February 10, 1932
Good day honorable secretary of the AUCP(b), Comrade Stalin!
I am writing you this letter from a remote, out-of-the-way village in Ukraine. On a military map you will find the village called Polonyste on the river Yatran in the Uman region of Baban raion. Listen to this, Comrade Stalin! The village of 317 homesteads is collectivized a full one hundred percent. Do you think we have Soviet rule here?
No, it’s not Soviet, but completely bourgeois. Remember serfdom, six days of work for the master, and the seventh was а Sunday, when you didn’t work because it was a holiday? In the village cooperative, we work every day. There is nothing around the homes but empty buildings, yet we still have to pay taxes from our households for work done on the collective farm, and turn over our own savings; if you sign for a loan of 40 karbovantsi at the collective farm then [you must] pay it back from your homestead. It has been three years since everything has been collectivized by the kolhosp, yet we have to turn in grain procurements for land that we contributed to the kolhosp. Don’t go to the kolhosp for bread, but yourself provide 45 poods from three-tenths of a field, pay 28 karbovantsi for a share in the cooperative and pay a construction advance of 15 karbovantsi from your home; all that is left from three years of food are only kopeks of money — such is life.
Our village has fulfilled the [grain procurement] plan by 65 percent. The kolhosp shipped out the last funt of every sort of grain. There is nothing for the horses, only chopped wheat sprinkled with molasses; 56 horses have died already. Everyday three, four, six horses die of starvation; there is not a kernel left. There were 500 pigs, 184 of which have already died, [the remainder] eat sugar beet residue. There are only 60 cows, of which 46 will go for meat, leaving 14 for the entire village for all of 1932. That’s livestock breeding for you. Ours is a beet-growing and cattle-farming region and there are predictions that all the livestock will die in two months. People are beginning to die of famine, to swell and children ask for “bread, bread.” Do no think, Dear Leader, that people have refused to work… or [that there was] a bad harvest that nobody is considering. Last year’s harvest was average and the population barely survived because the plan was 38,000 poods. This year it’s 57,000 poods…
A brigade of 86 persons has spent three months doing nothing [but] check under every house, day after day. Since the campaign began, every house has been searched 60 times. They took the last funt of vegetables from the kolhosp, [leaving] collective farmers with two poods of potatoes per person; the remaining funts went for procurement. There is no provision for spring sowing, not a funt of seed, not a grain crop left: no potatoes, no beans, no legumes, no lentils, no peas, no buckwheat, no cattle grass, no barley, no oats, no soybeans — everything to the last funt. They have taken our beets and pickled cabbage and are taking away our chickens. Villagers say the secret slaughter of rabbits is taking place because there is nothing to eat. Such is the state of affairs, Comrade Stalin. […]
Komsomolets, Branch secretary,
member of RKM bureau
Pastushenko
June 10, 1932
[...] In two trips (with a small break) I spent 15 days in the hardest-hit raions and villages of Kyiv and Vinnytsia oblasts. I became familiar with the state of affairs in 13 raions of Kyiv oblast (visited four villages) and four raions of Vinnytsia oblast (visited eight villages). I should say that I was unable to collect and check statistics for every raion and village to the same extent. Nevertheless, the main facts in all these raions and villages are similar enough that some general conclusions can be made. What, in fact, has happened to those raions that emerged extraordinarily weakened in the spring (some villages destroyed, in the direct sense)?
The failed harvest of legumes and spring crops in those raions was most likely not considered and the crop shortage was compensated by industrial crops earmarked for state procurement. Along with the general weakness of the state grain procurement plan, caused primarily by lower harvests across Ukraine and colossal losses during harvesting (the result of organizationally- and economically-weak collective farms and utterly inadequate control by the raions and center), a system of requisitioning of all grain, including seed reserves, from private farmers was introduced and everything of value was requisitioned from collective farms. Even if collective farms met the targets set by the procurement plan targets, they were issued an additional second and often third [grain quota target]. In many cases, grain issued to collective farmers as advance payment for work was confiscated by [collectivization] brigades for state grain procurement. As a result, the majority of collective farms in those raions were left without grain, without animal feed concentrate for livestock, without food for the disabled, for teachers, etc. […]
The collective farmers with fewest workdays suffered the most, although initially it seemed only private farmers were deprived of grain. In March and April, there were tens and hundreds of malnourished, starving and swollen people dying from famine in every village; children abandoned by their parents and orphans appeared. Raions and oblasts provided food relief from internal reserves, but growing despair and the psychology of famine resulted in more appeals for help. Under these circumstances the collective farms, Soviet state farms and raions should have launched a broad network of public kitchens to deal with the acute shortage of food products in general, and grain in particular.
