Marx-Engels | Lenin | Stalin | Home Page
Review of the political state of the USSR in January 1929
Top secret
February 27, 1929
Moscow city
Herewith transmitted to the review of the political state of the USSR during the month of January 1929 survey was compiled based on the data information 2 and the Secret of the OGPU departments.
This survey, in view of its top‐secret nature, should be kept on par with the code. Making copies and making extracts is not allowed in any case.
The PP of the OGPU and the heads of the provincial and regional departments of the OGPU can give an overview for reading to the secretaries of the regional committees, provincial committees, regional committees and the Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
When reviewing 3 applications and one table.
Deputy Chairman of the OGPU M. Trilisser
Head of the Information Department of the OGPU N. Alekseev
[Workers]
Supply interruptions to industrial areas and cities
In January, the distribution of food in cities and industrial areas was carried out almost exclusively at the rate. Sharp interruptions in the supply of grain were felt in a number of large industrial regions ‐ Baku, Izhevsk, Yaroslavl, the North Caucasus. In Yaroslavl, the norms were reduced: for children under 3 years of age (up to 160 per day), for cooperative handicraftsmen from 500 to 300 and for employees and their families from 600 to 300; the unworked population is removed from the supply. In Baku, interruptions began on January 10 due to snow drifts that caused a shortage of food, queues reached 300 or more people, were established from 3‐4 hours. nights. In the North Caucasus, interruptions have seized new points that have not experienced any difficulties so far: Sulin (queues up to 500 people), Vladikavkaz, Dagestan, Novocherkassk district, Yeisk and Donskoy districts. In the city of Azov, due to a decrease in the rate of flour supply, from January 25, interruptions in the supply of bread to the population began. On January 28, a crowd of townsfolk burst into the premises of the bakery, shouting: ʺGive me bread,ʺ shouts were heard at the factory: ʺBeat him with stones.ʺ The incident was caused by a lack of bread. There are tendencies among the workers to buy grain in reserve, in the spring (Izhevsk, Artyomovsk district, etc.).
A conflict on the basis of insufficient norms and an unsatisfactory system of grain distribution took place in the V. Volomsk deposit (Tver province). The workers of the weaving department (about 200 people) stopped working and came to Factory 3 demanding to increase the norms and improve the grain supply system. The break in work lasted 20 minutes.
In Moscow and Leningrad, the bread supply is satisfactory. The transition in Leningrad to the system of selling bread according to intake books 4 streamlined the supply of the working population (in the early days there were interruptions and significant queues due to organizational discrepancies).
Abuses with the issuance of sampling books and speculation have been noted; books are sold for 5‐8 rubles. apiece. The export of baked bread from Leningrad does not stop.
In the Moscow province. the shortage of grain was felt only at individual enterprises in the districts (at the Kashirskaya power plant, the Istomkinsky factory, the Yakhroma factory). Serious conflicts on the basis of food difficulties were in a number of small towns receiving food in the last turn (Voronezh, the cities of Tver province ‐ Bezhetsk, Torzhok, Ostashkov, a number of small cities of the Central Organ), among population groups removed from the planned supply
(employees, artisans,).
In the city of Bezhetsk, Tver province. since January 4, the norms for the sale of bread have been reduced: for families of workers from 600 to 300 a day, to the unemployed from 200 to 100, the sale of bread has been stopped to handicraftsmen and artisans (until now they received 200). When a new order was announced to those who were standing in line for bread, 70 people went to the board of the city PO, demanding the release of bread and the abolition of the division of urban residents into categories. The City Council was forced to temporarily authorize the sale of decommissioned grain.
In the city of Torzhok (the same province), a group of women demanded an increase in the rate of bread sales, since the existing rate did not satisfy them. In the Ukom of the All‐Union Communist Party, women broke the windows, there was an attempt to break down the door. The Ukom secretary was not allowed to speak.
There were interruptions in Voronezh for several days (from 2 to 5 January). The reason for the interruptions is the indiscriminate nature of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Koopinsoyuz 5, which did not supply flour to bakeries in a timely manner. There were queues of 100 or more people. The peasants took advantage of the grain difficulties by selling rye flour for 4 rubles. per pood, wheat 20 rubles. Since January 6, the supply has been established. Those responsible for creating the outages are brought to justice.
In recent years, there has been a sharp lack of supply of industrial areas with manufactured goods, especially textiles and leather. In Novorossiysk, some cement plant workers did not go to work due to lack of shoes; there are no shoes on sale. In Tula, there is no plantar leather, childrenʹs shoes, woolen, chintz and linen for sale. There are no felted shoes, the demand for them is great. The demand for taxes is not being met.
Due to the lack of manufactured goods in Melitopol and at the Kaslinsky plant (Sverdlovsk district), the following happened: in
Melitopol (at the end of December), the queue for the manufactory gathered at 4 oʹclock in the morning (1000 people). The crowd refused to disperse despite the categorical demands of the police. At the Kasli plant, * 00 people gathered in a queue. The crowd forced the store manager to give out numbers to the manufactory, not keeping to the queue. There was a crush. The police were summoned to put things in order.
Note
* The first numbers are illegible
Renewal of collective agreements 6
By the end of January, the collective agreement campaign had not yet been completed for a number of enterprises. In Leningrad, the collective agreements (information as of January 23) were not renegotiated at 58 enterprises, of which at some large metal factories
(Krasny Gvozdilshchik ‐ 2566 workers, Sevkabel ‐ 1462 workers). At the Electrosila plant (3480 workers), the contract is supposed to be concluded only by March 1. The contracts were not renegotiated at 2 large textile factories (ʺRabotnitsaʺ ‐ 2858 workers and ʺVozrozhdenieʺ ‐ 1872 workers) and at a number of other enterprises, mainly Pishchetrest.
On the CCM, only by January 20, after lengthy negotiations related to disagreements on the issue of wages, an agreement was signed between the Union of Miners 7 and Grozneft 8. A number of agreements on the JCC by this time were in the arbitration commissions 9 (general agreement between Sevkavpromlesom 10 and the Union of
Woodworkers 11, etc.). Collective agreements on some enterprises of the Nizhne‐Volzhsky region are in a similar position.
Demands for a pay rise
In some enterprises, at meetings to discuss a new collective agreement, individual workers and groups put forward demands for higher wages. This was noted mainly in the NWO. At the Proletary factory in the Novgorod District, a group of workers in the muffle branch 12 demanded an increase in the wages of all workers by 25%. This demand did not meet with support among the majority of those present. At the Fanerodvinoles plant in the Leningrad District, a proposal was made to raise wages by 10‐15%.
Among certain groups of workers in the coal and ore industries of Ukraine, dissatisfaction with the insignificance of the increase was revealed. In some cases, groups of ancillary workers announced their refusal to raise money. At a meeting to discuss the collective agreement, workers of the coke ovens of the Yekaterininsky mine administration (Stalinʹs district), individual loaders said: ʺWe do not want a ten‐kopeck increase, we donate an increase to the state for an aircraft, let them build an aircraft and fight without us.ʺ At the general meeting of the Rutchenkovsky mining administration (Stalin district), laborers declared: “An increase of 5 kopecks. ‐ itʹs like adding nothing. ʺ At mine No. 4 bis of the Khrustalsky mining administration, a number of workers declared: “We do not need any increments, we need to lower the prices of goods. Workers can never keep up with market prices when wages are not raised enough. ʺ
Attention is drawn to the tendencies of workers of mechanical workshops of the ore administration named after. Dzerzhinsky (Artyomovsk district) to move to the Union of Metalworkers 13 due to the fact that the salary at metal plants is higher.
At some enterprises of the Nizhne‐Volzhsky Territory, where the tariff reform was carried out, the grassroots party and trade union organizers were completely unprepared for the campaign (the Krasnye Barrikady plant ‐ Stalingrad, the Bolshevik and Kommunar cement plants ‐ Volsk, Astrakhan metal plants, etc.). At the Bolshevik cement plant, the worker, without coordinating the draft collective agreement with the party bureau, submitted the draft for discussion at the general meeting of workers. The workers, noting that there was no agreement on the new collective agreement between the party bureau and the factory committee, refused to discuss it.
Opposition speeches
Opposition speeches were noted at a number of enterprises in Belarus (Minsk), Ukraine (at small enterprises in Kharkov) and at individual enterprises in the Lower Volga region. In Minsk, when discussing a new agreement at some factories and plants (Minshvey factories, factories ʺEnergiyaʺ, ʺBolshevikʺ, bakeries), oppositionists show increased activity (demands were made for higher wages, there were cases when oppositionists restored workers against party members). In the tram fleet of Saratov, opposition‐minded individuals tried to disrupt a production conference to discuss the draft of a new agreement. At the Krasny Oktyabr plant (Stalingrad), at a Q&A evening dedicated to the collective agreement, one of the speakers said: “Enough to industrialize. It is necessary to give 50% of the income of industry to the workers. ʺ
Speeches by anti‐Soviet persons
Speeches of anti‐Soviet persons at meetings to discuss the collective agreement were noted in the coal industry of Ukraine, at the Krasny Perekop factory in Yaroslavl province, at the Kharkov steam locomotive plant, etc. In some cases, anti‐Soviet persons demanded a general increase in wages, norms for a long time, etc.
At the Kharkov steam locomotive plant, former anarchists spoke at meetings to discuss collective agreements 14. At a delegate meeting on January 2, under the influence of the agitation of anti‐Soviet elements, a number of workers opposed the clause on the calculation of wages under the new tariff setting 15, which should be introduced from May. Only 25 out of 0 voted for the aforementioned item. * At the Krasny Perekop textile factory, at a meeting of workers in a machine shop and a power plant on January 3, sharp statements by a number of anti‐Soviet persons headed by worker Lyulin were noted. Lyulin said: ʺThe situation of the workers is deteriorating, food prices have increased by 20% during the year, they promised the worker to increase their wages, but in reality the workers did not receive any increases.ʺ Lyulin ended his speech as follows: “The new collective agreement should include a clause stating that if food prices rise, the workers have the right to terminate the tariff part of the collective agreement at any time of the year. It is also necessary to give everyone an increase and, in addition, to allocate a fund to raise the salaries of lagging groups. The tariff part of the collective agreement in the 12th year of the existence of Soviet power has been worked out very poorly. ʺ His supporter, the worker Isaev, who spoke out for Lyulin, proposed a resolution on “the need to include in the collective agreement a clause that food prices should not rise during the year and that the transition from food books was untimely16 for the purchase of groceries for cash. ʺ For this resolution, however, no more than 35 people, headed by
Lyulin, voted, the resolution was not adopted.
Note
* The preceding numbers are illegible
Strikes and conflicts
In some enterprises (Moscow, Nizhny [Novgorod], Leningrad), minor strikes and conflicts took place after the new agreement was enforced. Discontent was driven by partial wage cuts and was noted among relatively small groups of workers.
In Moscow, the strike took place in the spinning and weaving f‐ke Ascension m‐ry (26 January did not work 15 minutes 68 bankabroshnits 17); at Verbilkovskaya factory on January 16, 100 workers of the grinding shop went on strike (the earnings of these workers were reduced from 35 to 45% per month, since the norms were increased, and the extra earnings were reduced). At the f‐ke them. Sverdlov of the 1st Gosherstotrest and at the spinning and weaving factory ʺRed Bannerʺ a group of women workers (weavers and ribbon makers 18) carried out ʺItalianʺ strikes 19... Weavers instead of 100 rubles. a month in January earned 75‐85 rubles. Around Leningrad at the Faculty of Anisimov, when paying out wages under the new collective agreement, it turned out that some groups of workers almost did not receive an increase (the hourly earnings of spinners in comparison with hourly earnings in December increased by an average of 0.5 kopecks, which is an increase of *, but weavers, instead of the established 7% got 5%). The workersʹ discontent is exacerbated by the waste discovered in the factory committee. The workers of the factory committee in recent days have not been doing any work among the workers since most of them are involved in embezzlement. On January 24, at the Optical Factory, a group of mechanics from 3 assembly and 3 mechanical workshops was ʺItalianʺ. The discontent among groups of workers at this plant is explained by rumors of a cut in wages. The salary fund under the new collective agreement decreased by 13%, while part of the extra income is included in the tariff. The rates and prices will be revised throughout the entire period of the new collective agreement and the rates will be determined by the maximum output, which, despite the increase in the tariff, will entail a decrease in earnings. The collective agreement at the plant has already been concluded, but the administration did not announce the terms of payment to the workers, fearing a conflict.
In the Nizhny Novgorod province. Sharp dissatisfaction, in connection with the decline in earnings after the implementation of the new collective agreement, arose in the workshops of the agricultural workshop of the Gudok Oktyabrya plant (before the conclusion of the new collective agreement, a number of workers worked out the rate of one and a half size).
On January 17, a group of pieceworkers (17 people) of the assembly workshop, headed by two former party members, did not work for 2 hours and filed an application with the factory with a demand to increase prices so that each worker earned at least 3 rubles at any job. 50 kopecks in a day. Some members of the All‐Union Communist Party are among those who signed the statement. The discontent of the workers became so aggravated that threats of beating were heard at the factory committee and TNB.
At the same time, dissatisfaction arose in the blacksmithʹs workshop, where the workers, led by a party member, also did not work for about three hours.
Note
* Number is illegible
Strikes and conflicts
Textile workers
In January, the most noticeable dissatisfaction was noted among workers in textile factories (Moscow, Leningrad, Ivanovo‐Voznesensk province, etc.). The reasons for dissatisfaction are the same as in December: a decrease in wages (from 5 to 20%), due to a drop in output, mainly among workers transferred to compacted work (from 2 to 3‐4 machines and sides). The drop in output is explained by the poor quality of raw materials, the transition to the production of new varieties of yarn, technical shortcomings, the lack of discipline of the administration, etc.
Despite the fact that in some cases entire departments of the factory were involved in conflicts, small groups of workers (from 30 to 70 people) took part in the strikes. In addition, the strikes were short‐lived (from 15 minutes to 2 hours).
In total, 6 strikes and 2 ʺItaliansʺ were registered in January. 2 strikes were caused by dissatisfaction with the poor quality of raw materials (Teikovskaya factory of Ivanovo‐Voznesensk province ‐ 30 workers went on strike; factory named after Lenin ‐ Kostroma, 70 people did not work). Due to the delay in wages, 2 strikes were registered (factory named after Lantsutsky ‐ Moscow, 15 people did not work, and the Knitwear factory named after Krupskaya ‐ Saratov, 70 people were on strike). At the Zanar factory in Moscow, 30 people went on strike due to the lack of fixed prices for work. One strike and two ʺItaliansʺ were associated with new agreements (see section Re‐entering collective agreements).
Conflicts on the basis of lower wages among workers who switched to consolidated work
Conflicts over lower wages among workers who switched to compacted work took place in factories in Leningrad and Moscow. In some cases, there has been a systematic drop in output among groups of workers (mainly spinners and weavers). The administration does not take measures to equalize the level of wages and does not provide explanations, which entails an aggravation of workersʹ discontent.
At the Neva textile factory (Leningrad), underdevelopment is noted in 4 departments, which employ up to 400 workers. Underproduction is caused by an incorrect mixture of 20 raw materials, a decrease in the speed of rotation of motors, wear and tear of equipment parts, downtime due to indiscriminate technical personnel and a number of other technical shortcomings. The lower technical staff pointed out this at a technical meeting convened on January 11, but the workersʹ management did not agree with the arguments of the masters and apprentices who spoke, stating that the decline in labor productivity was due to the insufficient qualifications of apprentices, new prices, etc. the real reasons for the decline in production, head. production answered, ʺI do not know.ʺ
At the Leningrad f ‐ ke them. Nogin, among the workers working in the compacted work, there is serious dissatisfaction with the poor quality of the yarn. There have been cases when female workers faint because of overwork (because of a bad mixture, the yarn is often torn and female workers have to run around the waterways all the time 21). 25 january group of water women 22 sent a delegation to the director with a demand ‐ either to cancel the compaction, or to thread other types of yarn and reduce the speed of the machines. The delegates said: “If you don’t take action, we will stop the machines. 3 sides is hard labor for us, since the roving is very bad, it turns out that we hardly work, but fix the yarn all the time. Let the Komsomol work on 3 machines, but we cannot. Even under Palais (former factory owner) there was no such exploitation. We earned 30 rubles on two sides, and now on three sides ‐ 34 rubles, and food is becoming more expensive every day. ʺ On the same day, two collective applications were filed (one by a group of water women, the other by a group of apprentices) demanding an increase in prices.
Metalworkers
Among the metalworkers in January there were 4 strikes and 3 ʺItaliansʺ with 564 participants (in December 3 strikes with 50 participants). Across Moscow, small groups of workers carried out ʺItalianʺ strikes at the Mytishchi and Kolomna factories due to lower wages. At the Podolsk Mechanical Plant of the State Shvejmashiny 42 pressmen of the foundry went on strike (the strike arose in protest against the dismissal of three pressmen, who deliberately did not work out the norm, after switching to a 7‐hour working day in order to achieve an increase in prices).
In the LVO at the Onega plant, a group of workers in the shell shop went on strike in connection with a decrease in prices from 2550%. Strikes in connection with the non‐issuance of overalls took place in Ukraine (plants of KhPZ and Konstantinovskiy metallurgical ‐ Artyomovskiy district.).
In Tula, a group of workers at the mechanical workshop No. 2 of the
Labor Department went on strike due to the delay in wages.
At the Ural factories (named after Kolyuschenko and NizhneSerginsky) there were conflicts in connection with the movement and reduction of workers. It is characteristic that at the Nizhne‐Serginsky plant the head. The MA did not agree on the reduction issue either with the director or with the plant organizations. By order of the director, it was announced to the workers that there would be no reduction, and the head. MA was reprimanded.
Miners
Among the miners in January there were 3 minor strikes with 120 participants (in December 1928, 5 strikes with 759 participants).
Attention is drawn to the strike mood among the miners (318 people) at the asbestos mines of the Uralasbest trust (Bazhenovsky district of the Sverdlovsk district).
The workers were recruited in December 1928 in the Tatrespublika on the following conditions: 1) daily allowances (5 rubles each) are issued immediately; 2) immediate provision of an apartment at the place of work, 3) those who have worked for 6 months, return travel is made at the expense of the trust. The recruiters told the workers that the earnings in the mines ranged from 3 to 7 rubles. in a day. When the workers arrived at the mines, most of the promises were not kept. All workers were placed in a barracks, which is designed for no more than 100 people. The workers were given bad slaughter. One batch of workers was lowered into mine No. 1, having given out sack overalls, in the allotted face ʺthe water was gushing.ʺ Instead of the promised 8th grade, the workers were given the 4th grade. The Asbestos Central Regional Committee refuses to supply recruited workers with sugar and tea, demanding that they join the cooperative. The trust refuses to issue advances to the workers on account of work, instead of money, orders are issued to the Central Dispatch Center, and these orders are accepted only on condition that products are taken for the entire amount indicated in the order and necessarily at one time. Discontent is exacerbated by the rudeness of the administration. Among the recruited workers, conversations are noted: “We were cheated, they promised to give daily allowance, but not everyone was given it. We barely earn our bread, if they do not improve the situation, let them be sent back. ʺ The regional committee of miners does not pay attention to the complaints of workers.
