGPU in general and in particular the Secret Political Department in the first half of the past year was mainly focused. The fulfillment of the task ‐ the defeat and isolation of the bulk of the rural counter‐revolution manpower ‐ made it possible to switch the entire apparatus to a deep undercover groping for new cadres of anti‐Soviet activists and the elimination of counter‐revolutionary formations of the kulaks and other anti‐Soviet elements that escaped an operational strike in the first half of the year.
The tasks of organizational and economic strengthening of a huge mass of new collective farms, partially littered with kulak and other alien elements ‐ set before the SPO the big task of identifying the kulak element and cleansing the collective farms of it. Probing the attempts of new counter‐revolutionary formations and organizing centers of the counter‐revolution, oriented towards the countryside. These tasks basically determined the direction of the agent‐operational work of the STR in the countryside in the second half of 1931.
The class struggle around collectivization and measures for the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms
By the beginning of 1931, the level of collectivization in the USSR reached 26.4% of all poor and middle peasants. From the first months of preparation for the spring sowing campaign, a powerful influx of individual peasantry into collective farms was outlined (and in almost all regions remained throughout the sowing and harvesting campaign).
The following figures characterize the growth from month to month in the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR; the percentage of collectivized farms was; 1 / II‐29.4; 1 / III‐35.6; 1 / IV ‐ 42.0; 1 / V 48.7; 1 / VI ‐ 52.7; 1 / VII ‐ 55.1; 1 / VIII ‐ 57.9; 1 / IX ‐ 59.9; l / X‐61.0; 1 / XI ‐61.9 and 1 / XII ‐ 62.4%. In the process of the mass influx, with the connivance and direct assistance of the opportunist leadership of individual collective farms and village councils, kulaks and another alien class element in the countryside entered the collective farms. Instead of an irreconcilable struggle against the kulaks and suppressing their attempts to penetrate the collective farms, individual village soviets (not to mention littered with an alien element) promoted the admission of ʺresignedʺ, ʺbankruptʺ kulaks and their promotion as ʺbusiness executivesʺ, ʺprospectorsʺ to middle leading positions in collective farm (foremen, field growers, supply managers, etc.).
In the Central Black Earth District, in the Donskoy Village Council of the Zolotukhinsky District, a kulak group was discovered in the collective farm named after The Comintern, which seized the leadership of the collective farm, deliberately disrupted the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan and persecuted the poor. The chairman of the village council, with whose assistance the kulaks sank to the collective farm, shows: “I knew Tishin (kulak, collective farm chairman) as well‐to‐do, and voted for him at the election meeting because he is an economic man who can be entrusted with running the economy and following him, as for a good owner, other individual farmers, the same owners, will go to the collective farm. During the elections, some people came up to me and said that Silence should be elected as a good owner who knows how to run a household, and not a poor man, since we do not trust the poor, and they do not know how to manage the economy. Not only did I not mind it,
Based on the materials of a sample survey of the personnel of collective farmers in certain regions of the Union, a significant contamination of collective farms with a class alien element was established:
North edge. On 85 collective farms, 299 kulaks and other anti‐Soviet elements were identified, with most of the identified kulaks falling on dwarf collective farms.
Western region. On 303 collective farms in 42 districts, 1230 kulaks and other anti‐Soviet elements were identified, of which 96 were on the board, including two collective farm chairmen.
Belarus. For 153 collective farms in 8 border regions (which are leading in collectivization), 254 people of the class of alien and anti‐Soviet elements were identified.
CChO. For 979 kolkhozes surveyed in 116 districts, 2543 kulaks, 34 people ‐ former whites, 40 ‐ former gendarmes, police officers, 115 merchants, 91 clergy, 66 former bandits and recidivist criminals were identified.
The kulaks that infiltrated the collective farms, at first quieted down for fear of revealing themselves and being evicted to the northern regions, then, together with other anti‐Soviet elements, begins to become active, forms covert counter‐revolutionary groups inside the collective farm and conducts demoralizing work on the collective farm, sabotages, disrupts production plans and the fulfillment of collective farmsʹ obligations before the state.
The demoralizing and sabotage work of the kulak within the collective farm was expressed in the overwhelming and infringement of the assets of collective farmers, poor people, former Red Army soldiers, etc., deliberately confusing workday accounting, sabotage and mismanagement of business, spreading false, provocative rumors about the ʺcollapse of collective farmsʺ, ʺrobbery of collective farmers the state ”, the introduction of kulak‐leveling sentiments among the masses, the incitement of proprietary and consumer tendencies among less stable groups of new collective farmers.
Brigadier Matrosov, a member of the kulak counterrevolutionary group on the collective farm liquidated in the Moscow Region, shows: “Our goal was to disintegrate the collective farm, to ruin and discredit collectivization, as harmful to us, and to create anger among the peasants. For this purpose, we tried to do our best. Subbotin and I deliberately ruined labor discipline and during the sowing campaign sent people of little capacity and inexperienced to work. They tried to free the men with the expectation that they could be sent to side earnings, thereby delaying the sowing. We categorically did not introduce piecework in our work” and so on. etc. Intimidating the collective farmers with war, intervention, persuaded them to leave the collective farm, declaring that only they, the kulaks, against their will, out of fear of eviction, had to go to the collective farms, and the middle peasant and the poor peasant to be an individual farmer. During the sowing and harvesting campaigns, the kulak tried to disrupt the production plans of the collective farms with agitation: “No matter how much you work, you will not get bread. They will leave you a ratio of 1/4 pound for an eater, so that you do not swell from hunger, and the rest will be taken to the elevator ʺ(kulaks agitated in the station Poltavskaya and other Slavyansky district of the SKK).
By talking: ʺYou are working not for yourself, but for the state,ʺ the kulaks tried to demoralize the collective farmer and paralyze his will to fulfill and overfulfill the production plans of the collective farm.
As a result of the wrecking activities of the kulaks, mismanagement, bungling and opportunistic practices of collective farm leadership in a number of districts (IPO, SVK, NVK, Central Chernobyl region, Ural, etc.), a significant part of the harvest and socialized working and productive livestock perished on the collective farms, the economic year ended with a deficit. In some cases (IPO, MO), under the influence of the kulaks, the governing bodies of collective farms made ʺdecisionsʺ on self‐dissolution or abandoned land and crops.
In some areas, exits from the collective farms took on significant proportions in connection with the departure to production and the settling in the industrial areas of collective farmers, provoked and intimidated by the kulaks. In some areas, as a result of the unorganized seasonal work of collective farmers, the percentage of collectivization has somewhat decreased.
In the NVK, from 26 districts during the period from January 1 to October 1, 1931, out of 70,000 who left for retreat, 47,240 people left by gravity.
At the same time, under the influence of the provocative agitation of the kulaks, in some districts, mass refusals of the individual farmer from their land allotments, sowing and harvest, the mass liquidation of their agriculture by the individual farmer and resettlement to cities, state farms and industrial enterprises were also noted: in Western Siberia in 44 districts they self‐liquidated and left there are about 17,000 farms in their districts, of which: poor ‐ 4230, middle ‐ 7600 and prosperous ‐ middle ‐ 5000.
The same was noted in IPO, MO, NVK, Kazakhstan, etc.
During the grain procurement period, the kulaks tried to disrupt the fulfillment by the collective farms of their obligations to the state, arousing and kindling proprietary, consumer‐leveling tendencies among collective farmers, clamped down on grain by creating all kinds of ʺinviolable fundsʺ, concealed bread when it was harvested from the fields, threshed and counted, burying it etc. In Ukraine, in the SVK, NVK, TsChO and other regions of the Union, such methods of concealing were practiced, for example, during threshing, the drum teeth were raised, as a result of which most of the grain went into the chaff, then the waste was divided among collective farmers and threshed by collective farmers for themselves. Sometimes in this way from 30 to 50% of the grain was covered. When winding and sorting the grain, the winders were started at the fastest possible speed, due to which a significant part of the grain flew into the chaff, the chaff was then also divided among the collective farmers. In this manner, in addition to the widespread shelter under the guise of ʺfundsʺ, a large mass of grain was hidden.