Cases of malnutrition and starvation were noted in December and January, both among private farmers (particularly whose farms and belongings were sold for failing to meet grain targets) and among collective farmers, especially those with large families. […]
A few words about the excesses of those in charge of economic campaigns and the violations of revolutionary lawfulness that took place in these raions, and, unquestionably, impacted their economic conditions. They were primarily the following:
1) Orders for sowing were received by the raions that contravened crop rotation [practices]; the raions, in turn, assigned absurd tasks to the kolhosps, ignoring the views and experience of collective farmers and [the rules of] agronomy. They were forced to sow winter crops on stubble-fields, which predictably reduced crop capacity, and so on. As a result in Baban raion, for example, with a capacity of 150 to 200 poods of wheat per hectare, they collected only 60 to 70.
2) Raions were overloaded with work, which disrupted fall sowing and winter plowing. The deep tilling of land for sugar beets led to a drop in crop yields and loss of interest among collective farms. Very few collective farms in these raions had fully prepared their fields for beets by the fall; as a result, [only] 30 to 50 percent was prepared.
3) In the battle for bread, the right to sell the property of malicious non-deliverers of grain (the law of 1929) was abused. Private farmers’ harvests were gathered and threshed on so-called “red threshing floors” with threshed grain delivered to grain collectors. This was followed up by rigid “home” targets which were left unfulfilled and resulted in the forced sale of all property, including buildings, domestic goods and chattel, footwear, clothing, etc. In some villages, 20 percent or more of farms have been sold. Add to this the malicious humiliation of private farmers, the majority of who would have become collective farmers, and that of expelled collective farmers, then it becomes clear why independent farmers have no working animals, land allotments or livestock. Those whose livestock was not sold by way of repressions sold or butchered [their livestock] themselves. Leaderless brigades were on the rampage. Those guilty of excesses were tried, but you cannot try all their deeds with one trial.
In addition to grain procurements, the same methods were applied to potato and, especially, meat procurements. A question arises: Is it not time to abolish the system of sales in fully-collectivized raions (since the tools and means of production have been sold off)?
After such actions, it’s clear why so few village council heads and leading [Party] activists from the previous campaigns are left in local areas. Some were tried and removed, while others ran off on their own. Few raion leaders have survived. The new people have lost their heads under the colossal pressure from a public demanding food and the return of illegally-sold property and improperly-collectivized livestock…
[…] The proper functioning of agriculture has been impaired in the Ukrainian SSR over such a large area that special corrections are required to state grain and meat procurement targets and other agricultural goals; in this regard it will be necessary to address the Central Committee and the Council of Peoples’ Commissars separately.
V. Chubar
21 June 1932
Two addresses: Kharkiv, CC CP(B)U, [Stanislav] Kosior
Copy: CPC, [Vlas] Chubar
In accordance with the resolution of the CPC and CC of 20 and 21 June, the CPC USSR and the CC AUCP(B) propose that you ensure at all costs:
First. The delivery, in fulfillment of the annual grain requisition, by collective farms and individual peasant homesteads according to Ukraine’s allocated obligations: 14,500,000 poods in July; 72,400,000 poods in August; 71,200,000 poods in September....
Second…. No manner of evasion should be allowed under any circumstances for collective farms and individual peasant homesteads with regard to grain procurement or for grain delivery by state farms, or for the delivery schedules established for your region according to the resolutions of 20 and 21 June.
Molotov, Stalin
November 18, 1932
III. On grain procurements from collective farms
On collective farm reserves
In accordance with the resolution of the CC AUCP (b) stating that “the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan is the highest priority mission for collective farms, Soviet farms, MTS [machine and tractor stations] and private farmers,” the Central Committee of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine expressly points out to all Party organizations in Ukraine that the full performance of grain procurement plans is the principal duty of all collective farms and MTS before the Party and the working class, the highest priority task to which of all other collective farm tasks are subordinate, including the formation of various collective farm reserves: seed grain, fodder, food supplies and others.
In accordance with the above, the CP(b)U CC informs Party organizations that:
1. The mission of Party organizations is the full performance of the grain procurement plans by January 1 and formation of seed reserves by January 15.
2. A ban shall be immediately instituted on any and all natural reserves stored in collective farms that are failing to perform grain procurement plan; these reserves shall be inspected [to determine] their real size, places of storage, individuals responsible for their safekeeping; this matter shall be placed under the direct control of raion executive and Party committees.