Seasonal workers
There were 12 strikes among seasonal workers in January with up to 3,000 participants.
The reasons for the strikes are: dissatisfaction with prices, late delivery of fodder, difficult working conditions (woodland, etc.). Particularly serious discontent was noted among the loggers and carters at the logging of the TLO of the Northern Railways. (Arkhangelsk province). In a short period of time (from 12 to 26 January), 4 strikes were recorded in this area, involving 1,300 workers; the strikers demanded an increase in prices (up to 80%) or transfer to better forest areas.
Sharp dissatisfaction among workers is noted in the Urals in connection with the failure to provide forage.
On the Voskresensky section of the Kaslinsky forestry of the Sverdlovsky okrleszag, the carters have not yet been issued with the oats norm for December 1928, since the okrleszag, instead of the 23 wagons of oats required by the forestry, sent only 5 wagons for December. On January 14, a group of carters came to the Union of Agricultural Workers, demanding that the Union influence the forestry. The workers said that ʺthey will have to quit their jobs.ʺ A number of artels (600 supplies) are in the mood for strike. At the Nizhne‐Serginsky plant, due to the untimely supply of fodder, on January 31, a significant group of carriers (500 carts) stopped working. The drivers asked the factory management to give an advance payment of 5 rubles, but this was refused. The attempt of the chairman of Vserabotzemles 23 to settle the conflict on the spot with the plant management was unsuccessful.
Mood of the unemployed (December ‐ January)
The mood of the unemployed in December‐January continues to be tense. The reasons ‐ a significant reduction in the objects of employment in the winter (the elimination of seasonal and public works) with a continuing increase in the number of unemployed.
Among the unemployed in Ukraine, there is an increase in anti‐Soviet agitation (Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Proskurov,
Mariupol). Most of those leading anti‐Soviet agitation are socially alien and even criminal elements (those who have served prison in correctional houses, 24 re‐emigrants, former police officers, etc.). In some cases, agitation is defeatist and pogromous.
Peasant and clearly right‐wing sentiments are noted among the unemployed: ʺThe peasants used to live much better than they do now ‐ the peasants are oppressed from all sides.ʺ “We cannot do without a kulak; a kulak can work and he always has bread” (Kharkov). At the same time, there are also open Trotskyist demonstrations among the unemployed by the oppositionists who were dismissed from production 25 (Kharkov). ʺThe pressure on the kulaks from the party is imperceptible.ʺ ʺThe first is developing before the eyes of the partyʺ (speech of the oppositionist at a meeting of the unemployed). These performances are met with the sympathy of a very small number of unemployed. It should be noted that there is a significant increase among the unemployed Ukrainian labor exchanges of anti‐Semitic sentiments 26 (Kharkov, Zinovievsk, Kiev, Proskurov), sometimes turning into beatings and insults of unemployed Jews (Kharkov, Odessa).
At the Orenburg, Ryazan and Krasnovodsk labor exchanges and at a number of labor exchanges in Ukraine, there were conflicts among the unemployed (the defeat of the unemployed labor exchanges, beatings and attempts to beat up workers of labor exchanges and professional workers).
The conflict in the Orenburg district, Unemployed seasonal gardeners registered at the Orenburg labor exchange, due to the illegal refusal by the insurance office 27 to issue them unemployment benefits, in an organized manner in the amount of 50 people went to the trade union of agricultural workers. Bursting into the premises of the Union, they tried to beat the secretary of the Union and the secretary of the insurance office who was there. After a promise from the Secretary of the Union to give them benefits, the unemployed dispersed.
Beating up representatives of the Union. January 7 in the office of the head. An unemployed member of the Metalworkersʹ Union appeared at the Mariupol Labor Exchange and demanded an extraordinary, immediate dispatch to work. Having received the answer that the parcel is made only in turn, the unemployed began to insult the head. the labor exchange and the employees of the labor exchange who were in his office and beat the representative of the Union who had taken away his profile ticket.
The discontent of the unemployed‐demobilized continues to be noted on the basis of slow placement for work. Cases of demobilized delegations being sent to various Soviet organizations with the demand for work (Krasnodar, Mariupol, Kiev, Nikolaev) have become more frequent. Demobilized, registered with the Moscow Labor Exchange, on January 2, it was filed in the name of the head. by the labor exchange a statement demanding the convocation of a citywide meeting of the unemployed to discuss the prospects for eliminating unemployment among the demobilized. A similar application was submitted by the unemployed‐demobilized, registered with the Penza Labor Exchange.
Peasantry
Re‐election of village councils
Shortcomings in campaign preparation. The main shortcomings in preparation for the re‐election of village councils, noted in the last review, are characteristic of almost all districts. Insufficient attention of grassroots party and Soviet organizations to the preparation for reelections, untimely deployment of the pre‐election campaign and hence often insufficient voter turnout during this campaign were noted in a number of regions of the Union.
It is especially necessary to note the cases of insufficient attention of grassroots party and Soviet organizations to the organization of the poor and the Soviet activists of the village in certain areas, which also affected the results of the re‐elections, causing the partial clogging of the re‐elected village councils with alien elements (certain districts of Ukraine, SKK, DVK, Leningrad oblast. 28, Yaroslavl and Ryazan provinces).
Along with the passivity, inertness and inactivity typical for many lower Soviet and party organizations during the election campaign, among the workers of the lower Soviet apparatus and rural party members, there were attempts to justify their inactivity, proceeding from an underestimation of the class struggle in the countryside, denial of the need to work to organize the poor, and, in some cases, clearly anti‐poor sentiments.
In the Plavsky district of the Tula province. The Presidential Council on the issue of the class struggle in the countryside said: “Now there is a lot of talk about the kulak danger, but all this talk is exaggerated and in reality there is nothing. All peasants are the same and it doesnʹt matter who will be in the village council ‐ a poor peasant, a middle peasant or a well‐to‐do. After all, all village councils 29 do not work independently, but according to the instructions of 30 RECs and carry out only the orders of the latter”.
In Mologsky u. Yaroslavl province. at the volost party meeting of the Nekouz organization, two members of the CPSU (b) and a Komsomol, nominated to work with the poor, said in their speeches: ʺThere are no poor people, there are only quitters, and therefore no work should be done among them.ʺ
As a result, in some places grass‐roots party organizations and village councils found themselves in the tail of the masses. Cases have been recorded of poor people, trying to organize, convened their own meetings. For example, in one of the villages in the Buzuluk district, 150 poor people organized themselves without the help of party organizations, and a former member of the CPSU (b) took over the leadership of the group.
Insufficient work with the poor causes numerous complaints from the poor that “the party and the Soviet government are talking about organizing the poor, but the local communists are not doing anything in this direction” (facts for individual districts of NVK, SVO 31, Central Black Earth Region, Siberia, Leningrad Region and some provinces of the Center).
Poor work with the poor and the often purely formal attitude of the village party organizations and village councils to her led in a number of cases to the presence of passivity of the latter at convened poor meetings and conferences, fear of exacerbating their relations with the wealthy, fear of persecution and revenge of the kulaks.
“We, the poor, have been and remain all the time in the pen and depending on the wealthy. We do not have our own bread. You do not give it to us, but the well‐to‐do gives it to us. If this is so, then how can we exacerbate our relationships with our fellow villagers, on whom we depend on a lot. We, the poor, are still very weak to oppose the wealthy with our rights. We, if we say anything, they can burn us and do anything. Therefore, there is no need to ask for trouble” (statement of the poor man at the poor meeting in the village of Ilyinka, Balashovsky
Okrug.).
In particular, such sentiments are common in areas experiencing food shortages.
Nevertheless, in comparison with the last re‐election campaign of village councils, in general, there is a significant increase in the activity of the poor.
Indicatives are the results of the pre‐election organization of the poor in the DCK (Chita, Amur districts), where often well‐trained kulak groups, kulaks and the wealthy did not even dare to speak at reporting meetings of the village councils, seeing the high level of organization of the poor and their united performance with the middle peasantry.
The work of organizing the poor in Ukraine has improved significantly as the re‐election approaches. The attendance of the poor at reporting meetings ranged from 50 to 70%.
The activity of women‐voters has especially increased almost everywhere.
Khvostist sentiments 32 and the merging of rural communists with the kulaks
In the course of the campaign, cases of khvostist sentiments were revealed among some of the village communists. Individual communists (in certain areas of the NVK, SVO, SKK, Urals, Siberia, etc.) at the reporting meetings reflected in their speeches the anti‐urban sentiments of the well‐to‐do top of the peasantry, came out with clearly anti‐party attacks against the partyʹs class policy in the countryside, etc.
In with. Lyalya‐Titovo, Tagil District (Ural), at the reporting meeting of the village council, a member of the CPSU (b) who spoke in the debate said: “You encourage those who do nothing. Why is the discount given only to the poor, it is necessary to make the discount to all equally? You are throwing off Trud from the agricultural cartel, because you are making new landowners, they have all sorts of benefits, and we are both oppressed and oppressed. ʺ
Individual communists, close to the wealthy in terms of their property status, sometimes took under their protection the kulaks and the wealthy, who were ʺtortured and enough, and now itʹs time to breathe freelyʺ (stts. Khanskaya, Maikop district).
There have been registered cases of direct confrontation of individual communists on the basis of drunkenness with the kulaks, support for them in restoring their voting rights, etc.
In with. Russkoe of the Mozdok district of the Tersk district, the electoral commission, which consisted mostly of wealthy people, organized an illegal meeting, inviting the secretary of the local cell of the CPSU (maintains systematic contact with the wealthy, in August 1928, during the aggravation of grain supply, he distributed up to 1000 poods of bread to the kulaks and the wealthy). At this meeting, a list of candidates for the new composition of the village council was outlined exclusively from the wealthy, and a candidate for the secretary of the cell was nominated as the pre‐village council. For the purpose of running their candidacies, special people have been designated who must oppose the candidacies of the poor.
In the hut. Kalinovsky of the Kuban district of the pre‐village council (a member of the CPSU) in the midst of the preparatory work for the reelection of the Soviets, he spent all the time drinking with the local kulak, whom he initiated into secret resolutions of the district committee of the CPSU (b). In with. Garshino of the Buzuluk district of the pre‐village council (member of the All‐Union Communist Party), a member of the electoral committee and a policeman drank at the ʺdisenfranchisedʺ kulak. While drinking, the ʺdispossessedʺ asked for assistance in restoring his voting rights. The latter, having secured their consent, was restored to voting rights.
In the village. Podgornaya Novosibirsk district of the pre‐election committee (candidate of the All‐Union Communist Party) at a meeting of the election commission, when considering the list of kulaks to be deprived of election rights, defended them, saying: “We have no one to deprive of the right to vote. If the peasants live well, then they should not be deprived of their electoral rights for this. ʺ
On the other hand, individual party cells at the re‐elections gave in to kulak activity, refused to speak with their lists outlined at party and poor peopleʹs meetings, and in some cases party members voted against them.
Ivanovo‐Voznesenskaya province. All L. Medvedkov Seredsky u. a member of the electoral committee (member of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), conducting a re‐election meeting, did not consider it necessary to announce the list of candidates outlined by the poor people and the Komsomol cell, as a result of which none of the intended candidates for the new composition of the village council passed. Most of them passed the middle peasants.
In the village. Utkino at the re‐election meeting when voting for candidates for the new composition of the village council, outlined by the party cell and the poor, the members of the CPSU did not vote unanimously enough.
In the village Vladimirovka, Pargolovsky District, Leningrad District, a member of the CPSU (b) campaigned at the re‐election meeting against the candidates nominated by the cell of the CPSU (b). As a result of his campaigning, the wealthy were elected to the village council.
Partial results of re‐election of village councils
The re‐elections of the village councils, which ended in some places of the Union (Moscow, Ryazan, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo‐Voznesenskaya, Bryansk provinces, certain districts of Ukraine, SKK and DCK), were held with a significantly increased voter turnout. Voter turnout across the board was significantly higher than in previous elections, reaching 60% and more in some areas.
In the Stavropol district, in 49 village councils, the turnout of voters at re‐election meetings averaged 60%. In 6 village councils of the Yeisk district of the Donskoy district, re‐elections were held with a turnout of 44.5 to 88%. In 4 precincts of the Prilesnyansky village council of the Slavyansky district of the Artyomovsky district, the turnout of voters at election meetings ranged from 79 to 87%.
Preliminary data on the results of the re‐elections in the noted districts indicate a generally satisfactory social composition of the newly elected village councils. So, for example, in 3 districts of the North Caucasus (Kuban, Donskoy and Sh [Akhtinsko] ‐Donetsky) the social composition of re‐elected village councils is represented by the following data: poor peasants ‐ 37%, middle peasants ‐ 37.7%, laborers and workers ‐ 13.4 %, office employees ‐ 9.3%, others ‐ 2.6%.
However, in the Vladivostok District, 14% of the well‐to‐do are in the new village councils.
Attention is drawn to the rather high activity shown by women during the re‐election campaign. Everywhere the percentage of women attending re‐election meetings ranges from 50 to 60%.
In the vast majority of cases, the lists put forward by the party cells and the poor meetings were adopted with minor changes at re‐election meetings.
It is necessary to note the cases when the rural party cells put forward lists of communist candidates who were not authoritative among the poor and middle peasants, who had compromised themselves by abuse and drunkenness, and in some cases anti‐Soviet elements.
Cases are especially numerous in the North Caucasus. Despite the attempts of individual party members to impose such candidates on voters, most of them were rejected and voted out by the poor and middle peasants, and poor activists or other communists enjoying authority with the population were nominated in their place.
Cases of pressure on voters during the promotion of compromised Communist candidates aroused sharp discontent among the poor and middle peasants with the actions of the party members and significantly undermined the authority among these strata of the peasantry.
In with. Kimbulat, Petrovsky District, Stavropol District, the VKP (b) cell has nominated a list to the new village council, in which there are 3 well‐to‐do people with income from the economy from 1200 to 1600 rubles. One of them was a kulak in the past, the second was a large kulak, and the third was a landowner with up to 16‐20 hired workers, a tenant of a large plot of land who owned 2,000 Spanish sheep — all anti‐Soviet. At the re‐election meeting, the secretary of the district committee of the All‐Union Communist Party strongly defended them, as a result of which they were elected to the village council. The poor and middle peasants were dissatisfied with the elections, expressing distrust of the cell.
In sl. In the Rodiono‐Nesvetaevskaya Donskoy District, the cell and the village council nominated two persons, drunkards and associated with kulaks, as members of the village council. Despite the fact that the voters spoke out against these candidates, the secretary of the AllUnion Communist Party (Bolsheviks) cell said: ʺWe must take the one whom the party recommends to us.ʺ The dissatisfied population said in this regard: “We were appointed atamans before and are now offered”; ʺWe will not have it at the general meeting.ʺ
The activity of the kulaks and the well‐to‐do: The kulaks and the well‐to‐do are highly active in re‐elections.
Given the unauthority of their candidacies, the kulaks and the well‐todo, acting by bribery, soldering and coaxing those who were economically dependent on them, nominated the poor and middle peasants who were under the influence of the kulaks or morally decayed elements, on whose support the kulaks and the well‐to‐do in the new Soviets counted.
In a number of cases, the kulaks, without nominating their own candidates, tried to bribe in advance the poor and middle peasants who were put forward by the poor peasantsʹ assemblies, soldering them on the eve of the re‐election, promising them economic aid for support in the village council.
Kamensky district. In the village. Zelena Dubrava kulaks, having learned that the poor at their meeting had outlined a former Red Army soldier in the pre‐village council, under various pretexts began to invite him into their homes and get drunk, hoping in the future for his patronage. The latter is so involved in drunkenness that not a day goes by that he does not get drunk with his fists.
The kulaks everywhere tried to weaken the poor‐middle peasant bloc, agitating: “All measures of the Soviet government in the countryside are carried out in the interests of the poor, and not in the interests of the entire population. The poor all the time sit on the neck of the middle peasant and the state. Poor people are drones, quitters, they need to be destroyed, they get drunk and hope for the help of the state, while the middle peasant has to pay a tax for these quacks ʺ(Tula province), how all this will not last long anyway” (Vologda province).
The kulaks were especially active among women, trying to turn them against the communists and the poor, acting through their wives and other family members, intimidating women with the idea that ʺif the Communists are elected to the Soviets, the peasants will be strangled with taxes,ʺ any help if they vote for the poor people.
For the re‐election, the well‐to‐do are without exception with all members of the family, trying in every possible way to make themselves a majority at the re‐election meeting.
Bryansk lips. In the village. Korenevka Klintsovskaya Vol. and the district to the re‐election meeting, the well‐to‐do part of the village brought wives, old men and women with them; thanks to their organized performance, the middle peasant, the well‐to‐do, the poor, and the prosperous candidate turned out to be elected to the village council.
Not having confidence in the conduct of their candidacies, the kulaks tried to interfere with the normal course of the re‐election, disrupting the meetings with provocative actions and antics (they sounded the alarm, raised a fire alarm or put out the lights in the premises where the re‐elections were taking place), arranging solemn services on the day of the convocation of the re‐election meetings. In some cases, kulaks, through bribed criminals, amnestied bandits, perpetrated defeat of meetings, dispersed meetings.
Leningrad district. In the village Strelna of the Uritsk district, the church twenty discharged a priest from Peterhof for worship on the day appointed for the re‐election of the Soviets. The re‐election was disrupted, as most of the peasants went to watch and listen to the visiting priest.
The terrorist activity of the kulaks against rural activists, party members and workers of the village councils is unabated. The facts of terror against the newly elected members of the village council attract attention. Settling scores for the deprivation of electoral rights or active speeches in the re‐election against the kulaks and sang along with them, the latter at the same time seek to intimidate the other members of the village councils.
Zinovievsky district. In the Petrinsky village council of the Khmelevsky district, three local kulaks, being dissatisfied with the results of the re‐election of the village councils (a poor man‐activist was elected to the pre‐village council), on the second day after the reelection, they arranged a drinking bout, inviting the local poor manpodkulachnik to it. During the drinking, which dragged on until midnight, the kulaks persuaded this podkulak to poison the newly elected Presidential Council by giving him a poisoned apple, which they performed on the same night. The pre‐village council was sent unconscious to the hospital.
Nezhinsky district. In with. Steppe Farmsteads, a newly elected village councilor, a farm laborer, was killed; the killers turned out to be a kulak and a ʺdisenfranchisedʺ with a criminal past who spoke out against the candidacy of the murdered during the re‐election.
We have 8 cases of terror against newly elected members of village councils during the reporting period.