The kulaks on collective farms made extensive use of the original, incorrect directive of the collective farm center on the procedure for distributing the crop. In this respect, the testimony of the leaders of the collective farm to them. Comintern in the Zolotukhinsky District of the Central Black Earth Region: “There was talk on the collective farm that the plan was not feasible, many said that the authorities were setting too big plans and did not give us the right to dispose of the property of the collective farm. However, the authorized representatives of the RIK demanded that the plan be fulfilled, then at the meeting I was forced to tell the collective farmers that we would have to export the grain. The poor on the collective farm also insisted on completing grain procurements, but when we received a collective farm wall newspaper from Moscow, which said that first it was necessary to provide the collective farmers and livestock, and then only take‐out grain for procurement and got acquainted with the instructions on the same issue of the Regional Collective Farm Union, which we received in September, we began to doubt. It seemed to us that the order of Moscow and the region was more suitable for the collective farmers than the orders of the district authorities. Therefore, at the beginning of September, we convened a board meeting, where we decided to first create funds, distribute the harvest, and then hand over the rest to the state. ʺ “The collective farmers, being provided with grain, did not rush to thresh, and so that we would not be forced to thresh, we decided to transfer 4 collective farm threshing machines to individual farmers for threshing grain, which also delayed the threshing. As a result of the delay in threshing, grain procurement was delayed” (Testimony of the preparatory collective farm of the kulak Tishin). The Presidential Council on this matter shows: “The board all the time delayed the export of grain to the state, declaring in private conversations with each other that there should be no hurry with the delivery of grain, we must first satisfy the collective farmers, and then export it to the state. The export of grain was delayed all the time, despite the fact that some of the collective farmers with whom I had to talk, declared that the grain procurement plan was not difficult, it could be easily fulfilled, and demanded its fulfillment, but the board did not fulfill, but, on the contrary, aspired to to distribute more grain among the collective farmers”.
Having seized the leadership in individual collective farms, the kulaks tried in every possible way to discredit collectivization, embittered collective farmers with their provocative work, inciting them against Soviet power and collectivization itself. In the NEC and other districts, for example, facts were noted of the intentional overfulfillment of grain procurement plans by the kulak leadership of collective farms at the expense of food grain and seed stocks in the expectation that: ʺThe more the collective farm gives to the state, the more the collective farmers will become angry.ʺ In the village of Baika, Serdobsky district of the NVK, a well‐to‐do middle peasant ‐ the brother of the kulak, using the grain difficulties on the collective farm, agitated: ʺLetʹs eat carrion, the Soviet authorities are lying, look around and give bread ‐ this is a shame to it.ʺ When the provocative role of this ʺcollective farmerʺ was exposed, he fled to Siberia. The facts of organized flogging of collective farmers deserve special attention. Last summer, in a number of NEC collective farms (about 40 such facts were taken into account), whipping of collective farmers was practiced. The flogging was carried out in some collective farms on the verdicts of kulak ʺcomradely courtsʺ, in others under the guise of jokes, but in most cases the poor peasant, the collective farmer‐activist, sometimes the Komsomol member and even the party member, was flogged even more painfully. The calculation of the kulak was straightforward ‐ with such a flogging to identify the collective farm with corvee, serfdom.
In the village of Kalachevka, Turkovsky district, the NEC brigadier (he is also the chairman of the audit commission) Zatsepin, the son of a former landowner and Smirnov, a former merchant, practiced such ʺjokesʺ on women collective farmers: they caught women, and then forced the mentally underdeveloped collective farmer to first kiss the horseʹs face, and then captured women working in the brigade. In some places, this kind of bullying caused whole groups of collective farmers to leave the collective farms.
Along with demoralizing work inside the collective farm, the kulaks waged a fierce struggle against collectivization and collective farmers from outside, physically destroying active collective farmers, setting fire to and destroying collective farm grain, property, livestock and machinery. 43% of those who suffered from the kulak terror in 1931 are collective farmers, not counting the collective farmers who worked in village councils and other public organizations outside the collective farm. In 1842 cases, kulak arson and sabotage was targeted at collective farm property and livestock.
In the village of Studeno, Glukhovsky district of the Ukrainian SSR, fists set fire to the cloons of the Pevny Shlyakh collective farm. 24 horses, 10 agricultural machines, all harness, carts, sledges and part of the seed were burnt. In the village of B. Rybitsa, a group of kulaks set fire to three buildings of collective farmers. The chairman of the collective farm, Chebiryachko, who went to the fire, was fired upon and killed by the kulaks.
Attention is drawn to the facts of the brutal reprisals of kulaks against collective farmers. In the village of Dudorevka, Boryspil district of the Ukrainian SSR, two dispossessed people brutally killed an activist of a collective farmer, inflicting 14 knife wounds on him and finishing off with a sawn‐off shotgun. In the Bedillo farm of the Krasnokutsk region of the Ukrainian SSR, a kulak slated for eviction killed a poor collective farmer, gouged out his eyes, cut off his fingers and then finished off with an ax. At the crime scene, the fist left a note: ʺI did it myself, now everything is clear to you ‐ shoot me.ʺ In the village of Malafeevo, the Voskresensko‐March village council of the Ermakovsky district, a 10year‐old boy, the son of a collective farmer, was burned at the stake by underage teenagers at the instigation of kulaks because his father, despite the threats of kulaks, joined the collective farm.
Massive active anti‐Soviet manifestations in the countryside.
Mass performances
Most of the mass demonstrations in 1931 were markedly less aggressive than those in 1930.
The exceptions are performances that swept a wave of no SVK in July in connection with livestock procurement, performances on the same soil in the North Caucasus and individual performances in the Central Black Earth Region, the BSSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Eastern Siberia. For the whole of 1931, only 32 mass armed uprisings were recorded in the Union (of which 22 were in July on the basis of cattle procurement) against 55 armed uprisings and 176 massive armed uprisings in 1930.The overwhelming majority of mass uprisings were 1786 or 85.3% of their total number falls on the sole sector. Most of the mass demonstrations in the individual sector of agriculture arose in connection with livestock and grain procurements, and a significant part of these protests was caused by excesses in taxation and a distortion of the class line in the procurement process.
Of the 243 mass demonstrations on the basis of cattle logging in July, 206 took place in the SVK. Moreover, in the Bashmakovsky, Chembarsky and Ichalkovsky districts, the unrest resulted in armed insurrectionary actions, accompanied by the defeat of collective farms, mass beating of collective farmers and the murder of communists (in the village of Toporikha, Bashmakovsky district, 5 communists were brutally killed, in the Ichalkovsky district ‐ 9 communists, etc.). The unrest that gripped 206 settlements in the UCWU from July 3 to July 18, in more than 40 districts, was mainly caused, like the demonstrations in January and February, by excesses and perversion of the class line in the distribution of tasks for the delivery of livestock. Local workers began harvesting grain and livestock without sufficient public awareness and public organization around these campaigns. In the distribution of tasks for the delivery of cattle and grain, gross excesses were made. The main burden of procurement in some areas fell on the individual peasant‐poor and middle peasants, and in some cases on the collective farmer (confiscation of all socialized cattle, confiscation of grain from collective farmers who do not even have socialized crops, etc.). In some villages, the anti‐Soviet elements that penetrated the Komsomols deliberately exaggerated in order to greatly exacerbate the discontent of the peasantry. The kulak, who skillfully used in a number of places the indicated excesses and distortions of the class line, bungling and the opportunistic policy of individual village councils clogged with an alien element, managed in some places to rouse more or less significant groups of individual farmers to action. Kulak (such facts were noted in the North Caucasus, in the SVK, etc.
On May 27, a herd of collective farm horses was driven along the outskirts of the city of Azov to shorten the path. The kulaks took advantage of this opportunity and spread a provocative rumor: “All our cattle have been taken and are being stolen from us.” The assembled crowd of women of 40 people rushed to the herd with the intention of dismantling the horses, but making sure that the herd of collective farm horses dispersed. (Fists arrested.)
On May 28, 1931, in the village of Aleksandrova N., Aleksandrovsky District of the SKK, in connection with the widespread rumors of the kulaks about the alleged seizure of cattle from individual farmers, a crowd of women of up to 100 people gathered. pasture. After the explanation, the crowd dispersed (3 instigators, former merchants and a well‐to‐do middle peasant were arrested).