3. Raion executive committees shall be authorized to transfer all reserves stored by collective farms that are failing to perform grain procurement plans to the grain procurement reserves.
4. Where sowing seed reserves are concerned, paragraph 3 shall only be implemented upon prior consent of oblast executive committees for each separate collective farm.The CC CP(b)U considers following these instructions on natural reserves to be exceptionally important and places political responsibility for their correct implementation upon oblast Party committees, foremost upon the first secretaries and the chairmen of executive committees.
On in-kind fines and combating abuses in collective farms
1. Upon receipt of this decree, the distribution of any in-kind natural [grain] advances to all collective farms failing to perform grain procurement plans shall be discontinued.
2. The return of illegally-distributed grain shall be immediately organized in those collective farms that are failing to perform grain procurement plans and have distributed more than the established quotas designated for public consumption and are engaged in additional distribution of different types of lower grade grains, byproducts, etc.; this grain shall be handed over for the fulfillment of grain procurement plans.
The chairmen of these collective farms (Communists and non-Party members) shall be held responsible for the misappropriation of collective farm grain; incorrectly-distributed grain shall be first seized from the board members and administrative staff of these collective farms (accountants, store-keepers, field workers, etc.).
3. The seizure of grain stolen from collective and Soviet farms during crop harvesting, milling, transportation, storage, etc., by collective and private farmers, especially thieves and loafers without any workdays, and grain reserves, shall be organized immediately in all raions.
In implementing this measure, it is necessary to secure the support of the best collective farmers for working in the fields, milling and other collective farm jobs, without resorting to mass searches of collective and private farmers.
4. In those collective farms failing to perform grain procurement plans, all the grain harvested by collective farmers from their home garden plots shall be counted as their in-kind payment for workdays; any excess grain shall be collected towards grain procurements.
5. Fines shall be levied on those collective farms that permitted the stealing of grain and are maliciously undermining grain procurement plans in the form of additional meat procurement targets: they will supply a 15-month quota of meat from collectivized and privately-owned livestock.
Fines shall be imposed by raion executive committees upon prior consent of oblast executive committees for each separate case. Furthermore, raion executive committees shall establish deadlines and sizes of fines for each collective farm (within the limits of the 15-month meat quota) according to the conditions in each collective farm.The collection of fines shall not release collective farms from their duties to fully perform grain procurement plans. If a collective farm takes active measures to fully meet its grain procurement targets by a set date, then a fine may be cancelled upon prior consent of the oblast executive committee. [...]
On measures to combat kulak influence in collective farms and village party organizations
For the purposes of overcoming kulak resistance and fully performing grain procurement plans, the CC CP(b)U resolves the following:
1. Collective farms that are maliciously sabotaging state grain procurement plans shall be blacklisted.
The following measures shall be imposed upon blacklisted collective farms:
а) Immediate suspension of delivery of goods, cooperative and state trade activities in these villages and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores;
b) Full prohibition of kolhosp trading activities between collective farms, collective and private farmers.
c) Suspension of all crediting activities and a demand for pre-term collection of credits and other financial obligations;
d) Investigation and purging of collective farms in these villages, followed by the removal of counterrevolutionary elements and the organizers of grain-collection disruptions;
e) Oblast executive committees shall blacklist and warn collective farms about being blacklisted by issuing appropriate resolutions.
Oblast executive committees shall immediately report the collective farms being blacklisted to the CC.
IV. On grain procurements from private farmers
1. Fines shall be levied on those private farmers who are maliciously undermining grain procurement plans (be they contractual or voluntary obligations) in the form of additional meat procurement target to supply a 15-month quota of meat.
These fines shall be imposed by village executive committees upon prior consent of raion committees in each separate instance. Furthermore, village councils shall establish the deadlines and size of fines for each household within the limits of 15-month meat and one-year potato quotas, depending on the conditions in each farm.
The payment of fines shall not release the farms from their duty to fully perform the grain procurement plan.
If private farmers fully perform grain delivery plans by established deadlines, then the fines may be cancelled by decision of raion executive committees.
In certain raions (subject to approval by oblast executive committee resolutions) fines may be levied in the amount of a one-year potato quota.
Fines may be doubled in extraordinary circumstances, subject to approval by special resolutions of oblast executive committees.
2. The CC warns all local Party organizations and workers against substituting consolidated work in the battle for grain with the simple administration and wide-scale levying of fines. The purpose of in-kind fines is to ensure full performance of grain procurement plans.