Political and Economic Demands of the Kulaks for Re‐Election
The speeches of the kulaks at their group meetings, at reporting and reelection meetings, their proclamation of their demands in leaflets or orders distributed in connection with the re‐elections and additions to them introduced at meetings, add up to a detailed program of the political and economic demands of the kulaks.
The kulaks place their main emphasis on the ʺperniciousness of class policy in the countrysideʺ, agitating for the ʺpreservation of unityʺ of the peasantry, putting forward the slogan ʺstruggle to destroy classes in the countryside as another slogan of the peasantryʺ (in the sense of establishing class peace).
“The Soviet government divided the peasantry into middle peasants, poor peasants and kulaks, but you peasants need to know that this enmity breeds poverty, destroys your well‐being. In this situation, you will more easily fall under the violence of the CPSU (b). Therefore, you need to be friendlier, more united, for this is only your strength, strength in the present and victory in the future. Now your common task is to fight for the elimination of classes” (from a leaflet distributed in the Syzran district).
In Pushkin parish. Moscow province. and the county, at the insistence of the ʺdisenfranchisedʺ present at the meeting, a resolution was adopted ʺto propose to the new village council to abandon the class policy, since it introduces enmity between citizens.ʺ
The statement of the kulak at the reporting meeting in the Achinsk (Siberia) district is characteristic. Addressing the poor peasants, he said: “We, just like you, peasants‐toilers, must stand together. All strength is in unity ‐ so Lenin said. ʺ
Agitating for the unification of the peasantry, against the division of the peasants into classes, the kulaks strove by demagogic agitation to turn the peasantry against the workers, ʺoppressing the countrysideʺ, ʺdestroying the individual peasant economy.ʺ
“The workers for the peasantry not only did not become a friend and comrade, but, on the contrary, became an implacable enemy with all his power, which legally destroys his small individual economy” (from a leaflet circulated in the Zvenigorod district of Moscow province).
Hence the demand for the expansion of the political rights of the peasantry, the demand for the establishment of a peasant dictatorship instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat is wrong; a peasant dictatorship must be created. Let the workers eat what they do, and we will eat our own” (Novo‐Izrailevskoe village, Salsk district).
The attacks of the kulaks on the communists, ʺcorrupting the peasantryʺ, on the CPSU (b), according to almost all anti‐Soviet leaflets without exception, are especially harsh, ʺthe only and main culprit of all disasters and all disastrous policies of the Soviet government.ʺ
“Know, peasants, that those who live by your labor, who use all the blessings of the land, are the so‐called All‐Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. You should see it as an enemy of your economy because it imposes unbearable taxes on your labor, self‐taxation is carried out from its directives,” etc. (from a leaflet circulated in the Kuban and Syzran district).
Sharply criticizing the economic policy of the party in the countryside, the kulaks directly put the question: ʺThe situation will change only when the party is removed from power,ʺ and individual representatives of the kulaks and prosperous peasantry at reporting meetings demanded the transfer of power to those who ʺpreviously ruled it.ʺ
“The communists and the working class are squeezing the impossible out of the peasants. The Communist Party is leading the peasantry against its (peasantryʹs) will. Only then will we live well, when the party is destroyed and we will not allow communists into our Soviets” (speech of the well‐to‐do Balashov district in the village of Chirkovo).
Speaking at the reporting meeting in the village. Bobylevo, Yaroslavl Gubernia, a well‐to‐do peasant (former worker) said, addressing a party member: “At the party congress, raise the question of revising your line and so that freedom is for everyone. Communists, leave the leadership, you are destroying the economy, give the leadership to those who have been good leaders before, surrender the power. ʺ
Among the specific economic demands of the kulaks, we have a radical change in the policy of levying agricultural taxes on powerful groups of the peasantry (abolition of individual taxation, refusal of a progressive tax, etc.) and a weakening of ʺpressureʺ on them in general, expansion of the private market and the curtailment of the cooperative network, refusal from ʺforcible collectivization of the peasantryʺ and the organization of state farms, rejection of the policy of industrialization and the granting of the peasantry ʺcomplete freedom to realize their grain surpluses.ʺ
“Now the will of the peasantry is being violated under individual small farms by the force of a collective law called the workersʹ dictatorship, and they are forced through collectives to go over to the commune. In this way, the gigantic agricultural machinery of our country got a stick in the wheels throughout its course and in a short period of time will stop its productivity, paralyzing the energy in the working masses of the small peasantry. ʺ ʺParticularly destructive is the policy of the party in the countryside, where the desire of the peasants to improve their economy is deliberately killed and collective farms that do not give anything are forcibly implantedʺ (from leaflets distributed in the
Zvenigorod district of Moscow province).
ʺThe state farms need to be dispersed, they do not give any help, they only waste money, cooperation needs to be abolished and the private market increased ‐ it will be betterʺ (a proposal made on the basis of the reporting report in the Kopysk region of the Minsk district).
“The peasants reason like this: we donʹt care about factory industry. The state should not interfere with the economic well‐being of the peasant and count the income in his wallet. Give full steam to individual strengths and abilities”, if you wish, create a team (from the declaration read out at a meeting in the village of Sharapovo, Moscow province).
ʺDo not interfere with the peasant to live as he wants, to create his own economy according to his mentality.ʺ
ʺIn the future, it is necessary to change the policy regarding private trade and stop pressure on the kulaks and the top of the village, the imposition of collective farms, artels, communes and associations.ʺ ʺAt all peasant meetings, demand complete exemption from tax.ʺ
“Heavy industry should be weakened and more attention should be paid to agriculture” (extracts from leaflets circulated in connection with the re‐elections ‐ see Appendix [No. 1]).
It is curious that the kulaks in their speeches and leaflets, putting forward a program of economic demands, sometimes referred to the right deviators 33 in the party, called on the peasants to show solidarity with them, seeing in them the only legal force that can be seized upon to implement their program.
ʺHold on to the right slope ‐ this is the only weapon for overthrowing the yoke from the neck of the grain growersʺ (from a leaflet distributed in the Batalpashinskaya station of the Armavir district).
Food difficulties
The situation with the grain supply of the rural population in the provinces of the consuming strip (Tverskaya, Ivanovo‐Voznesenskaya, Nizhegorodskaya, Tula, Ryazanskaya, Kaluga, Yaroslavskaya), as in
December, remains tense.
In the Yaroslavl province. the demand for bread by the Peopleʹs Commissariat for Trade 34 was significantly curtailed, as a result of which even the poor receive almost no bread. The fund for supplying the village is garnets collection 35, the receipt of which is insignificant.
In the Kaluga province. at a meeting of the troika on grain supply, it was decided to introduce intake books for receiving bread from February 1, and norms for various categories of the population were established. Those deprived of voting rights and administratively deported are completely removed from supply.
The aggravation of food difficulties is aggravated by abnormalities in the work of the lower Soviet apparatus in the distribution of grain.
Often, along with the inclusion of priests, millers, merchants, etc., in the lists of needy priests, the poor are not included. In some village councils, lists are not submitted at all, and digital applications are given to the VIC, indicating the number of those in need ‐ clearly exaggerated in order to create a reserve fund in case of a hunger strike (NikoloTronsky village council of Yaroslavl province).
Eating surrogates of bread, mainly waste, oatmeal and potatoes, is very numerous, due to which stomach diseases are observed.
In a number of districts of the Yaroslavl province. there have been cases of eating seed potatoes and oats.
Along with this, a massive sale of livestock for the purchase of bread was noted. A pood of bread costs on average 7‐10 rubles.
In the village. Ivankovo, out of 15 young cows, only 4 remained. Out of 30 uterine sheep, only 2 remained (Yaroslavl province).
The poor and farm laborers, not having their own grain and not receiving it from the cooperatives, are forced to turn to the kulaks and the wealthy for help.
The latter, using the aggravation of food difficulties, economically enslave the poor, giving bread at interest, and seek to restore it against the Soviet regime, agitating that “in difficult times the poor cannot do without a strong peasant, because the government cannot help”
(Yaroslavskaya province.).
Often, the well‐to‐do, being groups in the village councils, categorically demand the distribution of bread to everyone without exception (Ivanovo‐Voznesenskaya province) and, at the same time, incite the middle peasants for the forcible selection of grain in cooperatives and dividing it ʺequallyʺ (Kaluga and Yaroslavl provinces ‐ see Appendix [No. 1]). On this basis, three mass demonstrations were registered.
At the reporting meetings, under the influence of the well‐to‐do part of the village, resolutions and additions to the orders were adopted: ʺDemand the supply of bread on an equal basis with the cityʺ (Danilovsky and Rybinsky districts).
Proposals were put forward that ʺthe cooperation should abandon the class principle of distributing grain and spending cooperative funds, etc.ʺ (Yaroslavl province.).
In the Kaluga province. in some places among the middle peasants, the tendencies towards the organization of independent middle peasants are increasing. The peasantry of the villages located near the factory cooperatives (the village of Ilyinskoye ‐ near the Pesochensky plant, the village of Matyukovo ‐ near the Khaninsky plant) is raising the issue of creating middle peasant cooperatives.
LVO. In connection with the limited delivery of grain to rural areas with a simultaneous increase in demand, food difficulties are aggravated.
The applications of the subdivisions are not fully satisfied. So, in the Pskov Okrug, the amount of grain received could satisfy only 30% of the demand.
Bread delivery rates are being cut and cut. In the Novgorod District in the Bolotovsky District, no grain was delivered at all; the peasants were supplied from the logging fund, 4–8 kg per family.
When distributing bread and drawing up lists of those in need, some organizations do not respect the class principle.
The mood of the poor is deteriorating and there is talk about the defeat of the cooperatives and the forcible confiscation of bread from the wealthy (see Appendix).
Cases of the sale and deliberate destruction of livestock for obtaining insurance premiums and spontaneous resettlement to Siberia and other regions are increasing.
The well‐to‐do and kulaks, having their own reserves, buy up bread at 7‐8 rubles, which they resell at a higher price or lend them to those in need on enslaving terms (for labor, for land, interest). At the same time, they are campaigning for free trade and for organized action by the peasants. Under the influence of this agitation, in January there were two mass demonstrations in the Velikiye Luki District and one group in the Luga District.
North Caucasus. The issue with grain supply is not good in a number of districts of the Stavropol, Sh [Akhtinsko] ‐Donets and Black Sea districts. In the Yeysk district of the Don district, new applications are received from the surrounding villages and farms, which raises concerns about the shortage of flour booked outside the area.
Cases have been recorded when the poor, who do not have bread, turn to the wealthy with a request to sell them grain. The latter either refuse or sell at high prices.
There is no reserve grain fund in the Bataysky district. The bakeries of large villages and villages are under threat of closure. There are no bakeries at all in 7 village councils. The poor from the farms go to the region for bread and come back with nothing.
Distribution of flour is abnormal.
In the Turkmen region of the Stavropol district, flour is distributed without observing the class principle, to all residents equally. The poor are begging, unable to buy flour.
In with. Dvinskoe, Stavropol district, in connection with the issuance of flour by the chairman of the SKKOV to the middle peasants, intended for distribution among the poor, a crowd of poor women of up to 200 people came to the village council, demanding bread.
In connection with food difficulties, the wrong distribution of grain products, discontent and depressive moods among the poor and lowpower middle peasants increased. ʺThere is no bread now, what will happen in the spring ‐ famine is inevitableʺ (Black Sea District).
Such sentiments are promoted by rumors that ʺsoon there will be no forage and flour at all, in the spring there will be 1921 36 ʺ (Armavir district) and anti‐Soviet agitation: ʺWho is to blame for us, after all, we achieved with our own hand ‐ the land is all ours, but bread is not our ... It will not be the same ‐ these are flowers, and the berries will still be in the spring” (Black Sea District).
Ukraine. The situation with grain supply to districts affected by crop failures continues to remain tense. In the Odessa district, out of the total rural population of 495,000 people, 275,000 do not have bread, and 180,000 (70,000 children, 110,000 adults) are in dire need of food assistance. The issue with grain supply is especially unfavorable in Tiligulo‐Berezansky, Grosulovsky, Kominternovsky districts. Out of 70,000 children, 37,800 will be covered by food aid. The situation is much worse with the help of the adult population. To provide assistance to the latter, 2,175,000 rubles are needed, and only 950,000 rubles have been released. 80% of the allocated funds are used for labor assistance, and 20% for those in need who cannot be involved in public works.
There are abnormalities in helping those in need. Often those who do not need them are included in the lists for receiving rations; members of the commission, using their position, receive reinforced rations.
In the AMSSR, the shortage of grain in the border regions is especially acute.
The AMSSR is not included in the general supply plan and must be supplied exclusively at the expense of the garnets tax, which decreases every month, since the well‐to‐do part of the peasantry, under the influence of rumors about the repetition of emergency measures, immediately after harvesting, ground the grain into flour.
Due to the lack of fodder and insufficient delivery of such (1.5 million poods of roughage were supposed to be delivered to the Odessa district through the line of Selgospoday 37, and only a few wagons arrived), there is a massive sale of livestock in all districts.
A number of cases of deliberate destruction of livestock in order to obtain insurance premiums have been registered. There are cases when peasants, buying sick horses for 5‐10 rubles, starve them to receive an insurance premium.
The kulaks, taking advantage of the availability of free funds, buy up cattle from the starving for a pittance and buy grain in the fertile regions, and resell them locally at inflated prices ‐ 6‐7 rubles. pood.
Fists with. Gidum (AMSSR) buy grain in neighboring districts for 2 rubles. 3 kopecks per pood, and on the spot they sell for 7 rubles. and lend out on bonded terms. The kulaks supply up to 20% of the population with bread.
At pre‐election meetings, the main issues on the agenda were pushed aside, and almost exclusively issues of food difficulties were discussed.
The attitude of the poor towards the kulaks is sharply hostile.
In with. Ingolo‐Kamenka, Novgorod district, Zinovievsky district, agitation is being conducted among the poor: ʺDo not rely on cooperation, go to the kulaks and take the surplus.ʺ
In a number of places, part of the middle peasantry, relatively covered by food aid, does nothing to provide themselves with food, relying solely on state aid. “Let the Soviet government think about me and provide for me in view of a bad year” (Odessa district).
The kulaks, using food difficulties and the anxious mood of the peasantry, are spreading provocative rumors about the impending occupation of Ukraine, are campaigning for an uprising and discrediting the measures of the Soviet government to help the starving to disrupt this campaign.
SVO. In a number of villages in the Bedno‐Demyanovsky district of the Mordovian district, affected by hail and soaking, 38 there is a shortage of bread. Due to malnutrition, 62 cases of diseases in children were registered, as well as some diseases with fatal outcomes.
The population of the affected villages consumes bread surrogates. The peasantry sells livestock to buy grain. So, in the village. Kozlovka has sold 10 horses, 20 heads of cattle and many small livestock.
DCK. In the Sretensky District, in areas affected by crop failure and natural disasters, industrial difficulties are aggravated. An increasing number of the poor are switching to eating surrogates. Some poor people are selling their working cattle and agricultural implements for bread.
Immigrants in the Chernyshevsky District are in dire need of food. On this basis, among the migrants, there are tendencies towards a return resettlement to their homeland. There is a massive exodus of the poor and farm laborers to other districts to earn money, and from the border regions to China.
Grain procurement
Grain procurement in January is characterized by an extremely slow pace. In spite of the fact that at the end of January the procurements revived, the January procurement plan for the Union was fulfilled only in the amount of 50%. The most successful blanks were in the Ukraine and the Urals, which gave the highest percentage of the planned target. The percentage of fulfillment of the monthly grain procurement plan in individual regions is expressed in the following figures: TsChO ‐ 51.6%, Urals ‐ 78.8%, SVO ‐ 40.7%, NVK ‐ 38%, SKK ‐ 54.2%, Siberia ‐ 53, 7% and Ukraine ‐ 66.3%. The main reasons for the slow pace of grain procurement are:
a) The gap between market and procurement prices
In the Central Black Earth Region, NWK and in Ukraine, thanks to the incessant activity of the private trader and the bagmen, as well as the continuing speculative activity of the kulak‐wealthy strata, the prices of bread on the private market continue to rise, largely stimulating the sale of grain surpluses on the private market. In NVK, SVO, TsChO and Siberia, the price of rye reaches 3 rubles. per pood, for rye flour up to 4 rubles. The price of wheat and wheat flour also continues to remain high, reaching in places (Ukraine, NVK, TsCHO) up to 7 rubles. and more for a pood.
b) Activities of a private owner and speculation in bread
In Ukraine and the CCK, in connection with the measures taken to restrict the activities of large private buyers of grain, the latter significantly reduced their activities. On the grain market, mainly small grain buyers ‐ bagmen and, mainly, intra‐village buyers ‐ kulaks and the well‐to‐do continue to develop their activities, thereby disrupting planned procurements and raising the price of bread.
In the Central Black Earth District, SVO, NVK and SKK, kulaks and the wealthy, buying up bread, take it out, mainly by horse‐drawn carriage, to consuming regions and to regions affected by crop failure.
In the Azov region (Donskoy district of the SKK), with the establishment of a sled route through the villages of Zaimo‐Obryv, Krugloye, Stefanida‐Dar and others, flour is transported by cartage to Taganrog and Mariupol, where it is sold for 6‐7 rubles. and more for a pood.
In sl. Urazovo (Ostrogozhsky district, TsChO) daily from the market to Kharkov from 500‐700 poods, and on market days from 2000 to 4000 poods.
Well‐to‐do with. M. Serdoba (Saratov District, NVK) is engaged in systematic speculation in bread, exporting it on horseback to Penza.
In some districts of Ukraine (Romensky, Shepetovsky, Zhitomirsky, etc.), the grinding of grain for speculation has increased so much that at most mills the line for grinding is set for a whole month in advance. In the Kupyansk District, there are cases when kulaks, grouping in groups of several people, come to grain districts to buy grain, resisting attempts to detain them by the financial inspectorate and local authorities.
There were also recorded cases of communication between employees of the procurement apparatus (Ukraine, NVK) with speculators and the use of their rights to buy grain for the purpose of speculation.
It should also be noted that significant reserves of grain are spent by the peasantry for moonshine.
c) Insufficient supply of the village with manufactured goods
In the Central Black Earth Region, NWK, SKK and Siberia, the supply of the downstream procurement network with scarce manufactured goods continues to remain insufficient. The facts of the absence of not only scarce manufactured goods, but also non‐scarce consumer goods (salt, kerosene, sugar, etc.) were registered in almost all districts of the Central Black Earth Region, NWC and Siberia. Private traders, taking advantage of this, carry out in places (TsChO, NVK) the purchase of bread in exchange for goods (leather, kerosene, etc.).