The number of mass actions on the basis of collectivization is relatively small; incomparably fewer than last year there were mass demonstrations that arose in connection with the eviction of the kulaks to the northern regions. A greater number of mass and group demonstration trips to warehouses, dumping points, village councils and regional administrative agencies of crowds of individual farmers demanding food and manufactured goods. In some cases, such demonstrations were accompanied by opposition to the loading of grain, unauthorized parsing and plundering of grain. Out of 1,786 mass demonstrations in the individual sector: 109 arose on the basis of collectivization, 171 ‐ in connection with the eviction of the kulaks, 55 ‐ due to the expulsion of an anti‐Soviet element, 168 ‐ on religious grounds, 6 ‐ due to the arbitrariness of local workers, 5 ‐ due to the reelection of rural public organizations, 267 ‐ on the basis of grain procurements, 447 ‐ on the basis of livestock procurements, 21 ‐ in connection with the procurement of other products, 133 ‐ in connection with sowing and harvesting activities (this includes the socialization of winter crops, the consolidation of collective farm crops into a single massif and the exchange of individual crops for plots outside this massif, land management of collective farms), 209 ‐ on the basis of food difficulties and a lack of manufactured goods, 105 ‐ in connection with the collection of taxes and other payments, and 66 ‐ others. In the corresponding months of the year, mass demonstrations prevailed.
As a rule, mass demonstrations of individual groups of collective farmers were not distinguished by their severity and most often proceeded in the form of demonstrative ʺstrikesʺ, campaigns with collective demands for the delivery of grain, manufactured goods and others to the boards of collective farms, village councils, etc.
The protests also took the form of active opposition, mainly during the socialization of the collective farmersʹ livestock, the socialization of winter collective farmers in the spring reception, and during protests on the basis of food and manufactured goods difficulties (analysis of seed funds, emergency supplies, etc.). Out of 316 mass demonstrations on collective farms ‐ 4 arose due to the disorder in the organization of labor and improper placement of the labor force, 16 ‐ due to dissatisfaction with the procedure for distribution of income, 182 ‐ due to grain procurements and excesses on this basis, 59 ‐ due to the socialization of the property of collective farmers and the organization of dairy farms, 80 ‐ on the basis of food and manufactured goods difficulties, on religious grounds ‐ 3 and for other various reasons ‐ 32. In March and June, most of the mass demonstrations on collective farms arose out of industrial difficulties. In the period from June to November inclusive, there were no mass demonstrations on the basis of industrial difficulties at all, but already in December 1931, several mass demonstrations were again recorded in connection with the emergence of new industrial difficulties in the collective farms of a number of regions (Central Black Earth Region, NEC, Ural, etc.) ... In July, out of 50 mass demonstrations that took place on collective farms, 33 arose in connection with the socialization of winter crops of new collective farmers. From August to November, mass demonstrations on the basis of grain procurements prevailed. In total, in 1931, 2102 mass demonstrations were recorded in the Union, in which, according to incomplete data (statistics cover only 81% of all protests), over 255,000 people took part. In 1930 g. 13,754 mass demonstrations were attended (statistics cover 73% of mass demonstrations) about 2,469,000 people. Out of 2102 mass demonstrations in 1931, 754 performances were taken into account ‐ women in the composition of participants; in these speeches (statistics cover 90% of speeches, over 70,000 women participated). In 1931, there were 168 mass demonstrations on religious grounds, the participants of which were exclusively women. On the basis of dispossession and eviction of the kulaks, there were 171 mass demonstrations, the overwhelming majority of the participants, who were also women. In the past year, the largest number of mass demonstrations was noted in the II and III quarters, and in the II quarter, the growth was mainly due to mass demonstrations in connection with cattle procurement in the SVK in July (over 200 performances were taken into account),
Number of mass performances
I quarter II quarter III quarter IV quarter
526 731 699 146
Selected data, covering over 38% of the total number of mass demonstrations, show that 67% of the speeches were self‐liquidated (the crowd, making noise, dispersed) or were terminated by explanatory work, 12.4% of speeches were liquidated by partial or complete satisfaction of the demands of the speakers, and 20, 6% of the protests were eliminated by exclusion and isolation, which incited the crowd to protest against the anti‐Soviet element.
Only in 36 cases during the whole of 1931, to eliminate the actions that threatened a further exacerbation of the unrest and the expansion of the territory covered by the unrest, was armed force used:
In SVK in 17 cases
In the CChO in 2 cases
In the CCM (national districts) in 6 cases
In NVK in 2 cases
In VSK in 4 cases
In the Ukrainian SSR in 1 case
In Central Asia in 3 cases
In NGOs in 1 case
In 315 cases, mass demonstrations were accompanied by the massacre of the crowd against collective farmers, communists, representatives of village councils, regional executive commissions, police officers and other rural Soviet workers.
During these protests, 24 people were killed, 29 injured and 588 beaten; in 7 cases the crowd disarmed militiamen, communists and local Soviet workers, in 95 cases they persecuted local Soviet workers with the aim of reprisals against them, in 38 cases they smashed village councils, collective farms and other Soviet institutions.
In 39 cases, simultaneous performances of several adjacent villages were noted, in 59 cases performances were repeated at some intervals in the same villages.
Insurgency in 1931 in certain regions of the USSR
During the year, 32 mass armed actions of individual farmers were recorded in the Union. Of this number, 14 turned into insurgent outbreaks (which, however, did not take on a protracted nature and did not cover a larger territory), which required the use of weapons and the deployment of armed detachments to eliminate them. In most cases, the immediate cause of these unrest was the excesses used by the antiSoviet element to organize counter‐revolutionary uprisings. However, in some cases, mass disturbances also occurred in those villages where there were no excesses immediately before the performances. In these cases, as further investigation showed, the protests were provoked by kulaks and other anti‐Soviet elements, who spread provocative rumors about the seizure of livestock, bread, etc. among the individual farmers ʺunder a whisk.ʺ In the SVK, over 200 mass demonstrations, covering 41 districts, took place in the course of 15 days of July on the basis of cattle procurement. Fifteen speeches took the character of rebel armed uprisings, during which 16 party and Soviet activists were killed, 15 were wounded, 16 people were beaten, 4 village councils and 6 collective farm boards were destroyed. The most serious actions, which required the use of armed force to eliminate them, took place in Bashmakovsky, Ichalkovsky, Kerensky, Pachelmsky, Melekessky, Inzensky and Chembarsky regions. In the village of Toporikha, Bashmakovsky district, on July 10, the crowd dispersed the village council, the collective farm board, defeated the collective farmers, established contact with the population of neighboring village councils (Agapovsky, Belozersky, Mitrofanovsky, Sheremetyevsky), urging them to support the speech. A group of party workers (from 5 to 9 people) were expelled from the village five times, threatening to beat them. On the same day, a group of party members who came to the village for explanatory work were disarmed, 5 communists were brutally killed. The operational detachment that arrived at the village was met with shooting, the rebels set up a barricade near the village and tried to puncture the tires of the car with the arrived Red Army soldiers. The whole crowd was armed with scythes, pitchforks, stakes, and some of the most active rebels were armed with hunting rifles and weapons taken from the killed communists. The crowd pursued a car with a detachment (the car was pursued by mounted rebels). The detachment, punching its way, was forced to use weapons (2 pursuers were killed). In the field, the rebels scattered their chains and set up an ambush, awaiting the second arrival of the detachment. The actions of the crowd were directed by the former headquarters, which included the former commander of the Red Army. The crowd, which met the detachment at the outskirts, responded with a categorical refusal to a repeated offer to the crowd to surrender their weapons. Only when the detachment opened fire from a machine gun at the top did the crowd disperse. When the detachment entered the village, individual rebels put up armed resistance. On July 13, in the village of Staraya Yauza, Ichalkovsky District, a crowd of peasants armed with axes, pitchforks, hunting rifles and revolvers brutally killed 9 communist and Soviet activists and dispersed the collective farmers. The arrived operational detachment was met with stubborn resistance and shots. Defending themselves, the detachment fired back, killing 5 people in the crowd and wounding 2 people. Part of the crowd dispersed, and the most active core retreated to the neighboring village of Rozovatovo, where armed resistance was again rendered to the operational detachment. An investigation into mass insurgency in the SVK established organized leadership of the insurgents from the anti‐Soviet element, who used excesses in order to raise the uprising and took the leadership initiative into their own hands. In the village of Korzhevka, Inzensky District, for example, the speakers were armed with specially made, home‐made cold steel; in the villages of Zasechnaya and Ivanovka of the Tarbeevsky district, groups of horsemen were sent out to detain the operational detachments; in the village of Kerry, N. Lomovsky district and Toporikha, Bashmakovsky district, the rebels set up barricades. In several cases, the speakers singled out the leading troikas and sent messengers to adjacent villages to raise an uprising. A major insurgency took place in the Taseevsky district (Partizansky district, East Siberian Territory, July 8 in connection with the eviction of kulaks). A group of peasants in the amount of 80‐100 people (half women) staged a rally in the villages of Vorkhovo, Unta and Vokhrushevo, demanding the release of the kulaks and the return of those exiled in 1926‐1927 from exile. On July 9, a rally was also held in the neighboring village of Sivokhino, attended by 500 men and women. The crowd invited the secretary of the district committee and the detachment, who came to the rally with a detachment of partisans, to surrender their weapons and go with them to the village of Taseevo to free the kulaks. Some of the participants, who spoke without weapons, but on horseback, tried to surround the partisan detachment. The armed part of the speakers in the amount of 50 people was hidden. The partisan detachment, assessing the situation, left the encirclement without firing a shot and settled down near the village of Sivokhi. On the same day, the speakers disrupted a rally, which was attended by over 1000 people, at the meeting, a commission of 16 people was elected, which drew up a document entitled ʺDemand of the masses to the government of the Republic.ʺ The ʺdemandʺ says: 1. To return from exile all the previously and now exiled kulaks, return their property or pay money for the confiscated property. ʺ By means of operational measures and explanatory work, the speech was eliminated.
