There is such a science - source studies, about which few people know, but which plays an important role in history. After all, no statement can be based on empty space, and even such an argument as “I remember” and “I saw” is more often than not an argument. There is a well-known saying: he lies as an eyewitness! If there are people who collect old documents and then study them, there are those who look for them in the archives. And then digitizes and publishes in the appropriate publications. This is how history accumulates, and above all history in documents that tells us a lot about the past.
Not so long ago, the processing of archival data, begun in 1993, was completed, and dedicated to the reports of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD "up" that in 1918-1939. was happening in the Soviet village. The project received organizational support from the House of Human Sciences (Paris) and became a good example of Franco-Russian scientific cooperation. In total, four volumes of these documents were published, which included materials from the archives of the FSB and a number of other Russian archives. The Swedish side supported the publication of the third volume. The last volume came out thanks to the support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation. In total, 1758 documents were published with a total volume of 365 printed sheets (one printed sheet - 40,000 characters)! Our historians have never had such a rich set of sources at their disposal. Of course, they could find something locally, but not in such a volume, of course.
Published documents show that during this period both the countryside and the peasantry actively opposed the Soviet authorities, and the degree of this opposition varied depending on the periods. The authorities quickly mastered the methods of fighting the peasantry, and learned to pacify the countryside by force. But the "people" resisted, and how. For example, according to the calculations of the OGPU, in the period from January 1 to October 1, 1925 in the countryside of the USSR, gangs of 10,352 people were destroyed. Of these, 8636 people. were captured and arrested, 985 killed. Nevertheless, as of October 1, 1925, 194 gangs with a total number of 2,435 people remained in the USSR, of which 54 were in Central Asia with a number of 1,072 people. In 1930 alone, 13,754 mass peasant uprisings took place on the basis of mass dissatisfaction with the policy of the state, about which, of course, the newspaper Pravda did not report. From January 1 to October 1, 1931, 1835 mass demonstrations took place, in which 242, 7 thousand people took part. According to the reports of the OGPU published in the 3rd volume, as of November 1, 1932, 31,488 peasants were arrested in the USSR only under the “law on five ears of wheat”, of whom 6406 were convicted and 437 people were executed. In total, by January 1, 1934, 250,461 people were brought to justice for embezzlement under the law of August 7, 1932. In 1937, during the "Great Terror" in pursuance of the order of the NKVD No. 00447 of July 30, 1937, the repressions touched upon the "former kulaks", who were identified and repressed 584,899 people. The plan for them, as it turned out, was exceeded three times, and for executions even 5 times. And what does it mean repressed? This means that they ended up in camps for different periods, and some of them were simply destroyed. So it is wrong to say that in 1937 only the top of the party and economic activists and the military suffered. First of all, the measures affected more than half a million peasants!
In his novel Virgin Soil Upturned, M. Sholokhov very realistically described the process of dispossession of kulaks on the Don. But he showed isolated examples. In total, in 1930 and 1931.it became the lot of 381,026 families, or 1,803,392 people, who were taken out of their native places in 715 trains, in which there were 37,897 cars. And it is understandable that many children, old people and sick people simply died, unable to bear the hardships of the road and life in places that were not suitable for this. The pages of the collection also reflected such a phenomenon as the escapes of special settlers, as it turned out, quite numerous. From the spring of 1930 to September 1931, out of the total number of special settlers - 1 365 858, 101 650 fled. Of these, 26 734 were detained, and 74 916 people remained on the run. According to updated data, in 1933 already 179,252 people fled. They managed to catch 53,894, or 31% of the total number of those who fled. According to the SPO OGPU, from 1930 to April 1934, 592,200 people fled, of whom 148,130 were detained, or 25% of the total number of those who fled. The fugitive "kulaks", as a rule, disappeared into the cities.