The shortage of manufactured goods continues to cause sharp discontent among the holders of surplus and criticism of cooperation. In certain districts of Ukraine (Izyumsky, Kremenchugsky) and SKK (Kuban District), due to the lack of manufactured goods among the middle peasants, there is a tendency to quit cooperation in order to organize ʺin their own middle peasant consumers.ʺ In the NVK and the Central Black Earth District there were recorded cases of a categorical statement by the peasants that ʺwe will not give any grain of 39 pounds until they give industrial goods.ʺ
It should be noted, however, that in some places (Ukraine, NWO, TsChO), along with the commodity crisis, there are cases of supplying the grassroots cooperative network with slow‐moving goods that are not in demand among the peasantry, on the one hand, as well as the irrational use of industrial goods for special purposes (squandering, selling to private owners). , the establishment of extremely high standards for the release of goods for bread, etc.) ‐ on the other hand (Ukraine, SKK, TsChO, SVO and other regions).
So, for example, the Akhtyrskaya base of the district union (Kharkiv district) has a five‐month supply of 40 blue, the Kharkov base has cranberry extract for 2000 rubles, vanilla ‐ for 3000 rubles. etc.
The Ostrogozhsky base (TsChO) received ready‐made outerwear in the amount of 15,000 rubles. This clothes on a silk lining and wadding, costing 130 rubles. each one. In addition, the base received up to 2,000 pairs of fashionable ladiesʹ shoes of milk color with narrow socks, which are not in demand among the peasant population.
d) Insufficient debt collection measures
In a number of places, contrary to the directives, there is no discipline to collect urgent payments from the peasantry (Ukraine, SKK, Siberia, SVO). In Siberia, the peasantry continues to have large debts (Omsk, N [ovo] Siberian, Achinsk and other districts). It should also be noted that the largest amounts of free funds are with the propertied strata of the peasantry.
So, for example, in the Irkutsk District, until recently, over 100,000 rubles have not been collected. various types of debt (for a purchase on a loan, land management, insurance, overdue loans, etc.). In the Barabinsky district, the debt for only one land management is expressed in 24,000 rubles. The same is observed also in other areas of this district. In with. Sharatovo, Berezovsky District (Achinsk District), the debt on insurance payments alone is expressed up to 5,000 rubles, moreover, the kulaks are predominantly the worst non‐payers.
The SCC has agricultural loan arrears of over 6 million rubles.
Self‐taxation campaigns are also very weak in a number of regions (NWO, Siberia). So, for example, in Sibkrai 41, the total percentage of the accepted self‐taxation does not exceed 14% (instead of the supposed 25% to the sum of the agricultural tax and possible 50%). In a number of districts, the percentage of the adopted taxation ranges from 7 to 9 (Irkutsk, Barabinsky, Novosibirsk and Tarsky districts).
e) Counteraction of kulaks to grain procurements
Grain procurements continue to provoke active opposition from the kulak‐wealthy strata of the village. Refraining from handing over their grain surpluses, in a number of districts (SKK, TsChO, Siberia) the kulaks resolutely do not want to donate the surplus they have, keeps the bread unmilled (in stacks), hides it in pits, cellars, distributes it for storage to relatives and partially to the poor (Siberia).
In Ukraine (Chernigov, Sumy and Mariupol districts) facts of feeding livestock with bread have been recorded, just to avoid surrender to the state. In the North Caucasus, the kulaks, categorically refusing to hand over their grain reserves to the state producers, declares: “Let them throw them out of the members of the cooperative, let them do what they want, but we will not bring grain to the cooperative”, or “we will not sell, but we can donate a little” (Maykop district). ʺIf the Soviet government needs bread, let it scoop it up itself, but we will not be luckyʺ (Siberia).
At the same time, the anti‐Soviet agitation of the kulaks against grain procurements intensified, there are talks about uprisings, an imminent coup, anti‐city sentiments are kindled, all kinds of provocative rumors are spread, etc. (see Appendix).
Along with this, the kulaks and the well‐to‐do oppose the collective delivery of grain, the organization of ʺred cartsʺ and, by means of agitation and intimidation of the middle peasants and the poor, with the lack of bread in the spring, are trying to disrupt the export of grain (Ukraine, SKK, NVK, Siberia). In the Ukraine (in the Uman and Poltava districts), under the influence of the agitation of the kulaks, the collective delivery of grain was disrupted. In the NWO, Siberia and other regions, there have been cases when kulaks participate in ʺred cartsʺ, handing over there an insignificant amount of grain in order to show themselves as ʺa loyal holder of surpluses.ʺ
As a result, the idea of ʺred cartsʺ serves only as a screen for the kulak.
In one of the districts of the NWO, for the organization of the ʺred convoyʺ they went from door to door with a steelyard and collected tens of pounds of bread.
In a number of regions of Ukraine, the NVK and in Siberia, kulaks disrupt meetings on the issue of exporting grain.
In areas where, in relation to the miller kulaks, maliciously evading the surrender of the garnets tax to the state, appropriate measures have not been taken to compel them to fulfill their obligations (Central Black Earth Region, Siberia, NVK), there are cases of organized resistance of miller kulaks to the surrender of the garnets tax. Refusing to surrender the garnets tax, the kulaks‐millers, declaring a strike, close their mills, hold illegal meetings, sell the incoming garnets tax on the private market, etc.
Thus, in the Voronezh District (TsChO), there was a strike of 24 millers who refused to conclude contracts for the grinding collection 42 and closed their mills and grinders 43. A similar took place in the Kursk, Rossosh, Lgovsk districts of the Central Black Earth Region.
The introduction of garnets collection in kind in areas of food difficulties (in the consuming provinces of the Center, LVO 44 and the BSSR), where the poor have to buy bread at extremely high prices, causes unhealthy sentiments among the latter.
On the part of the poor, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the failure to take measures to restrict the speculative activities of the kulaks, as well as measures to pump out grain reserves from the kulaks. In a number of regions of Siberia (Slavgorodsky, Irkutsky, Rubtsovsky, etc.), the poor and middle peasants are in favor of the need to apply repressive measures to the malicious non‐donors of grain ‐ the kulaks: “Why does the government stand on ceremony with the fist for so long? The poor have long handed over their last poods, and the fists and the wealthy keep a thousand poods each in barns, and they even laugh at us, the poor: “Well, take it, bring it in bread, and in the spring you will come, Iʹll give you 8 rubles. I will let go for a pood. ʺ “They think to get bread from them peacefully. The kulaks, sensing this, finally became insolent: they beat the poor, openly agitate against the surrender of grain, they do not surrender their surplus, and the authorities do not apply anything to them.45 kulak this year bread will not be lucky” (Siberia).
In with. Novoudy (Barnaul district) at a general meeting of peasants, in relation to the malicious non‐donors of grain ‐ kulaks and the wealthy, a resolution was issued: ʺTo ask the regional executive committee to apply Article 107 to them and isolate them from society.ʺ In the same district, one middle peasant proposed: ʺTo issue a law so that individual taxation is made in breadʺ, motivating his proposal by the fact that the kulaks, imposed by an individual tax, pay it with money received from the sale of livestock and other agricultural products, without touching their grain.
f) Shortcomings in the work of the grassroots procurement and Soviet apparatus
The drop in the rate of workpieces has to a certain extent be attributed to the inactivity and passivity of the procurement apparatus.
In Ukraine, Siberia, NVK, TsChO and SKK numerous facts have been recorded when the procurers did not take any measures to revive the blanks. In addition, everywhere there are cases of direct opposition of workers of the grassroots procurement and Soviet apparatus to grain procurement as a result of pessimistic and ʺpeasantʺ sentiments observed among these workers: ʺWhere to carry out procurements here when the villagers do not have bread.ʺ “You shouldnʹt take out bread until you get a couple of soles for a pood of bread” (Ukraine). ʺThe peasants have no grain ‐ they themselves eat only cornʺ, etc. (SKK). In a number of Siberian districts, procurers complain: ʺThe grain procurement plans have not been fulfilled and further pressure on grain procurements is useless ‐ the peasants have no grain.ʺ
The need to increase the rate of grain procurement among procurers in the NCC, Siberia, the Central Black Sea Region and in Ukraine has caused an increase in competition between the main procurers: an arbitrary increase in the price of grain is made, refusal to sell manufactured goods to peasants who handed over their surplus to other procurers, etc. (see Appendix).
Along with this, on the part of workers of the procurement apparatus, there is a tendency to resume emergency measures (Ukraine, NVK, SVO, SKK, TsCHO). In Siberia, in anticipation of the possibility of using repressive measures in procurements, some procurers do not take any measures to revive the procurements, referring to the fact that “the time will come, we will apply Article 107, and now there is nothing to worry about”.
There have also been recorded individual cases of administrative excesses used by procurers in blanks (threats, calls to the village council, raids, searches, etc. ‐ see Appendix).
Avoidance of surplus surplus sales and party members has a very negative effect on the mood of surplus holders. In Ukraine, in the Northern Military District, Siberia and a number of other places, there are facts when rural party members and activists hold back their surplus. When these workers appeal to the peasants with a proposal to take out the surplus, the latter declare: ʺFirst, show an example yourself, and then demand from the peasantsʺ (Ukraine). “We have nowhere to rush, not a single ruler has surrendered a pound yet” (Siberia).
East‐national republics and autonomous regions
Re‐election of the Soviets
In most of the eastern regions, the reporting campaign comes to an end in January. During the campaign, significant shortcomings in the organization of the poor continued to be noted, leaving the middle peasant part of the population outside the sphere of Soviet‐party influence (national regions of the North Caucasus, Crimea, Bashkiria, Tataria, Russian regions of Kazakhstan); excesses and distortions of the class line in the practice of depriving electoral rights; lack of organization of reporting campaigns, as a result of which in a number of cases they were thwarted several times, etc. According to preliminary data, in a number of districts there is some contamination of newly elected village councils (Tataria, Bashkiria, Kazakhstan). The significant contamination of rural and regional election commissions with a socially alien element (Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan) continues to be revealed. Despite the shortcomings in the preparation of the campaign, the poor as a whole are showing significantly increased activity. Only in some districts are there cases of support by the poor for the kulaks, terrorizing the agricultural assets and not meeting the proper organized resistance. The kulaks, bayism and other anti‐Soviet elements developed a particularly vigorous struggle to disrupt the re‐election in the national regions of the JCC and against the closure of madrasah46 and the emancipation of women in Adjarian. Numerous cases of disruption of meetings by fists and religious beliefs, terror of activists and party members, threats against them continue to be recorded. From the very beginning of the election campaign to mid‐January, 16 murders, 55 rapes, 16 wounds, 8 attempted murders, 5 arson were registered in all the eastern national republics and autonomous regions on the basis of the electoral struggle. Meetings were disrupted in January in all districts 66, there were attempts to disrupt meetings in 35 cases, the posters and lists of “disenfranchised” 47 were disrupted in 24 cases. In individual republics and regions, the election campaign is taking place with the following features.
Uzbekistan. In terms of social composition, the kishlak election commissions in the current campaign are designed much more successfully than the previous elections. However, the debris itself is great. Thus, in one Tashkent district, there are 9.5% of socially alien elements in election commissions. Farming is poorly represented everywhere in the election commissions ‐ 9.8%. The situation with the social composition of election commissions in old cities is incomparably worse. In 24 precinct election commissions in Tashkent, 50% consists of merchants, Muslims and bays. To all this should be added the fact that a significant part of electoral commissions, outwardly well‐designed, in their practical work manifest themselves as supporters of Bai‐antiSoviet elements (granting election rights to anti‐Soviet elements, infringement of the middle peasant, etc.). The bulk of the dekhkans as a whole are showing significantly increased activity. Baysko‐antiSoviet elements, along with the group struggle for the Soviet apparatus, resort to terrorizing the kishlak activists. 3 murders were registered ‐ a farm laborer, a pre‐village council and a woman activist, a candidate member of the village council (Andijan and Fergana districts).
Turkmenistan. Baystvo practices calling meetings to discuss re‐election issues. Grassroots party members take an active part in a number of meetings. Often, the poor and farm laborers are called together for specially arranged treats. In the village of Angi‐Aryk, bai summoned 48 poor people and farm laborers on theʺtoyʺon the eve of convening a poor meeting and invited those present to ʺgive information about the work of the asset.ʺ In a number of auls in the Merv region, the bais threatened the poor with reprisals if they came out against the aul workers ‐ the proteges of the bais. Bayami killed a member of the Sayat District Election Commission of the Chardzhuy District, and a number of activists from the Beurma village of the Bakharden District were being prepared.
Kyrgyzstan. There were registered cases of reinstatement of ʺdisenfranchisedʺ members of election commissions for a bribe (Jumgol vol. Naryn canton of Alamedin region). Bai and manapas arrange numerous treats to recruit the poor. Head By the order of the baimanap, the Jumgol wolf unit of the Naryn canton traveled around the auls, recruiting supporters. Manap 49 often attempted to disrupt meetings. A number of threats were recorded against poor activists.
Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh aul, Baysko‐Aksakal elements 50 are intensively preparing for the seizure of the village councils. Often grass‐roots co‐workers are directly involved in groupings. The greatest development of group warfare is noted in the Syr‐Darya and Kustanai districts. The leaders of tribal groups often lead the main strata of the population of the Kazakh aul.
In the Russian village and the Cossack village, kulak‐anti‐Soviet elements, along with attempts to re‐establish themselves in elections, terrorize the poor activists and workers of the village councils. A case was registered of the killing of a poor activist with his fists on the basis of an election struggle (the village of Pritraktovo, Syr‐Darya District). The greatest activity of the kulaks is noted in the Semipalatinsk and Kustanai districts.
National [ional] regions of the North Caucasus. Despite a number of organizational shortcomings in the conduct of the re‐election campaign, as well as numerous cases of distortion of the party line, there has been a significantly increased activity of the poor and middle peasants of the mountain aul. At the same time, there are cases when the Muslim clergy and the kulaks provoke the female part of the population to mass demonstrations and numerous protests at meetings against the deprivation of 51 election rights bymullahs. A number of terrorist acts (14 beatings, 5 attempted murders) were registered on the basis of the election struggle. In Chechnya, the kulaks disrupted 12 elections. Three cases of armed dispersal of elections were registered.
Georgia. The greatest activity of kulak‐anti‐Soviet elements is observed in Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaks and Gori districts. In some places, the kulak agitation influences part of the middle peasants, as a result of which there have been cases of the middle peasants coming out against the candidates of the poor peasants. A number of cases of convocation of special meetings by fists under the guise of drinking bouts was recorded. In Gori district recorded two cases of beating of rural activists (villages of Rehi and Dossi) by ʺdisenfranchisedʺ. A systematic disruption of meetings took place in the village. Burnt Akhalkalax u. Disruption of the poor meeting was noted in Tiflis district. (v. Zemo‐Mleti).
Adjarastan. The election campaign is accompanied by an extremely increased activity of the kulaks and the Muslim clergy. The opposition to the campaign is mainly in the direction of the struggle against the emancipation of women and the closure of madrassas.
The spread of provocative rumors became especially widespread in the Khuli district. In the mosque with. Jabnidze Khoja 52 organized a rally and, in the presence of 250‐300 people, said that the Soviet government wanted to destroy the Muslim religion, and called on to fight for the religion. As a result, a crowd of 70 peasants came to the election meeting, armed with axes.
As a result of kulak agitation in the Khuli district. 8 cases of disruption of elections were recorded. In Khulinsky and Uchimbsky, those 53 for election meetings are at best 50% of voters. A number of middle peasants spoke at meetings against the emancipation of women and the closure of madrasahs.
Azerbaijan. During reporting meetings, cases were recorded when local organizations prohibited voters from speaking at reporting meetings (Nagorno‐Karabakh). The activity of the kulak‐anti‐Soviet elements continues to develop primarily along the lines of the struggle for a new composition of the village councils. In a number of cases, influential kulaks drive around the villages, campaigning for their henchmen (Lankaran district, Nagorno‐Karabakh). 11 kulak groups were re‐identified and three cases of organized preparation for the murder of agricultural activists were registered, one case of arson, two cases of a failed assassination attempt, and four beatings.
Data on the new composition of village councils in Lankaran district. and partly in Kazakh, they indicate the penetration of kulak proteges and people from socially alien strata into a number of Soviets.
Armenia. The significantly increased activity of the kulaks is not opposed by any organized resistance from the poor. In some places, the poor are afraid to speak out against the kulaks who systematically terrorize agricultural activists.
In with. Teharab of Erivan district the poor are so terrorized that they insisted on granting electoral rights to all kulaks, so as not to ʺcreate enmity.ʺ
In a number of cases, the middle peasants oppose the poor candidates and in defense of the kulaks and clergy.
Eight active kulak groups were registered, in some places with the participation of 54 former Dashnaks (Leninakan and Erivan districts). A number of groups are registered in Meghrynsky district. There were three cases of beating with fists of agricultural activists.
Tartary. As a result of an insufficient preparatory campaign, there is a low attendance at the reporting meetings by the main strata of the peasantry. In some places, the attendance of meetings is 10‐15% of voters, and in some cases, meetings were disrupted three times and did not take place due to the absence of voters. Cases of support by the poor for kulak candidates (the villages of Derzhavino, Smoldiyarovo, Peleve, etc.) and the refusal of the poor to enter village councils with the motivation that ʺthis work is not paidʺ (Karmachi, Svinogorye) have been registered.
The kulaks, along with the intensified recruitment of supporters, are agitating against the entry of communists into the village councils. A number of characteristic protests against the ʺdivision of peasants into strataʺ were noted.
At the reporting meeting in the village. Salmatovka was made by the son of a kulak, who declared, among other things: “The governmentʹs approval and division of peasants into kulaks, poor peasants and middle peasants is clearly wrong. We have only toilers and lazy people. ʺ This presentation was supported by many of the meeting participants. This was followed by a demobilized Red Army soldier who declared: ʺThe injustices that Baryshnikov (the son of a kulak) listed are happening because we have a workersʹ government, not a peasant government.ʺ
12 cases of disruption and attempts to disrupt reporting meetings were registered. Again, there were 8 cases of threats against poor activists, two beatings. The hut‐reading room in with. Yamash, the lists of ʺdisenfranchisedʺ in the village. V. Arbash. 12 cases of the convocation of special meetings of the kulaks were recorded.
Along with the kulaks, the Muslim clergy is showing a significant increase in activity, organizing in a number of cases the discussion in mosques of election campaign issues. In the village. Tashlak N. of the Chelninsky canton, the mullahs specially discussed the issue of reelections, recommending the peasants ʺnot to send atheists to the village councils and the VIC.ʺ
Chuvashia. 5 cases of disruption and attempts to disrupt reporting meetings with fists were registered; two cases of disruption of electoral posters and posting of anonymous advertisements with materials discrediting members of the electoral commission, 5 cases of attempted murder, an attempt at arson and one case of the capture of a new village council.