More than 1000 people armed with pitchforks, shovels and scrapers took part in the mass demonstration in the village of Talinsky Chemlyk, Dobrinsky District (TsCHO). The participants in the unrest destroyed 2 village councils, destroyed all the EPO papers, damaged 15 collective farm reapers, beat 3 horses with a pitchfork, burned the activistʹs house and beat 20 people of district and local communists.
Terror
The past year is characterized by a high level of kulak terror, although the total number of terrorist manifestations in the countryside in 1931 is much less than in 1930, but almost the same since 1929.
1929 ‐ 9093 terrorist attacks
1930 ‐ 13 794 terrorist attacks
1931 ‐ 9098 terrorist attacks
Up to half (4566) of terrorist manifestations recorded in 1931 are acts of physical terror (murder, wounding and beatings). The overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks occurred in the second and third quarters of the year. This is explained mainly by the intensification of kulak terror during the period of the kulaksʹ eviction to the northern regions.
The terror in 1931, to an even greater extent than in 1930, has a pronounced anti‐collective farm character. Among the objects of kulak terror (9098 people), 3010 people are collective farmers. In addition, among the objects of property terror (arson, sabotage destruction of livestock, bread and property) in 1842 cases out of 2212 were collective farm property. The victims of the kulak terror are: 1164 workers of the lower Soviet apparatus (village councils, regional executive commissions, police, etc.); 3010 collective farmers; 2712 individual activists and community workers of the village (village communists, elected workers of cooperatives and other public organizations). The anti‐collective farm direction of terror is also confirmed by data on the direct reasons for the commission of terrorist acts. The reason (reason) for committing terrorist acts was a struggle based on:
Collectivization ‐ in 3575 cases;
Active social work in the village ‐ in 3053 ‐ ʺ‐
Dekulakization and eviction of kulaks ‐ in 1054 ‐ ʺ‐
Bread and meat products ‐ in 920 ‐ ʺ‐
Tax and self‐taxation ‐ at 267 ‐ ʺ‐
Land management ‐ at 23 ‐ ʺ‐
Re‐election struggle ‐ at 52 ‐ ʺ‐
Sowing and harvesting campaigns ‐ in 153 ‐ ʺ‐
In the spring months of the year, when in a number of regions (the Ukrainian SSR, TsChO, Moscow Region, Nizkrai, Ural, BSSR, etc.) they began to evict the kulaks, the number of terrorist acts increased markedly, mainly due to physical terror.
On the contrary, in the period of the harvesting campaign and the deployment of grain procurements, property terror greatly increases, which quantitatively prevails over the manifestations of physical terror for the entire second half of the year.
Arson of collective farm grain, fodder, cattle yards, granaries, car warehouses and other property of the collective farm has become more frequent.
The growth of arson is clearly illustrated by the number of recorded arson fires in the Ukrainian SSR, Central ChO, MO and BSSR.
In Ukraine, the BSSR, the Central Black Earth District and the SVK, there have been cases when arson was committed with fists with the deliberate purpose of calling activists into the fire and, in the general turmoil, to deal with them. In the village of V. Urkhat, Temnikovsky district, SVK at the time of the outbreak of a fire, kulaks and well‐to‐do people in the amount of 6, attacking the chairman of the village council, tried to throw him into the burning building. In Ukraine, in the NVK, cases of mass poisoning of collective farmers by fists through food were recorded. For the direct commission of terrorist acts (murders, beatings, arson, etc.), the kulaks in many cases attracted the criminals they bribed, the most backward poor, etc. The rather high percentage of middle peasants among physical killers and arsonists and their accomplices is explained by the fact that that the terrorist attacks were in many cases committed by middle peasants, relatives of the expelled kulaks, or by the well‐to‐do in the form of revenge for imposing strict grain procurement assignments on their farms, individual taxation of agricultural taxes, etc. Among the physical perpetrators of the terrorist acts, there is a fairly significant group of kolkhoz workers who have been drunk, decomposed and have fallen under the kulak influence. According to incomplete data, the actual perpetrators and accomplices of the terrorist attacks in the amount of 11,205 people were identified in 4420 terrorist attacks (48.8% of the total number of terrorist attacks recorded in 1931).
Distribution of anti‐Soviet leaflets and anonymous letters
In the expired 1931, leaflets and anonymous letters of an anti‐Soviet character were found in the Union more than two times less than in
1930 and slightly less than in 1929.
More than half of the leaflets and anonymous letters were found in first four months of the past year and, unlike previous years, the last quarter of the year (the period of grain procurement, collection of agricultural tax and other payments) shows a noticeable decrease in them compared to the beginning of the year. A slight increase in the distribution of leaflets in the second half of the year was observed only in July and November.
Number of leaflets and anonymous letters found
In January ‐ 280; in February ‐ 268; in March ‐ 329; in April ‐ 270; May ‐ 202; June ‐ 98; July ‐ 170; August ‐ 149; September ‐ 96; October ‐ 68; November ‐ 124; December ‐ 98. Among the leaflets found, a large percentage are rebel (38%) and anti‐collective farm (30.7%). The largest number of insurgent leaflets were found in SVK (63), NVK and ZSK (up to 35), SKK (36), TsCHO (27) and in the Ukrainian SSR (18). As before, no noticeable changes in the technique of making and distributing leaflets in the village were noted in comparison with 1930; in the overwhelming majority of cases, leaflets were made in manuscripts in 1–2 copies. Several cases of leaflets being produced using a rubber set of letters of the “Gutenberg” seal were recorded in the Central Black Earth District, in one case in the amount of about 100 copies, in the other ‐ 30.
Counter‐revolutionary organizations and groups in the countryside
A socialist offensive along the entire front against the remnants of the capitalist classes in our country, the elimination of the kulaks as a class on the basis of complete collectivization — is meeting with fierce resistance from the entire anti‐Soviet element in the countryside. The mass eviction of the kulaks, a series of successive operational strikes against the active counter‐revolution in the countryside and the defeat of the organizing counter‐revolutionary centers force the remnants of the kulaks and anti‐Soviet elements to go deeper into the underground, to conspire about their work.
In 1931, a significant number of large‐scale members of counterrevolutionary organizations were identified and liquidated, covering a large territory, having an extensive network of their own cells and groups in several villages, districts, and in some cases trying to link counterrevolutionary groups and organizations of several regions (undercover case ʺKichmintsyʺ ‐ OVK). For instance:
The counter‐revolutionary bandit‐insurrectionary organization ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ had its cells in 11 settlements of 4 districts of the NC (Petrovsky, Blagodarnensky, Vinodelinsky and Aleksandrovsky) and numbered 60 people. The counter‐revolutionary insurgent organization in the Bobrinetsk region of the Ukrainian SSR numbered 60 people. The bandit‐insurgent organization, with its center in the Gorodnyanskiy district of the Ukrainian SSR, has spread a network of its cells and members of the organization in a number of areas of the former Chernigov and Konotop districts of the Ukrainian SSR and in adjacent areas of the BSSR. The organization numbered up to 350 people. The counter‐revolutionary insurgent organization on the territory of the former Odessa district and the AMSSR covered 25 settlements in 11 districts. The organization consisted of up to 300 people. The counterrevolutionary insurgent organization ʺGreen Armyʺ in N. Devitsky and Gorshechinsky districts of the Central Chernobyl Region had counterrevolutionary groups and individuals in 18 settlements. The organization consisted of 139 people. The counterrevolutionary rebel kulak‐monarchist organization liquidated in the Rzhaksa region of the Central Black Earth District consisted of 94 people. The rebel organization liquidated in several villages of N. Pestrovsky district of the SVK consisted of 70 people. The counterrevolutionary organization of exiled kulaks and local counter‐ revolutionary elements in the Northern Territory consisted of up to 100 people. The organization had its own groups in a number of kulak settlements and at enterprises in the city of Arkhangelsk, had connections with a number of regions at the place of the former residence of the deported kulaks.
