Kilde: Rapport om bøndernes modstand mod kollektiviseringen

To Comrade Moskvin

Top secret

INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE ALL-UNION COMMUNIST PARTY (OF BOLSHEVIKS) (TSK VKP (b)

POLITICAL REPORT No. 1

MASS UPRISINGS AMONG KULAKS IN THE COUNTRSIDE

Recently, in connection with the intensified offensive against the kulaks on two fronts – the grain requisition program and the restructuring of rural society – kulak anti-Soviet activities have increased significantly. More to the point, the kulaks no longer confine themselves to acts of individual sabotage but are beginning to adopt more sophisticated, openly counterrevolutionary tactics in the form of mass demonstrations, frequently connecting these demonstrations against the ongoing campaign to close churches, mosques, Islamic religious schools, and to remove veils, etc. As a result, this network of underground kulak groups, which has already made its presence felt in the Soviet election campaign, today has surfaced with impudent mass demonstrations with corresponding slogans and demands. These actions vary: in grain-procurement areas, they are against surrendering grain; in consuming areas, they focus on the difficulties of obtaining foodstuffs; in areas where campaigns are under way to close churches, they are in support of faith, religion, the old way of life; and almost everywhere, they are against collectivisation, against new forms of land distribution, against the social restructuring of the countryside.In Biisk okrug alone, when the public-pressure approach was being applied in the grain-requisition campaign, there were 43 mass actions, some with as many as 7,000 participants. Of these, 16 were very large and serious. (Report from the okrug committee, May 23)

A typical uprising took place in the village of Mikhailovskii on April 11 and 12, where “ a mob under the control of confirmed counterrevolutionary elements ruled the village for two days. 150 armed men were required to bring the mob to heel.” (quoted from a letter dated April 15 from the representative of the grain procurement center)

The incident can be summarized as follows. The kulaks took advantage of a mistake committed by the authorities when the latter sealed the barns of 28 farms (farms belonging to 10 kulaks, 10 wealthy peasants, and 8 middle peasants). The kulaks managed to sway the most backward segment of the population, namely the women, and through them the men, with an openly counterrevolutionary platform and managed to disrupt the grain procurement drive. They beat up the chairman of the surplus confiscation commission, shut down auctions of kulak property, seized property which had already been sold at auction, and used the threat of mob violence to compel the authorities to release prisoners under arrest, unseal the barns, and provide guarantees of no reprisals for the uprising.

A meeting called by the kulaks (attended by 900 persons, including 700 women) adopted the following platform:

1. The return of all property, livestock, and buildings sold at auction along with confiscated grain.
2. Lifting the boycott.
3. An inventory of all confiscated seed grain end edible grain and distribution of these supplies to the needy (?!)
4. Abolition of property auctions.
5. Election of a commission to investigate the activities of the surplus confiscation commission.
6. A halt to the grain procurement drive and cancellation of the most recent measures.
7. The return of all mills to the millers.
8. Equal shares for all cooperative members.
9. Restoration of voting rights to all voters.
10. Abolition of forced communization of the peasants. Disbandment of the existing communes.

In another village in the same Mikhailovskii raion, Verkhniaia Sliudianka, on April 12 an inventory of the property of peasants caught with surplus grain led a mob of 200 individuals (primarily women) under the leadership of the kulak Rubanovich to surround the village Soviet building, lock the 24 members of the village Soviet inside, and demand a halt to grain requisition. And if the Soviet refused, the mob threatened to burn down the building. The timely arrival of a police squad kept the mob from carrying out their threat. As soon as the police arrived, the mob began to disperse. While pursuing the kulak Rubanovich, one policeman’s horse got stuck in the mud, and a kulak tried to kill a policeman with a knife, but was prevented from doing so by another policeman, who shot and wounded the kulak with his revolver. Ten persons were arrested in connection with the case. (Report of Biisk okrug committee)

In the village of Abash in Bashelak raion of Biisk okrug, a group of women (as many as a hundred) appeared at the village Soviet building shouting, yelling and demanding to halt to grain procurement “because if we don’t have any grain, we won’t have anything to eat.” They pulled the chairman of the village Soviet – a day labourer – out of the village Soviet building and tried to beat him up. At that point the representative of the Biisk okrug committee rode up. The mob attacked him and tried to pull him out off his cart. After a long talk with the representative, the mob calmed down and dispersed, and two of the women admitted that some local Cossack kulaks had incited them. (Report of the Siberian Krai Committee, April 12)

The Barnaul Okrug Committee reports that “in certain villages in Upper Irtysh raion mobs consisting primarily of women have staged demonstrations against the grain procurement drive.” The Sungai village Soviet writes that “the measures adopted the village Soviet to stop the demonstrations haven’t worked. The mob continues to demonstrate the village day and night and has organized rallies against the grain procurement drive. Drivers hauling grain to the cooperative have been turned around with the warning: “If you hall off this grain, then you won’t see any of your own grain.” The men have begun joining the mob of women. The demonstrators devised a plan to steal all the grain from the consumers’ cooperative. The mob has freed individuals from custody, and any time the members of the village Soviet go outside they are threatened. The demonstrators have begun posting guards around seized property and putting their own locks on the buildings. 

The following incident occurred in the same village. Communards from the Zuboskal Commune had received edible grain and seed grain from the Sungai Cooperative and had loaded it into wagons, when a mob of 50 women appeared, seized the grain, put it back in a barn, and then locked the barn with their own lock. (Report from Barnaul Okrug Committee, April 26)

Siberia has been the scene of most of the mass uprisings and demonstrations organized by the kulaks in conjunction with the grain procurement drive. Nevertheless, isolated incidents have occurred in other regions.