Mari region in individual cantons, the attendance at election meetings averages 45‐50%. The poor in the mass are showing significantly increased activity. In the Nagorinsky and Lipshinsky districts, the poor and rural residents, terrorized by the kulaks, turned to the assistant prosecutor with a request for protection. In some places preparatory work among the poor was completely absent. There were registered cases of disruption of poor peasantsʹ meetings without the participation of middle peasants, who were not allowed there (Iorkinsky district). A number of cases of terrorizing poor activists and Soviet workers by kulaks, former police officers and other anti‐Soviet elements were recorded: beatings ‐ 6, 7 attempts to beat, two attempted murders. In addition, 6 election assemblies were disrupted by kulaks, election slogans were disrupted, lists of ʺdisenfranchisedʺ in three cases.
Buryat‐Mongolia. Organizational work among the poor has been poorly carried out in a number of districts. In some places, the poor groups were not organized at all, and the existing groups are inactive. Voter participation at reporting meetings was on average 20 to 40%. In some districts, attendance at meetings is below 20% (MukhorShibirsky District). A number of organizational flaws in the campaign contributed to the disruption of the election meetings (Kabansky, Alarsky and Kyakhtinsky districts). The following active actions of the kulaks were registered: the shelling of the house of the secretary of the village council and the systematic terrorizing of the poor (Novo‐Zagan village), an attempt on the life of the secretary of the cell, three cases of the failure of the list of poor candidates.
Oirotia. The work of organizing the poor in most areas has been poorly done. In places the poor groups are not organized at all. Almost not a single village council was prepared in time for the reporting campaign. The facts of the convocation of special meetings by kulaks to discuss candidates to the village councils have been registered.
Sentiment over Afghan events 55
UZBEKISTAN
Kishlak. The events in Afghanistan caused a significant revival of the Baysko‐anti‐Soviet elements of the Uzbek village. Numerous cases of expression of sympathy for the rebels have been recorded, while simultaneously predicting the imminent fall of Soviet power. The flight of Amanullah Khan was associated with the victory of England, and from this it was concluded that ʺsoon England will free the peoples of Central Asia from the oppression of the Russians.ʺ Among the dehkan masses, the events in Afghanistan did not cause a particularly noticeable reaction. Individual cases of condemnation of the rebels and sympathy for Amanullah Khan by the poor were noted.
Old city. The Afghan events were most reflected among the old city population. In all public places, the prevailing topic of conversation is the issue of the uprising in Afghanistan. The failure of Amanullah Khan and the temporary victory of the reaction in Afghanistan caused the satisfaction of the bays, traders and especially the Muslim clergy of Uzbekistan. The most typical and widespread statements of these elements are: ʺAmanullah Khan will undoubtedly be defeated and then England, without encountering any obstacles in Afghanistan, will be able to approach Soviet Turkestan, destroy Soviet power and restore the old order.ʺ “The rebels receive support from England. Emir 56 of Bukhara will take Bukhara and Turkestan will have the same position. ʺ
Baysko‐anti‐Soviet elements of Fergana, Andijan and Bukhara react most actively to the Afghan events.
Campaign to eliminate non‐labor farms
UZBEKISTAN
In the Kashka‐Darya and Surkhan‐Darya districts, the liquidation of non‐labor farms of the landlord type has been completed. Land management of the poor and farm laborers began at the expense of the liquidated farms. There are cases of refusal to allot the poor and provide land to the owners.
In the Ugmadzhan village of the Guzar district of the Kashka‐Darya district, three farms with 15–20 tanapas, 57 land and two to three heads of livestock received additional land and livestock, while 6 poor people who have nothing were denied allotments.
Due to the lack of attention to the newly organized collective farms, some of them are on the eve of collapse. In some cases, the same collective farms received land plots in different places, which presents significant difficulties in processing the received allotments.
In the Khorezm Okrug, the campaign to liquidate unearned farms is going on with a number of shortcomings. In some cases, areas subject to seizure from the clergy remain intact. Local co‐workers assist the buyers in hiding property.
In Gazovatsky region (Kuniyah village), a plot of land of vakuf 58, which is in the use of imam 59, is not registered. The chairman and secretary of the Turkestan kishlak council assured the regional commission that they have no farms to be liquidated, while there are three of them in the kishlak. A similar statement was made in the village of Khoja‐Kaka, where the secretary of the cell assisted the buyin to hide the property.
Grain harvesting campaign
Kazakhstan. The rate of procurement fell sharply in January. In some districts, the monthly plan was fulfilled only by 10‐15% (Semipalatinsk, Petropavlovsk districts). As before, a shortage of manufactured goods, a weak regime for collecting various kinds of debts from the peasantry, the disorganizing activity of a private trader, the inactivity of the procurement apparatus and the malicious delay of their surplus by the kulak‐wealthy strata are the main reasons for the slow pace of procurement. In a number of districts, a weak inflow of garnets collection is noted. Miller fists and tenants refuse to conclude contracts and sell the incoming garnets tax in their favor on the private market. The Soviet and cooperative organizations did not take timely measures to cover the mill owners with contracts. Due to interruptions in the shipment of harvested bread, in the Petropavlovsk district on January 1, 1929, about 14,000 tons of unshipped grain accumulated at deep points, in the Akmola district there were 956,543 poods on the same number of unshipped grain, on January 13, 9719 tons of unshipped grain were accumulated in the Kostanay district. Due to the lack of a sufficient number of storage facilities, bread in some places starts to burn (Akmola district), the procurers do not take any measures to protect the bread spoilage. Along with the demobilization moods of some workers in the procurement apparatus, there were isolated cases of administrative pressure on peasants, excesses and distortions of directives, up to the withdrawal of grain surpluses by force.
In the Uspensky village council of the Fedorovsky district of the Kustanai district, the district officials for grain procurement have created two commissions to identify grain surpluses, which included the ʺdisenfranchisedʺ. Members of the commission walk around the yards and offer to hand over even five‐pound surplus. Similar cases were reported in the Borovsk district of the same district.
At the same time, it is noted that the grassroots procurement and cooperative apparatus is littered with a socially alien element. In the Syr‐Darya district, as a result of the cleaning of the procurement apparatus, 19 people were dismissed from work.
Private trader activity. The intensified activity of the private trader makes itself especially felt in the Syr‐Darya district.
The influx of bagmen in the Kustanai district disorganizes the grain market. Former bread traders in the region of Uralsk organized a massive purchase of grain, intercepting peasants with bread on the roads, intermediate points, etc. ‐Darya district and from the KaraKalpak region. 60 and breaking limit prices.
The recently observed increase in the import of manufactories and other scarce goods in individual districts turned out to be insufficient. The crisis in manufactured goods continues to slow down the successful progress of blanks. A number of cases of squandering of received manufactured goods for special purposes, selling to relatives and friends, etc., have been recorded. The lack of manufactured goods, as well as abnormalities in their distribution (supply of manufactured goods only for bread, etc.) causes discontent among peasants, mainly of low‐income strata.
The grain procurement campaign continues to evoke active opposition from the wealthy kulak strata. Refraining from handing over grain surpluses (often expressed in 1000‐2000 and more poods per farm), the latter continue to throw them out on the private market. At the same time, the anti‐Soviet agitation of the kulaks intensified: there are talks about uprisings, an imminent coup, anti‐city sentiments are kindled, all sorts of provocative rumors are spread, etc.
Bashkiria. The January plan for Bashkiria for January 25 has been fulfilled by 50%. The weakest grain procurements go along the line of Soyuzkhleb 61, which has completed only 23.8% of the monthly assignment. The weakening of attention to grain procurements in connection with the campaign for re‐election to the Soviets played a significant role in reducing the rate of procurement. In a number of cantons 62Due to the insufficient coverage of the contracts of the owners of the mills for the delivery of the garnets collection, there are cases of millers sheltering the incoming garnets collection and speculation in flour. In this regard, the Bashkir Peopleʹs Commissariat of Trade sent a number of persons specifically to carry out a campaign to conclude agreements with the owners of the mills, spending a substantial amount of money on this matter. As a result, as of January 15, 2,050 contracts were concluded for 2,445,892 poods, which is 82% of the planned target. As of January 14, the check digit does not cover the entire harnz tax. So, for the Sterlitamak canton on January 15, 1929, 109% of the task was completed. Workers of the procurement apparatus do not take any measures to force the rate of workpieces, hoping for a chance. Among individual workers in the Soviet and procurement apparatus, depressive moods appear, talks about the need to stop grain procurement or the use of emergency measures. At the same time, competition between individual procurers, drunkenness, etc. is not being eliminated. The prosperous kulak elements categorically refuse to hand over grain to state producers, selling their grain surpluses on the grain market. At the same time, the well‐to‐do and the kulaks are conducting an active anti‐Soviet agitation, spreading rumors that all the grain is sent abroad, that there will definitely be a war in the spring, etc.
Tartary. Grain procurement in January across Tatarstan is characterized by an extremely slow pace. On January 25, 1929, the monthly procurement plan was fulfilled by 20.5%. There is an increase in the activity of a private procurement company. In the Chistopol, Spassky and Buinsky cantons, there was an increased influx of speculative bagmen, whose disorganizing activity was assuming rampant proportions. They are removed from the market daily up to 8000‐10,000 poods. (Buinsky canton). The prosperous kulak elements are holding back their grain surpluses, expecting a rise in prices in the spring. Part of the grain surplus is sold by them on the private market. At the same time, the wealthy and the kulaks are actively campaigning among the rest of the peasantry against the delivery of grain to the state. A case of beating with fists of grain suppliers by a
“red wagon train” was registered (Spassky canton).
Churchmen
Reactionary clergy. In a number of regions of the Union, an increase in religiosity is noted. The facts of the construction and repair of churches at the expense of believers collected on the principle of self‐tax have been registered. Divine services are organized with the presence of the highest clergy, for whom solemn meetings are arranged.
In the village Bishop Sinitsin was invited to the Andreevsky Rubtsovsky district, his meeting took place in a solemn atmosphere, the entire road to the church was covered with carpets and sheets, and the bishop was greeted according to tradition ‐ with bread and salt.
In the village Bystrukha of the Kamensky district during the local patronal feast, the church was attended by up to 400 people. After that, the whole village got drunk. The prepared 300 buckets of vodka were not enough for the participants in 900 yards.
Two new churches were built in the Vladivostok District during 1928.
In with. Koroksha of Vyatka lips. on the occasion of the completion of the stone church, up to 4,000 peasants attended the service. The money for the repairs was collected on a self‐taxable basis.
In the Kalmyk region. renovated 4 churches. The money was collected from the kulaks and the wealthy. Up to 1000 rubles have been collected for each church.
Along with the rise in religious sentiments, facts of a decline in religiosity are noted in some places. The population often refuses to maintain churches and clergy (Tarsky, Vladivostok, Orenburg,
Tulunsky, Samara districts).
Given such phenomena, the reactionary churchmen began to resort to all sorts of tricks in order to stop this decline. In this area, the priests most often arrange ʺmiraclesʺ (the healing of the ʺpossessedʺ, the prophecy of hunger, etc. ‐ Rubtsovsky, Taganrog districts and Ufa). In addition, they create various charitable institutions with the aim of attracting believers as much as possible. For example, in a number of dioceses of the JCC under the churches, mutual aid and charitable funds are organized. In the Odessa district (the village of Koplievka) a hospital was opened priestly at the expense of the community, where sometimes up to 60 ʺpossessedʺ patients are brought to be cured with ʺholy waterʺ.
The anti‐Soviet agitation on the part of the clergy in connection with the created food difficulties, the lack of manufactured goods, is noticeably increasing. Cases of disruptions due to the fault of the priests of the campaigns and mass opposition to the measures of the Soviet government were noted.
In with. Kobelyaki of the Poltava district priest calls on the peasants not to hand over their bread to the Soviet regime, but to bury it in the ground. In with. Kamenka of Rubtsovskiy okrug pop does not recommend buying bonds of the 2nd loan of industrialization 63, as the Soviet regime, according to him, will soon be over and the money will be lost. In with. Spassky, Vyatka province. the priest speaks out among the peasants against the multi‐field 64.
In the Sretensky district, there were attempts to create a union similar to the former “Union of Michael the Archangel” 65.
In with. Randamal of Erivanskiy u. (Armenia) On January 6, contrary to the order of the executive committee, a religious procession was organized to the water 66. The procession was attended by up to 300 people who shouted: ʺHurray, long live the believers, down with the communists.ʺ
In with. Baryatino Kozlovsky District (TsCHO), it was decided to close the monastery church. However, this was not done, despite repeated attempts by the local authorities, for each time a crowd of up to 400 people gathered to the church.
In Makhachkala at the factory named after 3 Internationals by a group of Daghestani workers was beaten by a schoolteacher FZU 67, a member of the Komsomol, for his speech at an anti‐religious dispute.
In the Vladimir province. at the factory “Red Echo” a working conference was held with the participation of 500 delegates. In connection with the rumor that the conference, allegedly, will decide on the closure of the cathedral, a crowd of 500 people gathered near the club, which was engaged in boozing 68, trying to disrupt the conference. From the crowd there were shouts: ʺWhen will the workers be given bread?ʺ
In with. Amamny (Armenia) kulaks and well‐to‐do, who staged a religious procession on January 6, against the orders of the local authorities, attacked the chairman of the village council and the village executives and beat them. On the eve of the procession, the priest organized underground meetings in his apartment.
The ongoing re‐election campaign to the Soviets is being used by the churchmen for their own purposes. For instance. In the city of Pervomaisk, the priests agitated the peasants: “Everyone needs to go to the re‐election, but outline their candidates in advance. We need to send our own people to the village councils”. In the Syzran district (village V. Mazy), the priest every Sunday delivers sermons, in which he recommends not to participate in the re‐election campaign and not to elect anyone to the Soviets, since in 1933 the Soviet regime will collapse.
The increased taxation of priests revealed on their part countermeasures, which boil down to either dedigning or shifting the tax collected onto the peasants.
In with. Staro‐Leskovsky, Tula province. a local priest passed a binding regulation through the church council to tax each eater in his favor by £ 5. rye. In this way the priest hopes to collect 227 poods. (collected 60 poods).
In the Yaroslavl province. (Roguli village) the peasant gathering decided to donate 50 kopecks to the priest. from each believer in the order of self‐taxation. By this decision, the subscription to the industrialization loan was disrupted in this village.
Similar facts were also noted in Vyatka and Kaluga provinces. (they collected in one case 33 kopecks per person and in the other 80 kopecks from a house), in the Kamensk district they collected bread for 250 rubles, which they contributed for the priest (village Kharitonovo), in the Ulyanovsk district (village Tetyushskoe) collected 5 kopecks. per person, and in the Oirot region. ‐ 10 kopecks each. from all persons over 18 years of age.
Baptists 69. The plenum of the Council of the Federal Union of Baptists of the USSR, held at the end of January of this year, was marked by great alarm and confusion among the audience. At the convention, the leadership declared that they had to live in a time that had never happened before in Baptist history. Baptists in the USSR are oppressed by the government in the most severe way. Representatives from the localities who spoke out complained about the arrests, exile, confiscation and closure of houses of worship, excessive taxation, etc.
According to the reports, a decision was made: ʺTo initiate a petition before the government on behalf of the council to lift the constraints, and to submit a memorandum through a delegation to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR 70 ʺ.
The memorandum presented by the delegation to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR speaks of the loyalty of the Baptists to the government of the USSR and sets out claims against the Soviet government. Baptists complain that:
1) The entire Soviet press at the same time, as if on a signal, attacked the Baptist sect, trying to turn the population against it.
2) Arrests and administrative expulsions for up to three years of individual activists and groups for counter‐revolutionary activities, which the Baptists deny.
3) On the closure of a number of prayer houses.
4) To the interference of local authorities in the internal life of communities, the prohibition of choirs, solemn holidays, etc.
5) The deprivation of the right to vote not only for clergymen, but also for individual Baptists, which leads to begging for members of the sect. 6) On the prohibition of mutual assistance.
7) High fees for teaching children.
8) To accuse the Baptists of disrupting the election campaign and of alliance with the kulak elements of the village.
9) To restrict the release of sectarian literature, etc.
Baptists view the policy of the USSR government as a rejection of the principle of freedom of conscience and ask for the elimination of persecution, the provision of human rights on an equal basis with all citizens, the provision of the opportunity for out‐of‐school education to Baptist children, etc.
Deputy Chairman of the OGPU Trilisser
Head of the Information Department of the OGPU Alekseev
Correct: Secretary of INFO OGPU V. Kucherov *
Note
* The document is signed by V. Kucherov.
Appendix No. 1. Leaflets distributed in connection with the reelection of councils
The appeal was distributed in the Syzran district and in the Kuban, emanating from the city of Bogorodsk
“Peasants. The time has not yet come for an open struggle against your newly born oppressors. At present, you do not see the persons with whom you need to fight, but you feel the weight of their laws on your shoulders. You feel that the juice is being squeezed out of you, that your farm is not allowed to develop, that it is falling and at the same time your life is deteriorating. You ask yourself and others what the Soviet power gave you, and you cannot find an answer to your question. You are looking for faces that cripple your life and do not find them. Know, peasants, that the people who live by your labor, who enjoy at the expense of your suffering, who use all the blessings of the land, are the so‐called All‐Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks (VKP (b)). You should see in her the enemy of your economy, for she imposes unbearable taxes on your labor, self‐taxation is carried out from her directives, it sowed enmity in you, that is, divided the peasantry into classes ‐ the poor, the middle peasants and the kulaks, but you peasants need to know that this enmity breeds poverty ‐ destroys your wellbeing. You in this position will be easier to fall under the violence of the CPSU (b). You need to be friendlier, more united, because this is only your strength ‐ strength in the present and victory in the future.
Peasants, you notice that the artels that unite your labor and the cooperatives that satisfy your needs are not doing their job well. This is explained by the fact that the board of the artel and the board of the cooperative do not protect your interests, but their own interests, of their bosses and, ultimately, the interests of the CPSU (b).
Artels and cooperatives exist in order to apply from you to take not only in a direct way, but also in a roundabout way, so that you do not notice this tax. The policy of the CPSU (b) is to achieve its goals without the indignation of the broad masses. In fulfillment of these, it divided everyone into classes and seized the peasant and part of the urban population into its tenacious hands. But the time will come when you can shout:
ʺDown with provocateur.ʺ
ʺDown with Vekepevshchina (VKP)ʺ.
And now our common task is to fight for the destruction of classes, for the destruction of the network of bureaucratic income, such as tax, selftaxation, artel and cooperative membership dues.
Remember: we are not obliged to grow the belly of the communists.
So, peasants, we are throwing at you a cry of struggle, a struggle for the welfare of agriculture, for the offended in our Rus.
But we repeat, an open struggle has not yet begun, for our ranks ‐ the ranks of the peasants have not yet strengthened. But the day will come when we raise a truly peasant banner and take the place of a handful of party members who hide behind the sign of labor and equality. ʺ
Body of the right slope.
After reading it, we sent it by mail to another. ʺ
The declaration read out by the middle peasant at the reporting meeting in the village. Sharapovo Ivano‐Shnyrevsky parish Zvenigorodsky u. Moscow province, written by him.