Similar organizations were identified in NVK, VSK, ZSK, BSSR, MO, DVK, etc.
There is an increase in tendencies towards blocking the anti‐Soviet element of all shades, attempts to unite ʺall those offended by the Soviet powerʺ, the presence in counterrevolutionary groups and organizations of formerly irreconcilable representatives of political parties and social groups (village Social Revolutionaries and policemen ‐ the Western region, former red partisans and former whites ‐ Eastern Siberia, monarchical and socialist element ‐ the ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ, CCM, etc.). This largely determines the lack of a clear definition of the tasks and ultimate goals of the struggle in most organizations. More often than not, anti‐Soviet elements of different character unite on the platform of overthrowing Soviet power and ʺestablishing democracyʺ without predetermining the nature of this ʺdemocracyʺ. For instance, in the ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ two lines collided in the development of the program ‐ the line of restoration of the monarchical system with the ʺrestoration of Orthodoxyʺ and the other line ‐ with an orientation towards the Socialist‐Revolutionary program. As a result, a compromise was outlined: not to predetermine the nature of the future government, but to elect the peopleʹs representatives in the process of the uprising, so that they would then choose the mode of government at the congress.
The immediate goals of the struggle were more clearly defined: ʺThe restoration of the kulaks, compensation to the kulaks for the property confiscated from themʺ (ʺUnion of Monarchistsʺ ‐ the Central Black Earth Region, a counter‐revolutionary organization of exiled kulaks in the Surgut region of the Central Black Region). “Restoration of the individual peasantry and private property in general” (“Applicants” ‐ the Urals, a counter‐revolutionary organization of exiled kulaks in the Surgut region of the Urals). ʺAbolition of taxes on the peasantryʺ (the ʺApplicantsʺ). ʺLiquidation of collective farmsʺ, ʺreduction of wages of employees and workersʺ (Surgut region). ʺSoviet power without communes and collective farmsʺ, ʺAll land, forests and water ‐ to the people, without division into poor people and kulaksʺ, ʺFree trade and religionʺ (insurgent organization in the Ermolovsky and Karatuz districts of the ZSK).
The leaders of the counter‐revolutionary organization in the N.Pestrovsky district of the SVK set themselves the task of ʺestablishing a peasant dictatorship.ʺ Individual organizations set themselves the goal of ʺrestoring the situation that existed in the country in 1926‐1927.ʺ
From the total mass of counterrevolutionary organizations and groups that did not have a clear program, it is necessary to single out several organizations that tried to develop (and in some places developed) a system of political views, and bring them into the organizationʹs program.
It should be noted that, in general, attempts to develop a program were noted for a number of organizations, but for the most part they remained unrealized. Of the whole mass of such attempts, the following documents, worked out by counter‐revolutionary organizations, deserve attention.
In Borovichi, Leningrad Region, on the initiative of a party member, an illegal ʺPeasant Unionʺ was organized (the organization consisted of 12 people), which issued several leaflets, one of them says: ʺThe main driving force is the peasantry, which alone can be a reliable support in the fight against the Communist Party and the Soviet government. Based on this, ʺKSʺ relies on the petty‐bourgeois and bourgeois elements of the city and countryside, a hostile element from among the rural and urban intelligentsia, employees and former people, thus consolidating all hostile forces against the Communist Party and the Soviets. ʺ Leading role in the organization of the peasantry against the Communist Party and the soviet government ʺKSʺ identifies the intelligentsia as ʺthe most active social stratum.ʺ
A counter‐revolutionary organization that called itself the ʺOrganization of Russian National Freedomʺ was liquidated in the Moscow Region. The organization has developed its own program, which says: “The Soviet power, hiding behind the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, does not defend the actual interests of the working class, and even more so the peasantry. Therefore, the discontent of the workers and peasants must inevitably be used by the bourgeoisie in the sense of approaching the time of intervention, the outcome of which, of course, is the defeat of the USSR. ʺ The organization is working to unite around all those dissatisfied with the Soviet regime and is preparing an armed uprising.
Attempts to develop and fix the program were also made by the ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ ‐ the JCC, the rebel organization of the ʺPeasant Unionʺ headed by Gorokhovtsev and had its own cells in the Central Black Earth Region and Tatarstan, a counterrevolutionary insurgent organization in the Central Black Earth Region ‐ the ʺGreen Armyʺ, a counter‐revolutionary organization in ZSK, called ʺPeasant Partyʺ.
The most complete detailed program had: the counter‐revolutionary organization ʺPeopleʹs Labor Partyʺ ‐ with the center in the Ukrainian SSR, which had cells in the CCK, and a counter‐revolutionary organization called the ʺSouth Russian Democratic Partyʺ (Ukrainian SSR).
A counterrevolutionary organization in the former Cherepovets district of the Leningrad region has outlined the convocation (after the overthrow of Soviet power) of a constituent assembly ʺwith representation of all classesʺ; organization ʺRussian Peopleʹs Freedomʺ (Moscow) ‐ the formation of a ʺnon‐party republic with a legislative assemblyʺ; counterrevolutionary insurgent organization in the Gorodnyanskiy region of the Ukrainian SSR ‐ a bourgeois‐democratic republic.
In several cases, there have been attempts to organize the production of leaflets and brochures. During the liquidation of the ʺOrganization of the Russian [one] Nar [one] Svobodaʺ (Moscow), the printing press was confiscated; Borovichi ʺPeasant Unionʺ (Leningrad region) published three brochures printed on a typewriter: ʺOur tasks for work in the countrysideʺ, ʺMemo to a worker ‐ a member of KSʺ and ʺLenin and the Peasantryʺ; the head of the counter‐revolutionary insurgent organization ʺPeasant Unionʺ, Gorokhovtsev intended to publish a newspaper, for which he was going to purchase a printing press, not being satisfied with the chapirograph he had made; the counterrevolutionary Cossack organization in the Birobidzhan region of the DCK had and distributed anti‐Soviet literature.
The social base of the liquidated counterrevolutionary organizations and groups is, in the main, the kulaks and the remnants of the White Guard activists and former people; in a number of regions, organizations were based on fugitive and illegal kulaks. At the same time, the leaders of these organizations tried to involve in the counterrevolutionary formations the well‐to‐do middle peasantry, persons in one way or another “offended and dissatisfied with the Soviet regime”, the oppressed, kulak youth, offended former Red partisans, etc.
Active participants in the counterrevolutionary insurgent organization, which embraced a number of settlements in the BSSR, the Western Region and the Ukrainian SSR, tried to deliberately exaggerate and distort the class line when conducting households. campaigns in the countryside through their members of the organization in the Soviet apparatus to embitter the layers of the peasantry close to us and push them to support the rebels.
Along with the clearly counterrevolutionary element that took the initiative to organize counterrevolutionary formations into their own hands (former landowner Ilyasov ‐ the Union of Monarchists in the Central ChO; former fishery Meshcheryakov and a group of former large owners of enterprises ‐ Krasnoyarovtsy in the NVK; former officers ‐ kulaks Angora Tungusniki in the VSK and ʺDevilʺ in the Ukrainian SSR, etc.), among the initiators of the creation of counterrevolutionary organizations we meet kulak agents who penetrated into the CPSU (b), who are among the former Red partisans.
The counterrevolutionary organization in Tataria and the CChO arose on the initiative of a member of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks since 1930, a student at MIIT ‐ Gorokhovtsev, a dispossessed son; The Borovichi Peasant Union was organized by party member Arsenyev; the counterrevolutionary organization in the
Gorodnyanskiy region of the Ukrainian SSR arose on the initiative of the former commander of the Red Partisan detachment, who held a number of responsible posts in the region, and then turned around; a counter‐revolutionary organization in the Bobrinets region of the Ukrainian SSR also existed, headed by a former Red Partisan. A group of communists was at the head of the counter‐revolutionary rebel organization of former Red partisans in several regions of Eastern Siberia.