And here is the question: what did they feel, what did they think, who did they become? Whom did they hate and to whom did they seek revenge? This is not in the reports, but … it was not for nothing that so many Soviet people went to serve the Nazis during the war years and surpassed their masters in their atrocities: in many ways it was revenge! The reports of the NKVD testify that people were dying of hunger in the Soviet countryside right up to the very beginning of the war. In the reviews of the letters of collective farmers for July 1939, compiled by the special department of the NKVD of the USSR, depressing pictures of hunger in the field were given: there is a poor harvest, everything has burned out, but there is no bread. And it turned out that the war was on our doorstep, and there was an acute shortage of food in the country, both in the cities and in the countryside, which fed these very cities. These facts contradict the created Stalinist myth about the achievements of the pre-war agriculture of the USSR, since the reports "upward" of the NKVD agents say the exact opposite. In Ukraine today the myth of the "Holodomor" is being spread, but in the 1930s it was everywhere, and documents from the NKVD archives confirm and refute this myth! The suicide of collective farmers and rural activists, who could not withstand pressure from the authorities, and were afraid of severe punishment for their misdeeds: "for refusing to be a foreman", for "a melted bearing in a tractor", etc. became a daily routine in the village. For example, in 1936 the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR sent a special message to Stalin about 60 cases of suicide in 49 regions of Ukraine from the beginning of the year to August 1.
In 1935-1936. in the countryside, the facts of "disruption of the Stakhanov methods of work", "opposition to the Stakhanov movement", "a negative attitude of collective farmers towards it" (harassment, ridicule, beatings) and it is clear why became widespread. Not only ordinary collective farmers, but also often the collective farm leaders treated the Stakhanovists (they did not pay "for records", etc.). Some forms of sabotage, reports of which even got into local newspapers, were truly fantastic: for example, in the Penza province, on how many hectares of peas there were aphids! Here it is necessary for the experts to see if this is sabotage ?!
Even young people by no means all sought to take advantage of the career opportunities provided by the Stalinist regime through the Komsomol, vocational training, military service and work on collective farms and village councils. Some of the youth took a critical position in relation to the authorities, which was regarded as "anti-Soviet manifestations." The OGPU and UGB of the NKVD liquidated "counter-revolutionary youth groups" in rural schools and rural areas, whose members even "painted a swastika", distributed leaflets "for Hitler," declared that "every fascist must harm the collective farm", and so on. So the swastika, which we sometimes see with surprise on the walls of our houses, in the 30s was familiar even to the inhabitants of the village. How much the Chekists themselves did not invent this, it is difficult to say. But if they made it up, then it's even worse …
The reaction of the majority of the peasants to the Stalinist constitution was also skeptical. They saw her duplicity: "It's all one lie." For obvious reasons, the published documents of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD did not reflect the cultural life of the Soviet village. But since the mid-1930s, the NKVD authorities have uncovered numerous shortcomings in the work of rural clubs, reading rooms, red corners, many of which were dirty, busy with bread dumping, a smithy, were not heated, etc. and signaled this "up". That is, the main lot of the peasants should have been hard work for the good of the country, which they did not see and did not understand.
Lack of information and distrust of Soviet newspapers gave rise to the wildest rumors that were recorded by the NKVD. For example, rumors about the population census, allegedly coming from "churchmen and sectarians": "At night they will go home and ask questions:" Who is for Christ and who is for Stalin? " Anyone who writes down that he is for Christ will be shot after the census by the communists "," St. Bartholomew's Night will be held on January 6, the entire population will be massacred. " The regional directorates of the NKVD of the USSR recognized the reaction of a part of the rural population to the Soviet-German non-aggression pact and the entry of the Red Army into the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which was disappointing for the authorities: USSR "," Perhaps the rifles will have to be turned inward. " In the Penza province, the peasants asked the lecturers of the OK VKPB the following "provocative" questions: "The government says that we are fighting for peace, but we ignited the war ourselves?""
So those who want to get acquainted with the life of the Soviet village, as they say, from the inside, now have access to a much larger number of documents than before, moreover, many of them were previously secret. Moreover, now these same documents in originals can be requested in the FSB archive, since each volume contains corresponding links to them.
P. S. Literally just now, there was a message on TV about the next declassified documents reporting on the atrocities of Nazi accomplices during the war. But who prevented them from declassifying earlier? Or could they include the parents of those who have succeeded in our day? Their fathers served their time, saved their lives, then were silent more, and the children were taught this way: go, they say, to the Komsomol, to the party, and then we'll see!