“I have never been a party or political leader, but I have always been a political supporter. Every mass movement of the people aroused an upsurge in me and I sympathized with everyone, without examining the party. At this time, since 1918, after the end of the German war, 71 I have been living among the peasants, studying their life and political aspirations, and I notice that Bolshevism, with its direct party line, not only did not attract the peasantry to itself, but on the contrary separated it from itself. The workers for the peasantry not only did not become a friend and comrade, but, on the contrary, became an implacable enemy with all its power, which legally destroys its small individual economy. Legislative directives of the Soviets in relation to the peasantry are often rude, like the Arakcheevism 72 (100 years ago). At that time, too, Tsar Alexander I was building a federation. Then the brutal despot Arakcheev led the violence, building military settlements without asking the wishes of the people. Now, the will of the peasantry under individual small farms is being violated by the force of a collective law, called the workersʹ dictatorship, and they are forced through collectives to go over to the commune.
Thus, the ʺgiganticʺ agricultural machinery of our country got a stick in the wheels throughout its course and in a short period of time stopped its productivity, paralyzing the energy in the laboring masses of the small peasantry.
The Soviets were carried away not by living activity, but by soulless paper formalism. People who understand the real views of the broad masses of the peasantry, under the pressure of the dictatorship of the workers and peasants (refer to as *), where a straight line is the general line of the Bolsheviks, unceremoniously cuts off the slopes on the right and left, silently moved away from the peasants out of fear of going to jail or Solovki 73.
A person who expresses his views against the directives of the Soviet government is already an enemy of the workersʹ party, and he is being unceremoniously dealt with according to the law.
By means of such repressions in relation to the small farms of the peasantry, the workersʹ power reveals its cowardice towards the capital that is pressing on it and [in this way] [tries] to attract the peasant masses to itself.
This nervousness and twitching of the small peasantry on the part of the workersʹ power not only does not unite the worker with the peasantry, but, on the contrary, tears them apart and separates them from each other.
The peasants reason like this:
ʺWe donʹt care about factory industry, the workers donʹt care for themselves, and the peasants donʹt care for themselves.ʺ The workers have achieved their well‐being in life, so do not interfere with the peasantʹs life as he wants. Create your own household according to your own way of thinking.
Give a soft loan with a low interest rate for broad strata of the peasant masses. Move to the aid of chemistry and agronomy for the purpose of cultural development. Tax only land (although you should charge no less than your current rent). Do not hit the labor economy with a progressive tax 74.
The state should not interfere with the economic well‐being of the peasant and count the income in his wallet. Levy a progressive tax on those farms that exploit hired labor in their management. Give full play to individual strengths and abilities (if you wish, create teams as well). And you workers will see that the land will be covered with cultural economic units like mushrooms and in a short period of time the country will be unrecognizable. And these cultural and economic units, like an epidemic, will infect a backward and passive economy with the cultural movement. Even a bum and he will find a job.
With this approach, you will reduce the influx of unemployed people into cities from the countryside. The labor exchange will be empty. The peasant does not need to shorten the hours of the working day, he himself will find time to rest. This order of business will quickly increase the yield of the fields, and the markets will be inundated with agricultural products and bread. The peasants will be satisfied and the workers will be fed.
Only in this way will the worker unite with the peasantry into indissoluble ties and give a fierce rebuff to the oppressive capital and intervention. ʺ
Signature.
Note
* So, in the document
The appeal was sent by mail from Leningrad and Kursk. Received in stts. Zelenchukskaya Batalpashinsky district, st. Bogoslovskaya Nevinnomyssk district of Armavir district and in the village. Baranovka, Kurakinsky district, Tula province.
“Citizens of the Soviet Union. Devastation surrounds us on all sides. Inside, it takes away a third of the total national income, the collapse of industry and agriculture, an acute shortage of food, which has already caused the transition to a rationing system and substitutes for bread in the provinces and the first signs of a threatening famine in the spring. In foreign policy, there is complete isolation and the danger of turning our country into a second China, while the defeated and 10 times poorest Germany is successfully developing its economy. The only reason for all this is the existing system of party dictatorship, which is reduced to the dictatorship of Stalin (sufficiently described in Leninʹs will 75), strangles all life in the country and leads it to the edge of the abyss. Particularly destructive is the policy of the Party in the countryside, where the desire of the peasants to improve their economy is deliberately killed, and collective farms that yield nothing are forcibly implanted, and of all the goods, only vodka is being promoted to the countryside. At the same time, industry, devoid of an agricultural basis and bureaucratically controlled, is crumbling, and here, as elsewhere, the constant interference of the Party is pernicious, and the billions thrown into construction do not produce any results. The senseless propaganda of the international revolution led to the disruption of foreign loans and the economic blockade. All attempts to straighten the party line only lead to repression (defeat of the Moscow Committee). There is only one way out ‐ unite and demand the establishment of the true power of the working people,
Workers, peasants and employees, refuse to buy loans, pay taxes and rent grain, go on strikes and create your unions. Red Army men refuse to disperse demonstrations and suppress the uprising. Do not participate in the elections to the Soviets, in which the party wants to create the appearance of democracy by the people and shift the responsibility for the consequences of its destructive policy to you, and, where the elections have already taken place, demand that your deputies resign. By this you will show that you demand complete freedom of elections to the Soviets and an end to all Party interference in their work. Prove to an insignificant handful of people who hold power only in their own interests that they do not dare to force your will. ʺ
The appeal was sent from Moscow by mail.
“To the revolutionaries of Russia. Our heroic country is experiencing again the days of cruel trials and troubles. The profound economic crisis and the rise in the cost of living, which are increasing from year to year, are causing the masses of workers to be disappointed in the imminent victory of socialism. This disbelief stems from the criminal and anti‐proletarian course pursued in recent years by the current leadership of the Communist Party. Behind this top party layer there was nothing left but murder and betrayal. The ruling elite flooded the glorious Bolshevik slogans, sanctified by the blood of revolutionaries, in the mud of political demagogy. No one will dare to say now, unless it is the notorious liars, that the material and political situation of the working class and peasantry has improved in eleven years, at least in comparison with the standard of living in the long‐gone old regime. The same poverty, the same unemployment, the same exile and the same prisons.
Comrades, who would have thought, when the best of the best died on the fronts of the Civil War, 76 years later, that in five or six years the damned tsarist prisons would be overcrowded again, that the reference roads would revive again, but not with the clatter of shackles, but with the modern clatter of railways.
The current political situation of the island of socialism ʺis characterized by precisely these ulcers of the restored regime.ʺ
Great Testaments 1917‐1919 hidden and forgotten. All that remained was faith in the intolerable position of the worker and peasant *. If workers are forced to declare strikes, as was the case at Trekhgornaya mr, Lyuberetskiy plant, Aleksandrovskie workshops, etc., then they rush to pay wages on time and promise an increase of 3‐4% despite the fact that food products have increased in price nine to twelve times. They press the worker with norms, increase the working day under the guise of extra earnings. They press the strengthening of the so‐called labor discipline. To this we must add the torment and the hungry existence of the registered and unregistered unemployed. It is hard to imagine that unemployment has increased 3 ½ times compared to the pre‐war period. If, on the other hand, the peasants begin to expand the cultivated area in order to feed themselves and the city in excess, then in response they send orders to impose emergency measures and increase the rates of various taxes. Hence, the active poor or middle peasant who defends the backbreaking labor of the peasant is called a fist and slandered as an enemy of the Soviet regime.
And the government and the top of the party explain the holding of such dastardly events by a desire to show concern for the state. These armchair people, of course, forget that the interests of the state are the interests of all working people who won power from capitalism with their own blood, that concern in the state is primarily concern for the worker and peasant himself.
For the free life of the broad masses, revolutionaries went to lay their heads under the ax of counter‐revolution and international predators in the unforgettable great seventeenth years. With their blood a red banner is raised over Russia. The Soviets were created by their blood. With their blood Russia was declared socialist. But in their own name the worker and peasant have been caught in the grip, in their name people who have torn away from the masses are exercising in their offices, pursuing a ruinous policy and thereby arousing just bitterness in every worker. Now the masses do not have the will ‐ there is the will of several hundred power‐hungry people.
Thousands of elite hangers‐on with darkened eyes listen to the speeches of the wonderful chosen ones and then elect them unanimously to all governing bodies of the country. The terrible applause of these hangers‐on at the meetings is immediately announced by the will of the people. The revolutionaries are imprisoned, and this shaking bastard applauds ‐ this is also the will of the people. Once upon a time at the Moscow Democratic Conference 77 thundering applause, once in the councils of workersʹ deputies thundering applause traitors and enemies of the people. This should never be forgotten.
The will of the people was expressed in 1919 **, when 150 million broke the neck of tsarism. Lenin alone sincerely sought the liberation of the people from slavery, he alone understood the needs of the ruined masses. When he was wrong, no one dared to curse him for these mistakes, for he corrected them.
Comrades, at all meetings demand an 18% increase in wages and a truly seven‐hour working day. At all peasant meetings, demand complete exemption from taxes, these damned tsarʹs weights.
Revolutionaries, be alert, keep your strength, do not lose vigor and hope for a great future.
Central Committee of the Party of Combat Resistance ʺ.
Note
* So, in the document
** Apparently in 1917
The leaflet was distributed in the city of Yegoryevsk, Moscow province.
“Comrades! Workers and peasants. It is already the twelfth year of Soviet power, and there is still nothing good, except oppression. You workers work in factories and factories for 8 hours, but if you calculate and it turns out to be about 10 hours. You work with a heavy load, before you worked on two machines, and now on 4 or more, and for this you do not receive a pay as a whole how much you earned, but you are deducted for bonds, then in favor of MOPR 78 and so you donʹt get the whole thing. You have to ask that the plant does not load with bonds, you have to ask for a premium, because you make a lot of income for them, and they only say that the state is suffering a big loss. They are deceiving you in everything, but you cannot utter a word against the Soviet regime, they will immediately dismiss you from your place, because you are in the hands of the communists. Previously, all the people worked in factories and plants and no one walked around the stock exchanges, but now, under Soviet rule, there is a crush and a fight at the stock exchange and no one is sent to work, but are sent for 2‐3 days. Here, workers and peasants, I am a worker myself, and I treat you with secret words that there is no interest in living under such a regime. Eh you, Russian unemployed people, what do you hope for, if you act like this, you will disappear like flies. Have you forgotten that the power of the workers and peasants, all Soviet power is in your hands, and you do what you want, let the communists enjoy you, and you cannot do anything, organize order so that everyone works, and if you cannot, then give up this work, then we will find those people who could define everyone, so that everyone would work, and would not die of hunger and could rule the whole of Russia? Here our government consists not of workers and not of peasants, but of accursed landowners, in whom there is no pure worker and peasant blood, they have no feeling for the worker, they, like landowners, have taken all power and they are living, enjoying themselves not like a worker ‐ and in a dream the worker will not dream of how the communists live, and this is the difference between the worker and the communist and the government. And you, poor working people, almost hungry, are sitting from this power, you always have longing and sadness in your heart, as if today to receive bread. Why is all this so, and therefore nothing has become, unless who thought [about] such a terrible picture in Russian Rus. They began to give everyone a 15‐ruble book, and get up from morning until late in the evening in line for bread, and for flour and other products, if you do, then you eat, and if you do not, then sit hungry. Eh you, working people, itʹs time for you to wake up and make a check on different institutions and choose a different government, those people who would give the Russian people freedom, a free press. Long live the Russian people who have not perished from such a predatory Soviet regime. Long live freedom in practice and on paper. Long live the power of the Soviets ‐ a sharp, poisonous, incurable knife for the common people. Long live our Russian ruler, who would give freedom to all the people,
Read and distribute to other comrades, but take more into your mind. In the meantime, goodbye, I shake your emaciated hand and wait for an answer that we are writing.
Your friendsʺ.
Envelope cover: “Freedom for the Russian people. Read and pass on to other comrades. Your friendsʺ.
The resolution proposed at the reporting meeting in vil. Korsakov, Ilyinsky village council, Bogoroditsky district, Tula province. according to the report of the district executive committee.
“After listening to the report of the representative of the Bogoroditsk Regional Executive Committee, Comrade Kuzmichev on the report of the work of the same RIK for 1927 and 1928, we, citizens of the village. Korsakovo, we welcome the Presidium of the RIK and bring our sincere gratitude for the achievements of culture and the improvement of the life of our peasant situation on a communist basis, under the leadership of the CPSU (b) on the behests of the late Ilyich. We honor the death of the deceased and all his associates by standing up.
It can be seen from the report that during this period a lot of work was put by the RIK to link the city with the village and its cooperation in counions to achieve the common goal of the working people, as well as to raise the position of agricultural production to a height, in the supply of high‐grade seed materials, the latest design of the latest achievements and re‐equipped machines and tools, in obtaining them on preferential terms, through the organs of the state apparatus, for the use of such on a large scale by poor and middle peasant farms, as well as for cooperation ‐ in supplying the population with essential products at close range. Nor can we remain silent because we, women of remote villages, during the eleven years of the October Revolution received complete emancipation in the role of work, depending on the role of men, as was the place we occupied before the revolution, and the October Revolution under the leadership of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) gave us the right to decide and defend our interests and economic plans, which know us no less than men do on a common basis with all of them. Therefore, honor and praise to women, members of the CPSU (b), and women standing in the ranks of the ruling power. And we, citizens of the Korsakov society, demand that the new composition of the governing power should include at least 50% of us, and we notice that the male composition has become loose and bureaucratic to 75%. To everyone who corrupts the ideas of the peopleʹs labor will and encroaches on its enslavement in the corrupting press ‐ a merciless purge from the ranks of the governing apparatus of the Soviet power, so that the newly elected apparatus would be a truly apparatus from a number of working people and speak the language of the interests of the working people. And about the experiences of our society for the period 1927‐1928. shortcomings in the little things, we put them on the surface and hope that the new composition will get rid of and eradicate them.
1) The tax system of 1927 was satisfactory, but there were upstarts on the part of the seconded responsible employees of the RIK, a tax withdrawal in a rude form, an act with the poor man S.M. I had to ask for a semssud to seed the spring field.
2) The tax system of 1928 led to the complete indignation of the cultural farms erected by the Soviet government, namely: those citizens who responsively reacted to the propaganda of agriculture, raised animal husbandry to the height of the position, such as: horses, cows, gardening, beekeeping and field farming, up to 8‐field crop rotation with the cultivation of seed clover ‐ are taken into account * kulaks and podkulachnikov 79 , and taxes on their farms are inflated to the limit of their destruction.
3) Thus, the tax system of 1928 showed a class division into five groups: kulaks, podkulachniki, middle peasants, poor peasants, activists and poor peasants **.
In kulaks, no doubt, we got those natural peasants, as they were called ʺcultural workersʺ, who, by their personal labor, achieved this external enrichment with horses, cows, etc. without the use of hired labor, but on the contrary, using themselves, as well as family members in hired labor, in earnings on the side, such as state farms and the work of seasonal workers on peats near Moscow.
The second group ‐ podkulachniki, these are middle peasants, who came out no more than three years at the expense of personal labor, again from those seasonal work and the use of land for rent by citizens who left for Siberia.
The middle peasants are small‐family citizens who do not show themselves to earn money on the side, and thus their economy is closed at one level.
Poor activists are farms experiencing the elements of adversity, and they are different every year, such as: death of livestock, under‐seeding, soaking, etc. gradually, at least with the middle peasants, but are leveled.
But our grief and misfortune are with the poor peasant, and we have them, and it is not possible to raise his economy even [to] a candidate for the middle peasant. Not because society doesn’t help them, but simply they don’t want to, and why they don’t want to, they know better about it. And we heard that the re‐election campaign definitely interprets that the whole support of the elections falls only on the poor and middle peasants, and only their candidates are the main ones.
And here we, the citizens of this society, are heartbroken that these candidates will be promoted to the village councils and other government apparatus in accordance with the latest slogans and aspirations of the re‐election campaign. While in his household, he did not show activity, in all likelihood the same will happen to him there. We have a lot of urgent matters that cannot be delayed.
In the region of the Ilyinsky village council, we have handicraft industries, such as: mills, butter churns, wave 80. They are inactive, and because of their inaction, we have to travel 10‐15 versts and lose 2‐3 days because of the queue, while this can be completely avoided. The reasons for their closure ‐ letʹs leave the question open.
And putting them into motion ‐ the question does not require delay. Also being an exemplary farm, the state farm of sugar‐makers has numbed eyes with its laxity in harvesting valuable products of the state. Bureaucratic behavior of RIK employees when receiving certain certificates and subordinate bodies. Cooperation suffers from interruptions in goods and lack of satisfaction of needs, especially by manufacture. We do not hear the fight against mass theft and the detection of criminals and the improvement of life in the peasant economy in relation to sanitation. The position of a child who is with the livestock of the farm has not yet been eliminated. For fencing such, at least they satisfied the demand for forest materials, for their isolation from such”.
Note
* So, in the document
** So, in the document. We need oppositionists.
From the speech of a rural teacher (daughter of psalm reader 81) in Kaluga province.
“You see what a strong hunger strike the population has, this is the fault of the Soviet government, this is a direct consequence of all the laws and orders of the government and communist policy, inability to plan, as a result of which we have obvious hunger and endless tails. Such hunger strikes and tails will twist the neck of the Soviet regime; they are in no way allowed in the future. To avoid this in the future, it is necessary to change the policy in respect of private trade and to stop the pressure on the pin and on the top of the village, the imposition of collective farms, cooperatives, municipalities and partnerships 82. By putting pressure on the kulaks and the top of the village, the authorities kill any desire to develop their economy and make it a commodity one. Some middle peasants and poor peasants and modern miserable state farms cannot increase the grain yield”.
On the question of Soviet schools. “In our schools, 60% of students were expelled, these are children of an element alien to us ‐ priests, kulaks and merchants. I ask how, then, to understand the law of the Soviet government on universal compulsory education for 83 people. Where, then, is the development of our culture, when those who want to learn are thrown out of school. At all crossroads they shout: children are our future, etc., learn, knowledge is power. Itʹs time for them, in the second decade of the revolution, to stop class persecution and end the division into “not ours and ours”. Children are innocent for their parents. ʺ
On the question of the crosscomb. “These pitiful cross‐committees only create a dual power in the countryside, like former commissars. It is not surprising that they still cannot take root in the village and exist only on paper. Just an extra spoke in the nationwide wheel. In my opinion, it would be much more expedient to increase the maintenance of teachers by reducing the costs of maintaining the Krestkom organizations from top to bottom”.