Recently, more and more often in the composition of the leaders of the organization there are not only former white officers, but also officers of the old army, sergeant‐major and other military men who take on the military training of the insurrection. The leaders of several large insurgent organizations (ʺGreen Armyʺ, ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ, etc.) are not military people themselves, they were looking for military specialists to organize combat detachments from members of the
organization. There have been repeated attempts to establish contacts with the workers of the Red Army, with changeovers and preconscripts. As a fighting force at the time of the uprising, certain organizations (the ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ ‐ CCM, ʺUnion of Monarchistsʺ and ʺGreen Armyʺ ‐ TsCHO, ʺOffendedʺ ‐ Ukrainian SSR, ʺBlack Partisansʺ ‐ ZSK) intended to use active gangs, established contacts with him and identified bandit groups themselves.
Separate organizations in search of funds, ʺleadersʺ and weapons tried to establish, and in some places established contact with the overseas White Guard organizations.
The counterrevolutionary organization in the ZSK (ʺWhite Knightʺ) was led by a representative from Mongolia; the activists of the organization intended to get into Mongolia in case of failure; The Barabash rebel organization in the DCK tried to establish contact with Ataman Semyonov. A counter‐revolutionary organization on the territory of the former Odessa district and the Autonomous Moldavian Republic (the ʺDiavurʺ case) tried to establish contact with Romania.
Organizational structure and practical activities of liquidated counter‐revolutionary insurgent formations
The participation in counterrevolutionary organizations of the old cadres of the village counterrevolution (former White Guards, former bandits, etc.) and the kulaks, who had rich experience in fighting the Soviet regime, led to the deep conspiracy of the organizations. For a number of organizations, the aspiration of their leaders to an organized design, the introduction of a specific charter, membership fees, the establishment of strict discipline, and the building of organizations on a military model were noted.
The ʺOrganization of Russian Peopleʹs Freedomʺ (Moscow Region) was built on the principle of triplets, who did not know their composition of the organizationʹs participants; counterrevolutionary insurrectionary organization in the Kantemirovsky district of the Central Black Earth Region ‐ according to the system of fives. In the ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ (North Caucasus), there was a chain link between the leaders of individual cells and rank‐and‐file members.
In most of the large insurgent organizations, there were ʺheadquartersʺ, ʺleading troikasʺ, ʺfivesʺ with a clear distribution of their duties among the members and the obligatory presence of a military leader. The counterrevolutionary rebel organization liquidated in the Rzhaksi region of the Central Black Earth District formed detachments of ʺshock workersʺ for terror and military action at the time of the uprising, moreover, subscriptions to join the detachment were taken from the shock workers and given nicknames. Nicknames were also given to members of the Green Army. The ʺGreen Armyʺ and ʺVolunteer Liberation Armyʺ were built on the principle of building combat units. Both of these organizations had specially made banners. The counter‐revolutionary rebel organization of the former Red partisans in Eastern Siberia, which covered several regions, had inter‐district and regional leading centers, who led the individual cells of the organization. In order to raise funds, mainly for printing and acquiring weapons, the Rzhaksin counterrevolutionary insurrectionary organization in the Central ChO, the Organization of Russian Peopleʹs Freedom in the Moscow Region, and others collected either membership fees or voluntary donations. The leaders of the counterrevolutionary organization liquidated in N. Pestrovsky district of the SVK intended to make several expropriations in order to replenish their treasury.
Many organizations were engaged in the search for firearms, carefully buying them. The main means of acquiring weapons was considered to be carrying out raids on the police, security forces, communists and military depots. To this end, the organizations carried out reconnaissance of the location of the guard of the warehouses of weapons, the location of the latter, took into account the weapons available from the communists and rural workers.
Counter‐revolutionary organizations and groups of the exiled and fugitive kulaks
In almost all areas of the Union, in many cases, fugitive kulaks have been identified as part of liquidated counter‐revolutionary organizations and groups, fleeing dispossession or exile. According to the approximate data of the OGPU GULAG ‐ by the end of 1931, up to 150,000 exiled kulaks were on the run. Heading from exile to their place of former residence, the kulaks organize and join counter‐revolutionary organizations, form and participate in gangsters, terrorize local activists and collective farmers, settling scores with them for dispossession. How active fugitive fists are, is shown by the data from individual PPs on the detention and repression of those who fled from exile.
In the BSSR, up to 5,000 fugitive kulaks were detained during the year, of which 888 were imprisoned in a concentration camp for active counterrevolutionary work and 33 people were sentenced to VMN ‐ execution.
On the ZSK only from September 15 to December 10, 1931, 3439 fugitive kulaks were detained, a significant part of them were also repressed.
In a number of regions, counter‐revolutionary groups from the environment and with the participation of fugitive kulaks were identified, and a number of groups were of an insurrectionary character.
A counter‐revolutionary group was identified in the Central Black Earth District, which arose on the initiative of a kulak in exile, maintaining written communication and ʺinstructingʺ the leaders of the group.
A significant intensification of the fugitive kulaks and exiled kulaks is observed in connection with the Manchurian events and the hopes of the kulaks for involvement in the conflict and defeat of the Soviet Union.
In the Northern Territory, the ZSK, in the Urals and in the NVK, a significant number of groups and several counter‐revolutionary organizations of the exiled kulaks, in some places blocking with the local anti‐Soviet element, have been identified.
In the Urals at the station. Suma of the Nadezhdinsky District, in April, the counter‐revolutionary organization of exiled kulaks was liquidated, which organized a mass demonstration of the exiles and demanded that they be granted the rights of free migrants. The speakers staged riots, beat up the guards and tried to join another party of exiles, and only the intervention of the armed forces localized the demonstration and the organizers of the protest ‐ a former landowner and several former officers ‐ were seized.
Another counter‐revolutionary organization (31 people) in the Surgut district of the Ural region was preparing for an uprising, intended to disarm the guards, move north and occupy several large settlements there.
In the Chainsky district of the ZSK, at the site of the Porbig commandantʹs office, in July last year, an armed uprising of special settlers took place. On July 29, a crowd of about 200 exiles, armed with hunting rifles, axes and clubs, surrounded the commandantʹs office, trying to disarm the guards. In the ensuing skirmish, three kulaks were killed and one watchman was killed on our side. On July 30, a crowd of about 100 people made an attempt to seize the headquarters of the commandantʹs office, but, meeting resistance, hit the taiga, where it was subsequently liquidated by expelled military detachments.
The investigation established that the speakers had intentions to unite with the neighboring commandantʹs offices and raise a wide uprising of the exiles. The leader of the uprising was a former breeder who was exiled in the order of dispossession.
A large organization of exiled kulaks, who came into contact with local counter‐revolutionary elements, was liquidated in the Northern Territory, near Arkhangelsk (up to 100 people). organizing uprisings. This organization had its representatives and small groups at a number of enterprises in the city of Arkhangelsk and surrounding settlements where the exiles worked.
After some time, the second organization of exiled kulaks in the amount of 80 people was liquidated, which sent fugitives to raise an uprising in Ukraine. In total, over a dozen counter‐revolutionary groups of exiled kulaks were liquidated in the Northern Territory, 6 in the ZSK, and several groups in the DCK and VSK.
In addition to the flight of kulaks to exile, there is a significant flight of kulaks from their places of permanent residence, moreover, some of the fugitives make their way to cities, where they penetrate to work in industrial enterprises, especially new buildings, while others settle in the villages, passing into an illegal position. For a number of uncovered counter‐revolutionary organizations and groups, direct attempts have been established by the kulak, hiding in production, to influence the countryside and organize the rest of the peasants in the struggle against Soviet power. The extent of the flight of this category of the kulaks can be judged by the following figures. According to the data of the PP of the OGPU in the IPO, 3998 people are on the run, 2924 people in the VSK, 2198 people and 1753 people in the LVO, etc.
Anti‐Soviet manifestations among the former. red partisans
On the basis of mistakes and distortions of the class line made by local organizations during dispossession and various kinds of economic political campaigns, mainly grain and livestock procurement, as well as the lack of sensitivity of local Soviet and party bodies to the needs of the former Red partisans among some of the latter in the expired 1931 unhealthy sentiments were recorded, which were intensively exploited by counter‐revolutionary and alien elements who had penetrated the partisan masses. In some regions, under the influence of the agitation of counterrevolutionary elements, former partisans took part in mass demonstrations, in some cases taking on an insurrectionary character. So, according to the DCK, according to incomplete data, during 1931 up to 17 mass demonstrations with the participation of former Red partisans were registered. Partisans took on an especially wide scale in the East Siberian Territory in the Dzerzhinsky, Taseevsky, Abansky and Kansky regions. In these areas, during the months of April and June, one after the other, several armed uprisings by former partisans took place, which took on an obviously insurrectionary character and took place under separate counter‐revolutionary slogans.