3. To immediately collect seed grain and foodstuff loans given to private farmers by collective farms in their raions without recourse for appeal; in cases where loans issued to private farmers were repaid by collective farms (in Vinnytsia oblast, for example), the loans shall be collected from the private farmers and credited to the collective farms’ grain procurement targets.
4. Organize brigades consisting of collective farm activists (from a given village or those in the area) from collective farms that have fully performed their grain procurement plans, or are on the verge of doing so, to assist in the full performance of grain procurement plans by the private farming sector.
Organize, by December 1, at least 1,100 of these collective farmer brigades throughout Ukraine, according to the following oblasts and numbers:
Vinnytsia -200 Kyiv -300
Chernihiv -100 Kharkiv -350
Odesa - 50 Dnipropetrovsk - 50
Donbas - 50
5. Private farmers who have conscientiously performed their grain procurement duties, especially those who have done so ahead of schedule, shall be recognized by resolutions of village executive committees, assistance commissions, etc., and shall be included in the grain procurement brigades, assistance commissions and so forth.
6. Kulaks who have failed to deliver grain shall be subject to repressions provided by Article 58 of the Criminal Code, either through judicial or administrative proceedings. [...]
To: Secretaries of Party raion and oblast committees, persons deputized by CP(b)UDecember 24, 1932
In accordance with the cancellation of the CC CP(b)U resolution from November 18 concerning kolhosp inventories, we propose:
1. All collective farms that failed to perform grain procurement plans have five days to ship, without exception, all kolhosp reserves, including sowing seeds, to fulfill grain procurement quotas.
2. Everyone resisting this measure, including communists, shall be arrested and tried.
3. Warn all collective farm heads that if any hidden reserves, stores and the like are found after the set date, then the chairman, and other guilty parties will be brought before the courts and severely punished.
4. Order all raion Party council secretaries, chairmen of raion executive committees and persons authorized by oblast committees to deliver this resolution for signing by the heads of collective farms in 24 hours’ time.
Kosior
Stroganov
Alekseiev
December 29, 1932Raion workers have not yet understood that the #1 priority for grain procurement in those collective farms that have failed to perform their duty before the state is the submission of all available seed, including so-called sowing reserves, towards the grain procurement plan.Accordingly, the CC AUCP(b) has canceled the CC CP(b)U’s decision from November 18 on non-shipment of seed reserves that had weakened our positions in the battle for grain.The CC CP(b)U orders those collective farms that have not fulfilled the grain procurement plan to immediately hand over all available reserves, including so-called sowing seed, in the course of five to six days, for the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan.Towards this end, the CC orders the immediate mobilization of all transport vehicles, working animals, automobiles and tractors. In one day’s time, orders should be issued for the daily provision of the necessary number of horses, including for private farmers.Any delays in the sending out of reserves will be considered by the CC to be sabotage of grain procurement by raion leaders and will be met with commensurate measures.Secretary CC CP(b)U S. Kosior
1 January 1933
The CC CP(B)U and CPC UkrSSR shall widely inform village councils, collective farms, collective farmers, and toiling private farmers that....
b) Those collective farms, collective farmers, and private farmers who stubbornly inisst on misappropriating and concealing grain will be subject to the strictest punitive measures provided by the USSR Central Executive Committee resolution of 7 August 1932 “On the safekeeping of property of state enterprises, collective farms, and cooperatives and strengthening public (socialist) property.”
Secretary, CC AUCP(B), J. Stalin
January 4, 1933
Horodyshche village is the largest in Voroshylov raion with more than 1,000 farms, mostly staroveri [old believers] for whom farming has always been a supplementary source of income as the overwhelming majority of homesteads have been traditionally engaged in trade. This village was found to host the largest kulak community.
Thus, the political campaign measures in Horodyshche were implemented with great difficulty and encountered active resistance from most of the population. In addition to the malicious sabotage of Soviet government efforts, groups of bandits, horse thieves, and the like used to live and hide in this village during the civil war.
Over the years, the Horodyshche village has never fulfilled grain procurement plans.
The persistent neglect of activities conducted in the village by Party and Soviet authorities, cover-ups and familial relationships with dekulakized village leaders are well-preserved to this day, despite the three-year existence of the collective farm that includes most of the people in the village.
In 1931, the grain procurement plan was 10,000 centners [100 kilograms] for a grain crop sowing area of 4,647 hectares; it was 64 percent performed, whereas the plan for the [entire] raion was performed 105 percent.