On the question of the stratification of the countryside. “By stratifying the village, the Soviet government and the party have done what is now going on in the village desperate squabbles and quarrels. You will take a peek into the modern village as it is through this bundle. They drove the population straight to their own, neighbor to neighbor, they completely quarreled with each other, they do not want to look at each other, they shared beasts, there is no end to personal accounts and reproaches, and all this thanks to the stupid policy of the party and the authorities in the village. The workers were kindly taken care of by the Soviet power, they were gratified by a seven‐hour working day and other indulgences on the professional line, therefore they are in favor of the Soviet power, but nothing of this has been done with regard to the peasantry. The Communist Party perfectly takes into account the psychology of the peasant ‐ the owner to the marrow of his bones and deliberately does not allow the unanimity of the peasantry, fearing that, being unanimous,
About teaching and specialists. “We, teachers, have now been brought under the rubric of Shakhty specialists 84 and are beginning to clean up. What a comedy this is. We found a harmful element among the poor ordinary teachers. From this, among the teachers now there is a kind of depression, uncertainty about the future, even though you have seven inches in your forehead, and you will be kicked out. The Communist Party and the Soviet government, in pursuit of counterrevolution and sabotage, will ultimately declare each other among themselves counter‐revolutionaries and saboteurs, as they have already declared such prominent and most devoted people to the revolution ‐ Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smilgu, Rakovsky and everyone they are declared opposition, Mensheviks, Socialist‐Revolutionaries 85 and counterrevolutionaries. The Bolsheviks are beginning to dream of counter‐revolution. This cleansing will bring gray hair, you are afraid of it like fire, and so we are already silent and obsequious to the authorities against our convictions, we compromise our pride. ʺ
By cooperation. “Now take our internal and external trade. Our cooperation is just a baby, a miserable offspring of the Soviet NEP, nothing more, nothing less. What kind of trade ‐ tears, some kind of misunderstanding, lousy shops ‐ that is not, the other is not, there is nothing? In my opinion, the very idea of cooperation in our conditions is impracticable. This is an empty idea of the Soviet regime, doomed to inevitable and quick death. You only hear ‐ shortcomings and waste, drunkenness, but nepotism, courts. Iʹm sick of talking about it. Well, think about how our useless cooperation will lead us to socialism, because this is a utopia, the delirium of our crazy, politically shortsighted government. We need to discard this empty venture and declare free trade, as it was before the revolution, then we will not have such long tails. ʺ
About unemployment. “The inability to conduct work economically has created the most terrible unemployment and hunger strike this spring. With the shouts of ʺwork and breadʺ, 86 seasoners in Moscow dispersed the central labor exchange and, in general, made up a lot of 87 there. This should be expected in the future. ʺ
About tax policy. “Now letʹs analyze the agricultural tax. Everyone shouted that every year we would reduce the agricultural tax, but in fact it increased from 30 to 35%. Poor Manifesto 88 exempt from paying agricultural tax. Everything is blamed on the middle peasant and the well‐to‐do part of the village, but it is very insignificant in our country, and there are no kulaks at all. It turns out that the middle peasant will pull all the yoke of the agricultural tax. This is what the progressive tax has led to, this is what the policy of reducing private trade has led to. In 5‐10 years, the communists promised to completely free the entire peasant population from the agricultural tax, however, it is systematically increased every year at the expense of the poor and the absence of private trade for the middle peasant as the bulk of the peasantry. Through this, the middle peasant will show them a sour face and turn away. By this method of alliance between the middle peasants and the poor, there is no way they can be strengthened, look, they will fail with a bang, and instead of unification, you will get separation. Selftaxation is also a tax under a new sauce, harness the middle peasant again, but the land was divided equally, his neighbor is the same user of the land as he is. He is a poor man through drunkenness, through laziness and mismanagement. This is what a reckless indulgence to idlers and drunkards, well, is this order, after all, this is the direct exploitation of the middle peasant in favor of the so‐called poor peasant, they improve the situation of one at the expense of the other. With them, it goes like this: first, a single agricultural tax, that is, a single taxation, then self‐taxation, and then they invent some taxation for each other in the Kremlin, and so on endlessly. Try to say that somewhere at a gathering or at a party, you will quickly find yourself in the GPU. ʺ
On opposition and self‐criticism. “You see how dangerous it is to say something nowadays. We are worms, not human beings, they will quickly drive us to Solovki for such harsh self‐criticism, although Comrade. Stalin declared self‐criticism in spite of faces and selfcriticism at full throat. A sound criticism of the policy of the CPSU (b) by the opposition was undoubtedly necessary and should be. Of course, it is more difficult to notice mistakes and blunders behind oneself, this is where the authorities and the party could help the eyes of the opposition, but they took him, but kicked him out of the party and the center ‐ this is wrong. The Communist Party, apparently, only now realized this and, in general, became convinced of the oppositionʹs predictions, which came true before our eyes, and began to accept them back in batches into the party ‐ they realized late that we would not have had these crises. Such luminaries of the revolution, great faithful revolutionaries like Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and others cannot change the revolution, the working class and will not be mistaken. Poor Trotsky was driven into the mountains. True, this is worse for them: the British are close there, they will agree to take him from there by airplane to their place, and then, at the head of our White Guards, they will release him against us with Poland or Romania. The Red Army will not fight against him, since the command staff, although they have quieted down, are undoubtedly on his side, then the Soviet government and the Communist Party will wind up their tails thoroughly. The idea of industrializing the country belongs to the opposition, and the Soviet government is now pursuing it, the oppositionists foresaw all our real crises, but then they did not believe and ridiculed. We are indebted to Trotsky for the victory of the Red Army in the civil war; perhaps the Communist Party will not dispute this fact. And if this is so, then the
Soviet government is ashamed of persecution of Trotsky, because he is also considered abroad, he is duly appreciated there too,
About foreign policy. “Even lousy Poland and Romania spit on us. Our ambassadors are being killed with impunity, but we are silent. They donʹt believe us for a penny, and how can they believe when we are still without pants and hungry. ʺ
About loans. “The Soviet government is already generous with loans, just 100%. Loans for a year, if you want, a whole dozen will be released, just do not be lazy buy, and you will not buy, so they will push you on the profile. Now the second loan of industrialization for 500 million has been issued, also fork out, otherwise they will be declared a counterrevolutionary. ʺ
On the defense of the Union. “Last year, almost all the village councils of the Union passed a resolution “down with Chamberlain,” but with us, however, the British do not reckon at all and, in spite of us, keep him as their foreign minister. And how the French demanded that we recall Ambassador Rakovsky 89, so we immediately satisfied their demand. Through our foreign policy and the Comintern, we do not love, it means that here, too, we must change the course of politics, feeling our powerlessness and poverty, to yield, bow down, ask for a loan. Read the appeal of the Congress of the Comintern to all the proletarians of the world, this is not an appeal, in my opinion, but a direct military order ‐ to the capitalist governments. Let’s, they say, beat and destroy them, and if they press us, we shout a guard to the whole world, “they want to strangle us,” but don’t dare to forbid us to agitate against them, we climb where they don’t ask us, and then we shout: “they are beating, choke”. In a word, our legislative authorities poorly, ineptly govern the country and, as they themselves, they are the ones who issue laws. ʺ
The leaflet was distributed in the Detskoye Selo of the Leningrad District at the Agricultural Institute.
“Comrades. The usual comedy of “re‐election to the Soviets” is to be repeated again. You will be forced to raise your hands and thereby confirm the officials appointed from above, who will continue to carry out the hypocritical policy of the Communist Party, and by no means the will of the broad working masses of country. Hunger in the country, the introduction of a rationing system to protect a well‐fed city from a hungry village, a constant shortage of consumer goods, growing unemployment, impoverishment of the peasantry, overcrowded prisons, repression and executions ‐ this is what the country has led to the twelve‐year management of the party and trade union bureaucracy, based on a new secret police ‐ GPU.
You students, future workers in the countryside, receiving general education funded by the working peasantry, are obliged to raise your voice against the shameless deception and the ever‐growing exploitation of the multimillion peasantry.
Comrades take advantage of these ʺre‐electionsʺ and turn this miserable farce into a living creative act of the people. Demand the abolition of the shameful norm of elections to the Soviets: ʺfrom rural areas one in 125,000, from cities one in 25,000.ʺ Demand relief for the peasantry from unbearable taxes.
Demand the legalization of all parties, freedom of speech, press, assembly.
Comrades. It is your duty to raise your voice for these measures, which should ensure the welfare and development of our country. ʺ
Leaflet in the amount of 10 copies was glued up on the night of December 11, 1928 in stts. Batalpashin Armavir district.
“Citizens, hold on and read the newspaper, hold on to the right slope ‐ this is a weapon to overthrow the yoke from the neck of the grain growers. Right deviation, he openly stated that the party is a system of suppressing agriculture. The sown area is falling because grain growers are pressured by taxes. Is the economy growing?
Citizens, you were promised a product, and where it is ‐ goes abroad, and we stand in line, waiting for the product ‐ just like all products are leaving us at the mercy of the war, for defense. They press with bonds and self‐taxation, and we, Cossack grain growers, carry on our necks. ʺ
The leaflet was found in the village. Mamontovo of the Barnaul district, was distributed by the manager of the Chumysh RK VKP (b)
by a member of the Komsomol:
“Only in Russia, downtrodden by Bolshevik‐gendarme autocracy, is such a mockery of the peasantry possible, when for every extra tithe of sowing requiring the hiring of laborers, for every pood of bread sold at the bazaar, for every agricultural machine provided by an economic peasant to his neighbors, the peasantry is persecuted by an “inflated” tax and deprivation of the right to vote. What, after that, can there be an interest in expanding the economy not only among economically strong peasants, but also among the poor who want to get out of poverty. Previously, the bourgeoisie — the manufacturers and landowners — was considered the enemy of the people. Now, when Russia has fallen into poverty, the enemy of the people is considered to be the one on whom Russia still rests, namely, an economic man who has an extra tithe of sowing, an extra cattle, an agricultural machine. Soon the enemy of the people will be considered the one who will have extra pants. It is a fact that Russia is falling into ultimate poverty and on the brink of ruin. Everyone sees this from the fact that the economic peasant, on whom Russia still rests, is reducing his economy, that the factory workers do not produce real durable, but ʺSovietʺ, that is, substandard goods (knives do not cut, axes do not cut, machines break down, etc.), that construction workers are erecting buildings in cities that fall apart in a year, that steam locomotives, agricultural machines, etc. built at Soviet factories, require repair or replacement in two weeks, and that, finally, the so‐called the industrialization of the country is carried out only in order to provide work and bread to a whole army of hungry unemployed by robbing the peasantry, and thus save the position of the Bolsheviks.
January 27 in with. Art. Khalevichi Lishitskaya parish Starodubsky u. Bryansk province. at the re‐election meeting, when discussing candidates for the new composition of the village council, poor man Mikhail Tolochko made the following statement:
“I propose to elect comrade. Frumkin ʺ. Despite the speech of the representative of the VIC (member of the All‐Union Communist Party), who objected to Tolochkoʹs proposal, the meeting proposed to put this issue to a vote. As a result, by a majority of votes, Frumkin was elected an honorary member of the village council. After the representative of the Ukom went to the place, the decision was canceled.
Correct: Secretary of INFO OGPU
V. Kucherov
Appendix No. 2. Difficulties
Mass performances
Yaroslavl province. In with. Vorzha Ugodinsky parish Rostov u. due to the absence of the chairman of the meeting at the womenʹs delegate meeting, information on the procedure for distributing flour was removed from the agenda, which caused strong discontent among those present.
The chairman of the village council was at that time in the house of the chairman of the PO. A crowd of women (up to 100 people), led by the son of a kulak‐innkeeper (a member of the Komsomol) and the son of a former handicraftsman‐breeder approached the house of the EPO chairman, burst into the house and found the pre‐village council there, tried to beat him. From the crowd standing on the street, shouts were heard: ʺGive him here, we will deal with him.ʺ Thanks to the persuasion of the chairman of the PO and the secretary of the Komsomol, the crowd dispersed, drawing up only an act stating that the chairman of the village council was drunk.
After the crowd of the pre‐village council left for Rostov, when leaving the village, he was stopped by a group of peasants led by one of the wealthy, who tried to pull him out of the sleigh and beat him.
From the village. Filippovo, Seletsky District, Rybinsk District a crowd of over 100 peasants came to the executive committee, demanding the supply of bread not only to the poor, but also to the middle peasants. After the PEC representative explained about the procedure for supplying the population with bread, those who came began to disperse, saying that ʺthey will wait another week, and then they will take other measures.ʺ
Kaluga lips. In the village. Ignatovskaya Zhelovskaya Vol. Likhvinsky u. On January 5 of this year, the peasants of three villages (Ignatovskaya, Razdoli and Vichki), mostly middle peasants and wealthy, provided with bread and having several shares, instigated by a group of wealthy people, organized a general meeting without notifying either the village council or the administration of the PO. At the meeting, it was decided to annul the lists of those in need of bread approved by the VIC and of the 85 farms recognized by the VIC as needy, to leave only 15 people on the list, who will be given flour at the rate of 15 pounds per eater, and the rest of the bread intended to supply those in need should be distributed to shareholders depending on the need. To enforce its resolution, the meeting elected a three‐person commission. The latter, having forbidden the seller of the cooperative to give out flour, by force, despite the protests of the chairman of the board of the PO,
In the village. Bielno Baryatyn parish Spas Demensky u. the middle peasants in an organized manner prohibited the issuance of flour from the cooperatives, took away the flour and poured it back into the bin 90. Poor man Seregin P. was strangled and put to a vote ‐ to strangle at all or not. The incitement was carried out by a former guard 91.
Ivanovo‐Voznesenskaya province. In Boyarskaya Vol. Yuryevetsky u. at the meeting of the commission on the distribution of grain at the Resurrection department [barely] Bolvanitskiy EPO, 120 peasants who had their own grain reserves came with a demand to include them in the lists. Having received a refusal, curses and shouts were heard from the crowd: ʺThey want to starve the peasants.ʺ A bootmaker from the village. Lagaytsovo called on those present to organize an uprising against the authorities.
Peasants of the villages of Alekseikha, Matveikha Kineshemskaya parish. and the county in the number of 20 people, most of the women ‐ well‐to‐do, having stocks of bread, came to the Vandyshevsky village council, demanding to issue white flour or to certify the list they had drawn up for receiving flour from the Kineshemsky Central Regional Committee. Having received a refusal, they raised a fuss and swearing, interfering with their studies. Those who came with difficulty were removed.
Poor tendencies towards violent seizure of bread and searches from the wealthy
Luga District (LVO). In the village. Lugovskoe, Osminsky district, the chairman and a member of the village council searched the house of a peasant in order to find bread.
Pskov District. In with. Kostygovsky Ostrovsky district, the chairman of the village council ordered the members of the village council to search all citizens who said they needed bread in order to find out whether they really have bread.
In with. At the Krasnoarmeisky Porkhovsky District, at a womenʹs meeting, the poor woman made a proposal to search all the kulaks and give the bread found to the state for distribution among the needy.
A similar speech took place at a meeting of the poor of the
Krasnogorodsky district.
Correct: Secretary of INFO OGPU
V. Kucherov
Appendix No. 3. Grain procurement
Counteracting the kulaks of the grain procurement campaign
a) Refusal of kulaks and the well‐to‐do from handing over bread to state producers
Kursk District (TsCHO). The first of the village N.‐Terebuk of the Shchigrovsky region, with up to 1000 poods. bread, he refuses to export them to the state service points: ʺFor me to take bread to the cooperative ‐ no way, I will wait that they will give me a tithe of land for 2 poods in the spring.ʺ
The well‐to‐do farm Zhuravlino, Leninsky District, on the issue of exporting grain, said: ʺLast yearʹs procurement method is not used now ‐ we now know the authoritiesʹ rights, itʹs enough to climb the bins, and if they go to the barns to look, there will be a pitchfork to plant in the side.ʺ
Lgovskiy district. In the village. The bagpipes of the Rylsky district are well‐to‐do, with 500 poods each. and more surpluses (most of them still have their bread in the stacks not threshed), they refuse to hand them over to the state producers: “We do not need money, the authorities have no goods, and bread is gold. Spring will come, bread will rise in price to 6‐7 rubles. for a pood, the bellies of the poor will tighten, then we will sell something and besides, then they will talk to us differently.
ʺ
Tambov district. In with. The prosperous Sulak of the Kirsanovsky District refused to participate in the “red wagon train”, declaring: “Not only will I not bring you bread, but I will tell other peasants of my village not to carry it either. Enough to deceive the peasants. The entire policy of the Soviet government rests on the peasantsʹ necks. Let the workers bring the goods themselves, then we will tell them the price for our bread, the price ‐ which is beneficial to us, and not to the Soviet regime. ʺ
Salsky district (SKK). Fist s. Razvilnoe stubbornly refuses to hand over its surplus to the state: ʺI will not take bread into cooperation as long as there is an opportunity to sell it on the private market.ʺ
In with. Watering kulaks say: ʺSince the voluntary procurement and delivery of grain to the state, we will not bring bread to him, and if extraordinary measures are taken, then let him take the power by force, and the manufactory will not extract bread from us.ʺ
Armavir district. Wealthy Cossack stts. Fearless, on the issue of exporting grain, said: “Since there is no forced unloading of grain, you do not need to succumb to the agitation of the communists and hand over bread to them. Better to let our bread perish, but we wonʹt give it away. If we all together would take up and refuse to surrender bread, then we would be given as much for bread as we want ‐ after all, we are the owners of our own bread. ʺ
Omsk District (Siberia). Fist s. Gankovka of Pavlograd region has not threshed bread collected from 4 dessiatines in ricks. Until now, he has not surrendered a single pound to the state.
In the Ust‐Zaastrovsky village council of the Achairsky district there are 3 kulaks with 2000 poods each. bread everyone, categorically refuse to hand over bread.
Kansk district. In the village. Krutovo, prosperous villages. Aleksandrovka N.‐Ingoshevsky district in order to keep the bread from surrendering to the state, they keep the bread not threshed ‐ in stacks.
Kuznetsk district. Fists der. They sold 1‐2 cows to pay the agricultural tax, refusing to export grain: ʺThere is nowhere to rush ‐ we will wait until there is money.ʺ
Achinsk district. Prosperous village Preobrazhenka of Tyazhinsky district sold hemp oil in payment of agricultural tax, and keeps bread ‐ rye and oats ‐ unmilled.
Rubtsovsky district. Kulaki village Livestock, wool and other agricultural products are sold in payment of the agricultural tax and other payments, without touching their grain reserves.