In the process of investigative and undercover development, up to 800 members of the organization were identified, of which 22 were members and candidates of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and about 300 were former Red partisans. The leadership of the organization and the performance was mainly concentrated in the hands of the partisans. At present, an investigation and undercover development is underway to identify the leading nucleus of the counter‐revolutionary organization and to uncover all the organizationʹs cells. Having started its existence in 1930 as an ʺexclusively partisanʺ organization, led by a group of communists from among the former partisan authorities, dissatisfied with the present policy of the party, with the task of ʺachieving the overthrow of the Stalinist dictatorship and changing the policy of the Soviet regime,ʺ anti‐Soviet elements (administrative exiles, former officers, etc.), subsequently assumed impressive proportions, setting as its task the ʺoverthrow of the present governmentʺ through an armed uprising, replacing it with ʺsoviet power without communistsʺ, violence and collectivization with a free market and free forms of farming, with the abolition of dispossession, etc. For the convenience of actions, the organization was divided into inter‐district and district centers, which, in turn, united groups, divided into several cells. In total, as of November 1, 1931, 14 groups with 92 grassroots cells were identified.
Along with the mass demonstrations that took place, in a number of regions there are attempts by the counterrevolutionary element to provoke the partisan mass and cause massive discontent by spreading fake ʺGovernment Decree on Benefits to Former Partisans.ʺ The dissemination of this decree is aimed at arousing the discontent of the partisans against the local party and Soviet bodies, allegedly hindering the implementation of the government decree. The dissemination of this document, which was observed in the first half of the year only in the NCC and the Ukrainian SSR, has also been noted in recent months in Siberia, the DVK and the Lower Volga region. It is characteristic that in the NIK this fictitious government decree was even published in two regional newspapers. In a number of localities, there are attempts by former partisans to preserve independent partisan associations, convene partisan conferences, etc., moreover, local organizations, due to the weak organization of mass political work, are often unable to rebuff these sentiments. So, in the DCK, in the city of Nikolsk‐Ussuriysk in October 1931, the regional partisan commission, under pressure from the partisans, having no day‐to‐day specific leadership in its work from the City Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, agreed to convene a partisan conference, appointing it on November 8, 1931. Not having received the consent of the city committee to convene the conference, the commission on November 7 announced through the newspaper that the conference would not take place, nevertheless, the next day, up to 100 partisans gathered near the building of the Red Army house, who demanded the opening of the conference ... The regional organization did not take any measures to carry out explanatory work, as a result of which a group of partisans, having gathered in the house of a local partisan, having discussed the issue of the behavior of local organizations, decided to send a delegation with a personal statement to comrades Kalinin and Stalin. The statement was drawn up and signed by 9 people sent to Moscow. In a statement, complaining about the inactivity of local partisans and Soviet bodies, the partisans, on behalf of 750 people, ask the All‐Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to create and expel a special commission to the DCK to deal with complaints of former partisans.
Anti‐Soviet manifestations among agricultural university youth
The general exacerbation of the class struggle in the country in recent years and the processes that took place in connection with this in the countryside were particularly sharply reflected among the students of agricultural universities, a significant part of which are closely connected with the countryside. The ego had as its consequence the strengthening of the anti‐Soviet activity of the counter‐revolutionary element, which had crept into agricultural universities. Receiving, as a rule, the most severe rebuff from the bulk of the student body in open anti‐Soviet speeches and attempts to push through kulak ideological attitudes, the counter‐revolutionary element in agricultural universities goes deep underground, passing to illegal grouping. A number of underground groups discovered in Moscow and, mainly, on the periphery, set themselves the specific task of overthrowing Soviet power, had a pronounced insurgent character,
A group of students of the Znamensky Agricultural College, liquidated in the Nizhny Novgorod Territory, set its tasks:
1. Propaganda of the need to overthrow the Soviet regime and create a peasant government.
2. Active daily agitation against industrialization, collectivization, loans and other measures of the Soviet government, under the slogan ‐ ʺAll measures of Soviet power, violence against the masses.ʺ
3. Wrecking in the economic and educational life of the technical school. The inspirers of the group were: the son of the executed cadet and two sons of the kulak.
In Kiev, at the Institute of Collectivization, a group of students was identified, including 7 people, of which 3 were children of kulaks, united under the guise of a circle of militant materialists. The members of the circle waged anti‐Soviet agitation, pointing out that ʺchaos is happening in the village, the peasants are being forced into collective farms, butʺ the time will soon come when the collective farms will fly along with the Soviet government. ʺ The members of the group tried to use their industrial practice to conduct anti‐Soviet agitation among the peasantry, inviting students going to the village to ʺopen the eyes of the peasantry and explain to him the false path of collectivization.ʺ
Special attention should be paid to the tendencies towards terror on the part of class‐alien elements of the student body, revealed during the investigation of a number of youth groups liquidated in 1931. A member of the counter‐revolutionary terrorist group liquidated in Voronezh, students of the Fedorenko Land Survey Institute showed: “conversations between members of the organization about the terrorist activities of individuals who killed and attempted to murder representatives of the soviet government and the party (the murder of Voikov, the assassination of Kaplan on Lenin), an approving attitude to the terrorist activities of revolutionaries ‐ Peopleʹs will ‐ developed terrorist sentiments of the members of our counter‐revolutionary group. In order to commit terrorist acts against representatives of the Soviet government and the party,
In the city of Orenburg, a terrorist counter‐revolutionary group of student youth was liquidated, which set the task of preparing an armed uprising and committing terrorist acts against the leaders of the party. The members of the group declared: ʺStalinʹs policy is leading the people to complete impoverishment, you need to act ‐ get bombs, go to Moscow and kill Stalin.ʺ ʺAfter the overthrow of this predatory power, a democratic republic must come.ʺ Members of the group are the son of a gendarme and the children of employees.
Another form of struggle against the Soviet power was the attempts of the counter‐revolutionary element among the students to carry out sabotage activities during industrial practice on state and collective farms by damaging agricultural implements (students of Moscow and peripheral universities). Insufficient housing provision for a significant part of the student body and poor, in some places, material and everyday services for it, are used by anti‐Soviet elements for counterrevolutionary purposes, moreover, manifestations of anti‐Soviet activity often take the form of collective written ultimatum demands, organized strikes, collective refusals to take food and attempts of mass leaving universities (SVK, Belarus, ZSK).
In some cases, under the influence of the anti‐Soviet element, students ‐ Komsomol members and party members fell.
In Orenburg, a counter‐revolutionary group ʺFor True Leninismʺ was discovered, the initiator of the creation of which was Istin, a member of the Komsomol. The groupʹs political platform was based on the speeches of the right‐wingers: Rykov, Lominadze, Syrtsov.
Ukrainian and Belarusian counterrevolutions
The liquidation in 1931 of the Union for the Discharge of Belarus and the Ukrainian National Center, which were the largest counterrevolutionary formations from the fragments of nationalist counterrevolutionary parties and nationalist circles, dealt a heavy blow to the counterrevolutionary nationalist movement of both republics. The work of the OGPU bodies in Ukraine and Belarus in nationalist and counter‐revolutionary circles in 1931 was mainly aimed at identifying and eliminating the entire periphery and connections of the discovered organizations. However, the remaining unopened ʺtailsʺ from the second half of the year begin to noticeably revive, trying to restore the counter‐revolutionary underground in a new situation, as evidenced by a number of recently uncovered national groupings.
Ukrainian National Center
According to investigators and agents, the ʺUkrainian National Centerʺ represented a bloc of former members of the Ukrainian anti‐Soviet parties and groups of the Ukrainian anti‐Soviet public, which carried out its counterrevolutionary work together with the bloc of Galician nationalist parties that headed the UNDO.
The UC consisted of Ukrainian Socialist‐Revolutionaries, Ukrainian Social Democrats, Ukaiists, counter‐revolutionary chauvinist elements of cooperators, as well as individual groups of the Galician nationalist intelligentsia in Ukraine (mainly former members of the Galician nationalist parties ‐ radicals, social democrats, as well as officers of the Galician army). The main directive of the ʺUCʺ is the overthrow of Soviet power in Ukraine by preparing an intervention and the uprising of the Ukrainian kulaks and Ukrainian anti‐Soviet elements.