The 1932 plan of 6.5 thousand centners was 23.9 percent performed as of January 2.
In the two months since the collective farm has been blacklisted (November and December), 373 centners, or 5.6 percent of the annual plan, were delivered to the state, including 83 centners of re-threshed grain, 63 centners of what was obtained illegally by farmers and 6 centners of stolen [grain]. [. . .]
A thorough investigation revealed that the trade ban did not produce the desired effect, because the population, acting through family members and relatives who work in industry, continued consuming goods from the workers’ cooperative, factory and village outlets.
Agricultural products are being secretly carried away for sale by, mostly to Debaltsevo station. Horodyshche farmers have 365 cows, 62 heifers, 56 horses, 10 pairs of oxen (in addition to small livestock), 100 hectares of home garden plots, 28 hectares of orchards that provide large incomes for these farms through the sale of agricultural products at the stations that are located relatively close by.
The following measures were used:
1. In addition to the closing of village stores and Donbastorh [Donbas trade network], strict and closed-list distribution of goods was introduced to the coal miners’ and collective farm workers’ cooperatives. One thousand and twenty family members of collective and private farmers engaged in industrial production were taken off the supply list.
2. Credits in the amount of 23,547 rubles were collected ahead of their scheduled repayment.
3. Three MTS [machine tractor station] tractors were seized from the collective farm.
4. An investigation into collective farm personnel was conducted resulting in the purging of 58 persons (3 kulaks, 22 kulak relatives, 32 thieves, slackers, speculators and kulak supporters). This group, which sought to demoralize the collective farm and organized resistance, was expelled at a meeting of collective farm worker teams with the support of the collective farm majority.
5. Forty-three kulak families that had fled their previous place of residence in Horodyshche were returned to the kulak settlement in the raion.
6. The leadership of the collective farm was put on trial. The investigation uncovered serious abuses. The case is now before the oblast court, where it was submitted on December 23. No response has thus far been received.
7. The collective farm’s sowing seed reserves of 356 centners were requisitioned for the grain procurement campaign.
All these measures were implemented in combination with organized work with the public and the participation of the best the collective farm activists in the grain procurement campaign.
A city Party committee team of 10 leading raion activists is working in the collective farm.
In order to deliver a decisive blow to chronic sabotage by kulaks in Horodyshche, we ask the Party oblast committee to authorize the following additional repressive measures for the Horodyshche village collective farm:
1. Levy 15-month meat quota fines upon collective and private farmers.
2. Assign the best plots of the spare 1,300 hectares of land available to the collective farm to coal-mine food producers, as repressions.
3. Dismiss at least 150 Horodyshche village residents from [industrial] operations for taking active part in the sabotage and derailment of the grain procurement campaign under the guise of industrial laborers after discussing the list of those to be dismissed with collective farm organizations and members.
4. Issue a warning to the collective farm and residents of Horodyshche: If the sabotage of grain procurement and the hiding of stolen grain continue, city organizations will ask the government to resettle saboteurs to the northern oblasts and bring in conscientious collective farmers from city suburbs to take their place; the houses of collective farmers in villages situated near industrial sites will be made available to industrial laborers in need of accommodations.
5. Request the speedy dispatch of oblast court personnel in the case of the Horodyshche collective farm leadership.
Secretary, CP(b)U Voroshylov city committee, Kholokholenko
Commissioner of the oblast committee, Lyrev
February 26, 1933
To the City Council of Dnipropetrovsk oblast
from Citizen Derevinskaya, Hanna,
Krasnopillya
STATEMENT
Please consider my statement on the unruly work of brigades dispatched by the village council and the representative of the Petrovsky factory.
On February 10, a grain procurement brigade came to me and asked that I voluntarily give what beans I could. From what I had left to feed the family I gave three kilograms but they took it all (40 kilograms).
On February 23, another brigade made up of the same group came and requested potatoes which I received for labor in workers’ gardens on days off for a family of four which works at the Petrovsky factory; the potatoes received from the cooperative were only for feeding our families. Despite the fact that the potatoes were issued by the state and equally among the other workers who worked in the gardens, including the head of the Petrovsky factory brigade, they did not realize that they’re undermining spring sowing in the workers’ gardens. Acting on their own, they took 125 kilograms of potatoes and 38 kilograms of beets from the cellar. I have fulfilled the entire grain procurement farming quota. I ask your assistance in returning the confiscated food issued by the cooperative.
Appellant Derevinskaya 26.II.1933
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