Document 100

Memorandum from NK RKI to Stalin on complaints of independent farmers in Mordovian Autonomous Oblast, 1933

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 661, ll. 3-5. Typewritten original.

The commission found unlawful activities of the same kind in other village soviets as well: Kochkurovsky, Tazinsky, Parakinsky, Yengalychevsky and others. Furthermore, the violations of the resolution of the TsK of the VKP(b) and the SNK occurred on a mass scale. The commission concluded that "at certain village soviets these irregularities reached monstrous dimensions, and the fulfillment of grain deliveries was transformed into outright prodrazvyorstka [requisitioning of farm produce according to quotas]." The commission determined that grain was confiscated solely from compliant grain deliverers, "from poor and middle-level peasants' farms."

Especially outrageous are the abominations perpetrated at the Parakinsky Village Soviet, where houses, horses, potatoes and so forth were confiscated on a mass scale. Here, as at other village soviets, the fulfillment of grain deliveries by a segment of the independent peasants lagged far behind schedule. But searches of their premises turned up no grain. Then Comrade Kriukov, the raion representative, summoned the chairmen of eleven kolkhozes and required them, "by way of kolkhoz trade," to deliver 171 centners of grain for the independent peasants at a price of sixty to ninety rubles a centner. This money was recovered from the independent peasants by selling their property, and specifically potatoes, although the delivery plan for potatoes had not yet been fulfilled. Thus, by Kriukov's directive thirty five centners were collected from the Kaganovich Kolkhoz, thirty five centners from the Veitse Kolkhoz, forty centners from the Red Pine Kolkhoz and so forth--long before kolkhoz trade was permitted. The director of the Parakinsky MTS knew about this, but failed to react to it in any way.

At the Tazinsky Village Soviet, grain was taken from every compliant grain deliverer. In fact, no receipts were issued for the grain collected, no records were kept, and there were possible abuses.

At the Kochkurovsky Village Soviet, where the secretary of the Komsomol Raikom was the representative of the Raikom, searches were conducted on the premises of all compliant deliverers and even kolkhoz farmers. The team would come to the house, calculate the amount of grain received and used, determine a dietary norm of three to five poods per person, and if a surplus remained, they would seize it. In this manner twenty six kg were confiscated, for example, from M. Z. Naumkin, sixty seven kg from A. A. Ageev, eleven centners from A. F. Samatkin, who has nine members in the household and, like the others, had honestly fulfilled his obligations to the state, and so forth.

Grain was confiscated in this way from eighty one farms. The teams made the rounds of the homes while drunk with bottles of vodka in their pockets. They flung raw eggs at the residents.

At the Yengalychevsky Village Soviet (the party-cell secretary Khripunov is a kulak's son who has already received a severe reprimand with a warning for distorting the class line), a concealed area of 114 hectares was uncovered. This area was parceled out among the farms in proportion to their respective numbers of tenants. The cell, under the leadership of Comrade Chekashkin, the Raikom representative, launched a mass seizure of all grain without the approval of the RIK or the issuance of supplementary obligations by the village soviet.