The organization arose in 1924, after the arrival of the former chairman of the central Rada, the leader of the UPSR, Professor Grinevsky to Ukraine. The leading center included: former members of the Central
Committee of the UPSR, who returned to Ukraine as
ʺSmenovekhovtsyʺ: Shrag N.I. ‐ former deputy chairman of the central council, Chechel N.F. ‐ Former Secretary General of the Central Council, P.A. ‐ Former Minister of Internal Affairs of the UPR, as well as members of the Central Committee of the UPSR, who were in Ukraine, who were convicted in the Kiev process of the UPSR in 1921: V.A. ‐ the former prime minister of the UPR during the Austro‐German occupation and Lyzanivsky ‐ the former minister of the UPR. In addition, the center included former members of the USDRP ‐ D.V. Koliukh. ‐ former chairman of the board of Dniprosoyuz, a prominent Ukrainian cooperator and Mazurenko V.N. ‐ Former member of the Central Committee of the USDRP, former adviser to the diplomatic mission of the UPR in Italy, a former Ukrainian emigrant, a prominent Ukrainian co‐operator E. Filippovich. In the first period of its activity, the ʺUCʺ carried out work on the collection of counter‐revolutionary chauvinist cadres and on the creation of groups and organization cells in various branches of Soviet, economic, cooperative, scientific and cultural work.
Due to the fact that the organization arose after the military and political defeat of the Ukrainian counter‐revolution, in an atmosphere of mass decomposition of the Ukrainian emigration, the ʺUCʺ for this period did not set the tasks of direct armed struggle and carried out counter‐revolutionary work under the guise of ʺSmenovekhovstvoʺ and ʺloyaltyʺ to the Soviet government (1924‐1926 g). In 1926‐1927, after Pilsudski came to power, the intensification of interventionist tendencies in the West, under the direct pressure of the interventionists, in the conditions of the intensification of the class struggle within the country, the organization switched from wait‐and‐see tactics to preparing for an armed struggle against Soviet power and intervention. The basis for this struggle is the ʺPolish‐Ukrainian Agreementʺ,
From 1928‐1929, an active preparation for the uprising and intervention was being developed, which is reflected in the planting of an extensive network of grassroots insurgent organizations in Ukraine (Volyn, Podolia, Kiev region, Chernigov region, Poltava region and other regions). Along with this, at the time of the uprising, the organization planned to use former officers of the ʺUkrainian Sichev Riflemenʺ and the Galician army ‐ members of the autonomous ʺUkrainian Military Organizationʺ, as well as former officers of the UPR army and former insurgents as a force leading the military rebel operations. The investigation established that this Ukrainian military organization in the Ukrainian SSR maintained contacts with the Zakordon UVO headed by the former commander of the Sichev Riflemen Corps Konovalets and D. Paliev, moreover, along with the preparation of the uprising on the eve of the intervention, one of the main functions of the UVO in the Ukrainian SSR was military intelligence work in favor of the Poles. The leadership of the UVO in the Ukrainian SSR included G. Kosak, Lyzanivsky, M. Yavorsky, and others, leading the activities of the peripheral groups of the UVO and the Ukrainian SSR. The investigation revealed and partially liquidated the UVO group in Moscow, which carried out reconnaissance work on the assignments of the UVO and the Poles and also played the role of a communication and information center between the UVO and the Ukrainian SSR and the foreign UVO. As a signal for the uprising, the UVO planned the commission of terrorist acts against the leaders of the Communist Party in Ukraine and Moscow. 816 people were arrested in the case.
Belarusian national counter‐revolution
In 1931 in the BSSR a large organization of the Union of the Liberation of Belarus was liquidated, 120 people were arrested in the case. ʺSVBʺ ‐ in its structure and activity resembled the ʺUnion of Redemption of Ukraineʺ liquidated in 1930 in the Ukrainian SSR. According to the materials of the investigation, ʺSVBʺ numbered several hundred people and had its branches in the Vitebsk, Orsha, Polotsk and Gomel districts of the BSSR. At the head of the organization was the ʺcenterʺ, which consisted mainly of scientists ‐ re‐emigrants. Each member of the ʺcenterʺ led a specific branch of work. There were 6 such branches: 1. Scientific institutions; 2. Literary sector; 3. Cultural sector; 4. Peopleʹs Commissariat of Agriculture and agricultural cooperation; 5. Sector of medical institutions; 6. Sector of work on the youth center.
The main backbone of the organization was the nationalist elements of the intelligentsia and student youth. The organization conducted extensive work aimed at mastering command heights in the Soviet apparatus and scientific cultural and educational organizations. The main aim of the organization was to overthrow the Soviet power in the BSSR by organizing an armed uprising, intervention and the creation of an independent peopleʹs democratic republic. In its anti‐Soviet organization ʺSVBʺ maintained close ties with anti‐Soviet emigre organizations, as well as with illegal organizations within the USSR ‐
ʺTKPʺ and ʺSVUʺ. conclusions
1. The mass eviction of kulaks in 1931 on the basis of successfully carried out collectivization took place with a great upsurge and activity of the collective‐farm and poor‐middle peasant masses, which explains the successful and quick implementation of the eviction itself without any serious excesses.
2. As a result of the mass eviction of the kulaks, a decisive operational strike against the kulak attempts to provoke mass resistance to the partyʹs policy in the countryside and the defeat of counterrevolutionary centers that tried to organize and lead the anti‐Soviet elements of the countryside, there is a sharp decline, compared with 1930, in mass and organized counter‐revolutionary activity in the village.
3. Despite this decline, the overall level of counter‐revolutionary activity in the countryside is still quite high (the level of 1929). This is largely due to the direct influence of the intensified threat of intervention on the activation of anti‐Soviet elements.
4. In connection with the imminent completion of the liquidation of the kulak as a class, its final eviction, the kulaks are trying to avoid eviction. The kulak tries to get into the collective farm, state farm, runs into the city to take refuge in production, or goes into an illegal position.
5. Under the new conditions in the countryside, the kulak concentrates its main attention on the collective farm. Crawling into the collective farm, he seeks to seize the leadership in it by a number of sabotage actions, to disorganize its economy, in every possible way to hinder and disrupt its organizational and economic strengthening, to use opportunistic sentiments, excesses and bungling of grassroots organizations. Playing on difficulties and failures and stirring up the consumer sentiments of the backward groups of collective farmers, the kulak is trying to become the organizing center of the remnants of the petty‐bourgeois element within the collective farms.
6. The presence of a number of difficulties and malfunctions in the collective farms, the emergence in a number of them of industrial difficulties affecting the political state of individual regions ‐ the kulak and counter‐revolutionary elements are trying to use in order to deepen these discontent, create panic and stir up the tendency towards organized migrant workers and even the flight of certain groups of collective farmers and individual farmers in the city.
7. A distinctive feature of the majority of kulak organizations over the past year is their deeper conspiracy and exceptional determination to prepare for the overthrow of Soviet power. The active role in these organizations of fugitives and hiding kulaks is especially noted.
8. An analysis of a number of recently uncovered individual organizations signals that the kulaks and counter‐revolutionary elements, orienting themselves towards the countryside in search of new ways and forms of struggle against Soviet power, are striving to organize peasant unions on a new political basis. In most cases, they organizationally form them as an independent ʺPeasant Partyʺ, often with a developed program characteristic of its political attitudes, sometimes disguised as a new situation in the countryside (the use of kulak‐leveling moods of a part of collective farmers, ʺjealousyʺ of the working class, etc..).
9. For a number of uncovered counterrevolutionary organizations and groups, direct attempts have been established by the kulak, who has taken refuge in production, to influence the countryside and organize the backward strata of the peasants in the struggle against us.
10. Attention is drawn to the increased activity of nationalist counterrevolutionary elements in Ukraine and Belarus, who are trying to restore the counter‐revolutionary underground after the defeat suffered.
11. Agricultural universities require serious attention, where, provided that a part of the student population, constantly associated with the countryside, sometimes reflects the backward and sometimes kulak sentiments of the village, that the percentage of their contamination with alien elements is higher than in other universities, a certain ground is created for the emergence of hostile moods and neo‐populist attitudes. For a number of liquidated groups, attempts were made to use ties with the countryside and industrial practices in order to exert an organizing influence on the anti‐Soviet elements of the village, and in some cases tendencies towards terror were noted.
Head of the SPO OGPU Molchanov
Head of the 2nd department of the SPO OGPU Lyushkov