In the Urals, in Uisk raion (Troitskoe), in the community og Kumliak, kulaks organized a public uprising (demonstration) against the grain requisitions on March 11. A mob began travelling around the farms and putting grain back in the barns which the kulaks had prepared to turn over to the collectors.

In the Khoper okrug (Lower Volga), in the village of Bezymiannyi, a mob of 100 kulaks resisted attempts to seize the property of four individuals caught with surplus grain, and the police arrested three persons. (Report from the krai committee of April 20) [break in the text]

… the lack of systematic work with the active poor and middle peasants, the failure to study these activists and bring them closer to the party cells, and the lack of any communication between party members and nonmembers.

In a letter Comrade Vol, the authorized representative of the People’s Commisariat of trade, provides the following assessment of the condition of the party organization IN THE Siberian countryside (based on his observations of four okrugs).

“The extraordinary inertia of our organizations, the political illiteracy of a large member of personnel, their reliance on “War Comminism” tactics against the peasantry, and their lack of public respect have greatly obstructed and blunted the impact of most efforts.” (He goes on to describe a large number of cases).

In his letter Comrade Khataevich arrives at the following conclusions:

“An investigation of the role of local party and Soviet organizations in all the aforementioned incidents which provoked mass uprisings has revealed that, in most cases, party and Soviet organizations were guilty of tactlessness, egregious blunders, and a lack of skill and proficiency in their preparations for vital efforts. This made the anti-Soviet activities of the kulaks and the clergy much easier. The latter were able to respond quickly, flexibly, and skilfully to the blundering, tactlessness, and ineptitude of our local party and Soviet organizations. The kulaks were particularly successful in taking advantage of incidents where local party and Soviet organizations closed churches and so forth by administrative fiat, without careful preparations at the lowest levels and without explaining, persuading, and gaining the support of most of the poor and middle peasants.”

2. Women have been extremely active in all the kulak uprisings, which is too alarming a situation not to draw attention to itself.

The extraordinary activity of women in the Soviet reelection campaigns (their participation in the reelection campaigns grew from 29.8% in 1927 to 46.9% in 1929; 19.1% of the members elected to the village Soviets in 1929 were women, as opposed to 11.8% in 1927) can be described as a very positive development. And if women are now playing a no less negative role in all of the counterrevolutionary kulak uprisings, the only conclusion we can draw from this is that local party and Soviet organizations have rested on their laurels, have let the leadership of rural women slip out of their hands, have been unable to take advantage of their energy and guide it in the proper – Soviet – direction, and have conceded leadership and influence over these women to anti-Soviet kulak elements.

3. A new and noteworthy feature of the current phase of the class struggle in the village is the fact that in a number of places the kulaks have been able to expand by drawing the middle classes of the villages into their anti-Soviet uprisings. The widespread support for anti-Soviet uprisings in certain areas is a direct consequence of deficiencies in our work with the poor peasants and thus with the middle peasants, which should be blamed entirely on the party’s disorganization en the countryside and the extreme shortage of rural party cells (there are only 23,000 rural party cells and probationary groups for the 75,000 village Soviets in the Soviet Union).

As the most recent reports indicate, the kulak counteroffensive is steadily growing in intensity and fierceness (as it must inevitably do in response to the sustained and systematic socialist offensive). This means that we must do everything we can to keep the kulak as isolated as possible in this merciless struggle. 

4. This leads us to the problem of strengthening our rural cadres, which is now becoming more urgent than ever for the party. The kulaks’ seizure of certain villages, the open mass uprisings against the party and Soviet power, the brazen and arrogant sabotage of our activities in a number of cases, and the excesses, pervasions, and errors which have occurred and continue to occur may be attributed, for the most part, not to the unwillingness, but to the inability of rural cells to assume leadership of the villages in a fierce class struggle. And hence cities and industrial centers must play a much greater role than they have to this point in supplying and reassigning personnel capable of organizing the poor and middle peasants and, in many cases, reorganizing party cells from the bottom up.

Recently, some party committees have begun taking concrete action in this regard. For example, as early as December of last year, the Lower Volga Krai Committee resolved to “reinforce the raion and village party organizations with skilled personnel from the krai and okrug levels” and assigned 28 comrades each from the krai and okrug organizations to work in the countryside, and on February 14 decided to transfer an additional 315 party members from the krai and okrug organizations for field work in the cities and countryside and promote lowerranking individuals to take their places.

The Kharkov Okrug Committee has mobilized 253 comrades, 178 of whom will be permanently reassigned and 75 of whom will receive temporary assignments (for five months). 151 individuals will be assigned to grass-roots electioneering efforts (conducted by cooperative shareholder meetings), while the others will be assigned to Soviet, agricultural, administrative, and party positions. In the near future the Kharkov Okrug Committee plans to transfer an additional 150 comrades and thus have one party employee assigned to each village Soviet (there are a total of 400 in the okrug).

There is no doubt that in this effort we will not only have to resort to mobilization, but we will also have to reduce our central and the oblast’ and okrug staffs in order to send additional personnel to the countryside. This will be especially important for regions without any large industrial plants (such as the Central Black Earth Region, Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Middle and Lower Volga).

5. On this basis the Information Department of the TSK VKP(b) deems it proper to put the issue of reinforcing rural party organizations on the agenda of the Organizational Bureau after first conducting a careful study of local experience by dispatching 3 to 4 senior instructors from the TSK to areas where this effort has already made substantial progress (such as the North Caucasus, Kharkov, and the Volga) so that a specially appointed commission can review the matter for one month to six weeks.

Head of the Information Department
of the TSK VKP(b)
(Bogomolov)   Signed (Bogomolov)

Copies distributed to:

Secretaries of the Central Committee:
Comrade Kaganovich
Comrade Molotov
Comrade Stalin
and
Comrade Moskvin