Fist s. Polovinsky Rubtsovskiy district, a malicious non‐delivery person of bread, put on a black board by the village council, continues to stubbornly not hand over his surplus: “I didn’t carry a single pound and I don’t think about carrying it any further. If the Soviet government needs bread, let it rake it out by itself, but I will not take it out. ʺ
Barabinsky district. In the village. Pavlovka, Kupinsky District, a kulak, which has large reserves of grain since 1926, stubbornly refuses to hand over its surplus to the state producers: “If the Soviet government has the right to do so, let them take my reserves, at least I will know that my bread has been taken away ʺ.
b) Agitation against the export of grain
Lgovskiy district (TsCHO). In the village. Myasnyankino of the Ivanenkovsky district, the prosperous one, speaking at a general meeting, agitated: ʺDo not take bread to the bunkers, let these idiot communists die of hunger, they must all be choked so that they do not ride on our back.ʺ
Don District (SKK). In with. Prosperous Bataysk, opposing the export of grain, said: “Why do the peasants give up sowing grain? Here are 1925‐1926. nobody knew about grain procurements, and taxes were affordable, but now those who have a good farm are subject to unbearable taxes and bread is pumped out, so everyone is trying to reduce their farm. ʺ
At the plenum of the Azov City Council on the issue of collective grain export, the well‐to‐do spoke: ʺThey only take from us, but they do not give us anything in return.ʺ ʺThere is no profit in handing over grain to the cooperatives when they do not supply us with goods,ʺ etc.
c) Anti‐Soviet agitation
Sumy district (Ukraine). Fist s. The debtor is conducting a systematic agitation against the delivery of grain: ʺWith its grain procurements, the Soviet government will drive us all to the next world ‐ there is no need to export grain to the state, let the rulers swell a little without bread, otherwise they began to oppress us worse than under Nicholas.ʺ
Dnepropetrovsk district. The well‐to‐do of Pavlograd region, regarding the export of bread to state producers, say: “The villagers would rather show the pitchfork than take out the bread. The authorities are painfully conceited, and the rulers themselves, receiving a good salary, make the villagers die of hunger, in fact, the time has come to show them the pitchfork. ʺ
Luhansk district. Fists with. Khrustalnoye is agitating: “Soon we will strangle the communists ‐ itʹs enough to rob the people. They took everything from the peasants and brought them to the point that there is no bread or fodder. ʺ
Kharkov district. Fist s. Orelki (a former church headman), using the discontent of the poor with the supply of goods only for bread, agitates among them: “Why do you need the authorities now ‐ when you had bread, then you were good, but now you sit naked and barefoot. The authorities will wait for the peasants to start persecuting them.”
In addition, in the Poltava, Chernigov, Cherkassk, Kryvyi Rih and other districts, the anti‐Soviet agitation of the kulaks boils down to the following: ʺWake up, it will be late today or tomorrowʺ (Cherkasy district). “We need to change our minds already ‐ down with the cement basements, where they put us for failure to deliver bread on time. Peasants be friends, it’s enough to endure ‐ the work has begun” (Poltava district). ʺNever mind, the end of everything will come soon, do not be discouraged, comrades, then we will show how to take bread from the peasantsʺ (Krivoy Rog district).
Armavir District (SKK). Fist‐Cossack stts. Voznesenskoy says: “Now we have lived ‐ there is money, but there is nothing to buy ‐ even if you walk naked and barefoot. Iʹm tired of this puppet comedy. Do they really think to reign for a long time, torment the people ‐ after all, the further, the worse it becomes and the lack of everything increases. “?
Another kulak spoke out: ʺWe see that things are getting worse and we have to be surprised that the Soviet regime has held out so far ‐ it is time for it to fail.ʺ
Don district. The kulak of the Chebachi farm said: “Before we beat the poor, but now we will take them by not giving them bread ‐ let them rely on their own KKOVs, from which they will howl wolves in the spring”.
d) Disruption by fists of meetings and organizations of ʺred cartsʺ
Stalin District (Ukraine). In with. Makiivka as a result of the agitation of the kulaks, the meeting convened by the village council on the issue of grain export did not take place.
Poltava district. The convened meetings on the issue of grain procurement in the village. Yarinovka is systematically thwarted by their fists, who themselves, without speaking openly, act through a group of middle peasants under their influence.
Kharkov district. The kulaks, opposing the collective delivery of grain, agitate among the peasants: “You fools, they are singing to you about the collective delivery of grain, and you are gaping. Let the fools carry bread with music and flags for themselves, weʹll see if they will be given bread with music and flags in the spring when they are hungry. ʺ
Poltava district. The kulaks threaten the middle peasants who donate bread to the cooperatives: ʺNow you are handing over bread, and in the spring you come to me to borrow bread ‐ I wonʹt give you, then let the state supply you.ʺ
In Umansk, Poltava and other districts, under the influence of the agitation of the kulaks, the collective delivery of grain did not take place. The middle peasants opposed the delivery of grain, referring to the fact that ʺwe do not know what will happen in the spring.ʺ
Tara District (Siberia). In with. Samokhvalovka of the Muromtsevsky District, kulaks and prosperous people who had crawled into the poor peasantsʹ meetings, opposed the export of bread: ʺWe have no bread, but in the cooperatives they give pennies for bread ‐ it is better to wait for spring, when the price of bread is decent,ʺ proposed to stop grain procurement. This proposal caused confusion. Part of the poor people opposed this proposal, another part left the meeting with their kulaks, as a result the meeting was disrupted.
Refusals of millers to hand over the harnets fee
Kursk District (TsCHO). In the village. Bykanovo, Oboyansky District, on the proposal of the authorized Oboyansky City Production Association, the millers, led by a kulak, categorically refused to conclude an agreement for the delivery of the garnets tax. After a detour by the commissioner, the miller (kulak) gathered a meeting of millers in the house of another miller, which was attended by 7 millers, and a decision was made: ʺDo not give bread, refuse to conclude contracts, until the closure of the mills.ʺ
Rossoshansk district. In sl. Livenka, Losevsky District, out of 10 mills, eight are completely closed, as their owners refused to conclude contracts for the delivery of garnets tax.
In November 1928, the chairman of the Belgorod PO of the Pavlovsky District, concluded an agreement with private millers for the delivery of the garnets tax. Due to the fact that the agreement set too favorable conditions for the millers, in January 1929 the representative of the Pavlovsk Regional Executive Committee proposed to the millers to renegotiate the agreements, but the latter, among 15 people, mostly wealthy, categorically refused to renegotiate the agreements.
Lgovskiy district. In the villages of B.‐Ugony, Klisheno and Sugrovo, eight owners of windmills ‐ kulaks categorically refused to conclude contracts for the delivery of the garnets tax, referring to the fact that the peasants do not grind them. In fact, these mills regularly operate every night.
Minusinsk District (Siberia). There is a weak coverage of the contracts of the owners of the mills for the delivery of the garnets fee. The contracts were not concluded for at least 36,000 poods. harntsevoy collection. In addition, the income of the garnets tax is very weak already under the concluded contracts. So, out of 212,000 poods. of the garnets tax due to be received in the district, only 37,000 poods were received. (17.5%).
Shortcomings in the work of the grassroots Soviet apparatus
a) Inactivity of procurers
Kozlovsky district (TsCHO). In with. Shekhman grain procurements are poor, a member of the OKRIK who came from the Kozlov Okrug Executive Committee does not carry out any work to strengthen the procurements, he never went to the places and has no connection with the peasantry.
Tambov district. In with. Sampur Sampur region, an agricultural credit partnership sent its representatives to village councils in order to strengthen procurement. One of them, without doing any work on the ground, returned back with the minutes of the peasantsʹ meetings about the refusal to export grain.
Oryol District. Employees of Verkhovsky ʺSoyuzkhlebʺ still do not go to places. Checking the receipts of the garnets collection from the millers is not carried out, as a result, the bread comes by gravity.
Kharkiv District (Ukraine). The chairman of the Tsaredvorinsky village council of the Lozovsky district does not take any part in grain procurements, arguing that ʺyou cannot quarrel with the villagers, you will have to work among the villagers, so you need to live peacefully with them.ʺ A similar attitude of the chairman of the Orekhovsky village council, who said: ʺIt is better not to bother yourself and not to touch people.ʺ The chairman of the Veselovsky village council of the Lipetsk region, on the need to strengthen grain procurements, said: ʺIs it really possible to go around the yards and extort 1‐2 poods, it is better to withdraw your surplus.ʺ
Luhansk district. The board of the Georgievsky EPO issued a resolution stating that ʺthe villagers have no surplus.ʺ
The chairman of the board of the Stepanovskiy EPO does not come to work for several days, does not convene meetings on the issue of grain procurements, conducting, together with members of the board, agitation against grain procurements, declaring: ʺWhere can I carry out procurements here when the peasant does not have grain.ʺ
Kamensky District (Siberia). Prev of the board of Gonokhovo Zavyalovskiy district (member of the CPSU) does not take any measures to revive the procurements, declaring: ʺThere is still a lot of time, we will still have time to prepare bread ‐ the men will bring it themselves, so there is no need to walk around the village and agitate for the export of bread.ʺ
Minusinsk district. The chairman of the Kavkat village council of the Minusinsky district refuses to participate in the work on grain procurement, saying: ʺWhat do I care about grain procurements, there are cooperative workers, even if they are engaged in this business, but
I have enough to do without it.ʺ
b) Peasant and decadent moods of workers of the procurement Soviet apparatus
Tulchinsky district (Ukraine). The chairman of the Savchenkovsky EPO, regarding the strengthening of procurements, says: “Is it possible to rob the villagers, demanding that they return bread at a fixed price ‐ 73 kopecks, when at the bazaar the price is 3 rubles. and more than that, the villagers cannot get manufactories at a cheap price. ʺ
Glukhovsky district. Chairman of the CNS s. Lizunovka N.‐Selersky district at a general meeting of shareholders made the following agitation: ʺYou should not hand over bread to state producers, then for one pood of bread they will give three pairs of soles.ʺ
Barabinsky District (Siberia). In the Kreshchensky Production Association of the Mikhailovsky District, the workers of the procurement apparatus do not take any measures to revive the blanks, citing the impossibility of fulfilling the plan: “They gave a plan for the blanks, but they were not able to fulfill it, but they were forced to carry it out, in the barns, or whatever.
Omsk District. The Bialystok Production Association of the Odessa region, the procurers are in a depressed mood: ʺThe plans for grain procurement are beyond our strength, no matter what we do, we cannot fulfill our plans.ʺ
The chairman of the Slavic Credit Partnership (member of the CPSU), regarding the strengthening of grain procurements, said: ʺFurther pressure on grain procurements is useless, the peasants do not have bread and one must be an idiot to take bread to a cooperative when it is 3‐4 times more expensive in the bazaar.ʺ
Slavgorodsky district. At st. Burla N.‐Alekseevsky district of the previllage council at all meetings makes a statement that ʺthe peasants have no grain and nothing to hand over.ʺ
Tara district. The Novo‐Yagodinskoye Production Association, which signed an agreement for the procurement of about 1000 poods of grain forage, did not procure a single pood. In this regard, the chairman of the PO says: ʺAlthough the agreement has been concluded, we will not surrender a single pound, they will not be shot for this.ʺ
Similar sentiments are observed among workers of the procurement and Soviet apparatus and in other districts (Minusinsky, Rubtsovsky, etc.).
c) Trends of purveyors to resume emergency measures
Barabinsky District (Siberia). In the village Golubkovsky, Mikhailovsky District, PO workers are passive about blanks, declaring: ʺThe time will come, we will apply the 107th article, but now there is nothing to worry about.ʺ
Minusinsk district. In with. Berezovki of the Kuraginsky district, an instructor of the agricultural trade union, regarding the strengthening of grain procurements, said: “We need to make sure that the wool flew from the peasants ‐ it’s not business with them to squander because of grain, and if they are not lucky, then we have Article 107 for them.
d) Application of methods of administrative pressure by procurers
Kozlovsky district (TsCHO). In with. Navels of the Sosnovy region, at a general meeting of peasants on the issue of increasing the export of grain, the head of the base of the regional union, a member of the CPSU (b), who, when asked who he was, shouted: ʺI will arrest all of you now and chase to Kozlov.ʺ When he started talking about the export of grain present said: ʺBread does not ask for threats and a kind word, and the head of raybazoy behaves like a policemanʺ 92. Having heard this, the head. the base began to threaten the meeting: ʺI will put you all out of here tomorrow.ʺ As a result, most of those present left the meeting, and the issue of exporting bread was thwarted.
In the same district in the village. Nikolskoe of the Khvorostyansky District, the grain procurement officer, spoke at a general meeting of peasants: “If the peasants don’t carry grain voluntarily, then we will be forced to inspect the barns and, if any surplus is found, put the owners on trial and deprive them of the right to vote.” After the meeting, the delegate summoned 8 middle peasants to the village council, who were offered to take out 20‐25 poods each. of bread. To the objections of some middle peasants that they did not have bread, in which they have a certificate from the village council, the authorized representative said: “There should be no refusals to export grain. If you do not want to take out the bread voluntarily, then give me a subscription in this, then I will know how to deal with you. ʺ
Kursk district. In with. Chekmarevka, Oboyanskiy district, authorized by the Cossack agricultural company, speaking at a general meeting of citizens on the export of grain, said: “If you don’t voluntarily carry bread to the state, then the Soviet government and the party will apply extraordinary measures and are much more “convincing” than those used in the past. year, namely: armed detachments will be expelled to the village”. After this speech, shouts were heard from those present: ʺWe have no bread, let the troops come and take our last bread.ʺ
Mariupol district (Ukraine). In with. In Novo‐Petrovka, the RIKʹs representative for grain procurement summons wealthy and strong middle peasants to the village council and intimidates them with the fact that ʺif they don’t hand over bread voluntarily, it will be taken by force, since the state will not allow workers to starve.
Chernihiv district. In with. Avdeevka, when conducting self‐taxation, self‐taxation was accepted at a rate of 20% to the tax assessment. Representatives of the district who came to the village insisted on accepting self‐taxation in the amount of 40% and arrested the peasants who voted for 20% taxation.
Kharkov district. Chuguevskaya fininspektura selects flour exported by peasants to the bazaar, which is then handed over at fixed prices to PO. The selection of flour is carried out without clarifying the social status of the villagers and the source of its acquisition.
Pervomaisky District. In with. Arbuzinki, Blagodatnovsky district, the party cell, the village committee of Vserabotzemles and representatives of the cooperative organized a raid at the bazaar in order to seize people who buy bread for speculation. One of the members of Vserabotzemles was detained with a supply of wheat (30‐40 poods). On the offer of a member of the Vserabotzemles union to the owner of the wheat supply to go to the village council, the latter refused and tried to leave. With the help of a policeman and one farm laborer, she was detained, and in order to prevent her from leaving, the policeman began to unharness the horses. A crowd gathered at the place where the carts were detained and outraged by the actions of the policeman, tried to deal with the above persons. Shouts were heard from the crowd: ʺBeat them, until when will they drink our blood, you need to kill all the regional and rural authorities ‐ then it will be easier to live.ʺ The kulaks of the Chervonny Yar farm were especially active. One of them, taking advantage of the crowdʹs attack, hit the farm laborer, while the others tried to disarm the policeman. A member of the Blagodatnovsky RIK who was present there jumped into the sleigh and tried to persuade the crowd to disperse, but shouts from the crowd were heard: ʺHit him,ʺ and the RIK member was pulled from the sleigh, and his fur coat was torn. Taking advantage of the confusion, the aforementioned kulaks and the son of the kulak s. Lyubanovka, deprived of election rights, drove the horses. When the carriage left, the crowd began to disperse, and in the conversation the villagers expressed regret that the Spirtotrest store was closed, because “if the store had not been closed, it would not have been so”, “if all the village and regional authorities had been killed, then life would be better. ʺ
Armavir District (SKK). Representatives of the Temirgoevsky agricultural partnership, purchasing bread in stts. Tenginskaya Kurganensky district, they intimidate the peasants with the fact that ʺall the same bread will be taken away soon and only 10 poods will be left for the eater, so it is better to donate bread voluntarilyʺ On this basis, the poor raised the question of a petition not to take away the bread from the poor.
A similar situation takes place in S. Uspensky, Armavir district, where the procurers tell the peasants: ʺBring bread now, otherwise, I will tell you a secret, last yearʹs events cannot be avoided.ʺ
Donskoy district 93. Authorized RIC in the village. Port Canton said at a general meeting of peasants: ʺIf we ask the poor to donate the surplus, then we will take all the bread from the kulak, not even leaving it for seeds.ʺ
The Novo‐Rogovsky village council of the Mechetinsky district made a record of the presence of grain surpluses in farms and the amount of grain handed over according to receipts in 9 quarters of the village and 5 farms.
A similar thing took place in the Cavalier village council, where members of the village council walked around the apartments and wrote down the surplus on the farms. In one quarter, a member of the village council ʺorganizedʺ a collective export of 600 poods from such surpluses. ʺ
In stts. Mishkinsky Novocherkassk region at a general meeting of peasants personally invited to individual owners to take out a certain amount of grain. When the peasant refuses, the question is put to a vote, after which the farmer has no right to refuse to export. ʺ In this way, not only the wealthy, but also the middle peasants are forced to export grain.
Minusinsk District (Siberia). Secretary of the VKP cell in the village. Shoshino of the Minusinsk region, being authorized by the RIK for grain procurement, threatened the wealthy: “If you don’t hand over bread to the cooperatives soon, keep in mind that next year we will take off your agricultural tax 2‐3 times more than today”.
The chairman of the Bugurtak village council threatened the middle peasant: ʺWhoever will not hand over bread to the cooperatives will be punished here on the spot, we will not send any authorized representatives from the RIK, equally punishment for the delay in bread is given to places.ʺ
Irkutsk District. In with. B.‐Goly, the accountant of the Malyshevsky PO, a member of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, speaking at a general meeting of shareholders on the export of grain, said: “We will wait a little longer if the peasants don’t bring bread to the cooperatives. Then you will have to resort to the 107th article, then there will be no mercy to anyone”.
Correct: Secretary of INFO OGPU V. Kucherov
Table strike movement at the enterprises of state industry of the
USSR for 1928 December city of ‐ 1929 January city of
Industry
Dissatisfa ction with the existing salary
Dissatisfa
ction with the decline in wages
Dissatisfa ction with
delayed
wages
Disconte nt with
deteriora ting working conditio ns
Othe
r
reaso ns
Tota
l
strik es
Total participa nts
Lost mandays
XII
I
XII
I
XII
I
XI
I
I
XII
I
XI
I
I
XII
I
XII
I
Metalwor
kers
2
1
‐
2
‐
1
1
3
‐
‐
3
7
59
56
4
ten
252
Textile workers
3
1
3
3
‐
2
2
2
‐
‐
8
8
1452
55
3
85
2
332
Miners
1
1
1
1
‐
‐
3
1
‐
‐
fiv e
3
759
12
0
18 65
102
Chemists
1
1
1
1
eight een
15
0
ni ne
50
Seasons
4
7
2
‐
‐
‐
‐.
five
‐
‐
6
1
2
576
29 98
70 06
220
84
Other
2
1
2
‐
‐
3
2
229
12
7
21
0
83
Total:
12
ten
6
7
‐
3
8
thirte en
‐
‐
26
3
3
3093
45 12
99 52
229 03 *
Note
* In the document, the total is incorrect, 3031 follows.
Correct: Secretary of INFO OGPU V. Kucherov