Document 107

Essay on life in Voronezh Oblast village sent by rural correspondent Grebennikov to Krest'ianskaia Gazeta, 1939

RGAE, f. 396, op. 11, d. 7, ll. 35-37ob. Original manuscript.

The Kazinka people's labor was well known not only in their own village but far beyond the boundaries of the former Voronezh Gubernya, in the Manich [Manych] and Kalmyk steppes, to which leased boats would carry them down the Don as soon as the gardens blossomed.

Driven by hope, they would travel there to the Martynovka fairs like human merchandise, where they would bunch together like sheep and wait for somebody to buy their labor, wholesale or retail.

And they were even considered lucky if they returned home, after covering hundreds of kilometers, with a wretched pittance in the bosom of their tattered shirts that had been worn away by perspiration, so that they could pay tax and rent to the landlord Sukhanov.

And in the spring they would again leave the half-orphaned village of Kazinka and their native fields, which were sliced up by gullies, and go off to harvest hay and grain for the rich men the Korol'ki [the Korol'kovs] and the Bezuglye [the Bezuglovs].

At that time Kazinka numbered [among] its villagers 320 seasonal mowers, eighteen shepherds, five horse herdsmen, seven ox drivers and three draymen.

Witnesses to all this who are still alive and who tasted the Bezuglov kandery [?] and their grain, which was black as the earth, are grandpa Koz'ma Matveevich and grandpa Timokha Shkurin.

And only Soviet rule loosened the grip of the landowners, which for many years squeezed the village of Kazinka, and only Soviet rule allowed the people of Kazinka to breathe freely in their own expansive domain. The people of Kazinka understood this and were always in the forefront in establishing the Kalinin Kolkhoz. They took more than one kolkhoz in tow and allocated more than one shock brigade to help sovkhozes. The kolkhoz itself had a Red Banner fluttering at its board office for several years with the inscription: "Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of valor and hiroism!"

But some people began to find the kolkhoz farmers' labor offensive and harmful. People who wormed their way into the leading raion organizations, now exposed as enemies of the people, the Polish spy Sandlir, the enemy of the people Shapkin, Riabinina and Zhuzhalov, who did their foul deeds and stooped to the worst act of nastiness they could think of. Making sure it was in the middle of the coldest frost, they summoned 200 carts to the raion under court order, supposedly for essential matters of national importance. Without preparing any shelter, they left people and horses out in the open air around the clock, and for two years these tricks deprived the Kalinin Kolkhoz of draft animals.

The people of Kazinka have seen quite a few such abominations, often at the height of harvest time. They have seen a combine come in because some simple part is broken and stand idle while the procedures began--daily expeditions to the raion and the MTS for parts, and carts would be sent. Brigades were assigned every day to service the combine. People would come with pitchforks and rakes and would wait for a part. By evening a cart would come back, but without the part.

On more than one occasion, grandpa Timokha Shkurin, swinging his shoulders with an eagle sketched in sweat glistening on his back, and boldly wielding a scythe, mowed down more than the idle combineY You can often hear people say things like, they all mow that way, they just write to us that we mow, but everybody can see their work.

But in May 1938 the glorious Soviet intelligence agents exposed the people who were perpetrating these outrages and they must bear their proper punishment. And only in 1938 did the people of Kazinka, after heaving a sigh of relief, freely set about their work, proving that labor is valor in heroism. Plowing was completed by 15 May. By 1 July all of the spring crops had been weeded three times, and on 6 July the kolkhoz began the harvest and finished it in seventeen days, and only in 1938 did the Kalinin people see the combine and tractor operate.

Combine operator N. F. Aleksandrov harvested 631 hectares on the Stalinets combine in seventeen days, and combine operator V. P. Drugalyov harvested 428 hectares on the Komunar combine in seven days.

After the harvest was over, when Comrade Aleksandrov was departing, he was seen off not only by the brigades that serviced the combine but also by the nearby production brigades. Everybody crowded around to shake his hand, and then they did not disperse for a long time, gazing after him until he was out of sight and listening to the comments of grandpa Timokha, who commented with emazement: "See, they told you that everybody can see the work of the combines. No, brother, if people work, and they love their work, then there will always be work." Upon learning that Aleksandrov was a student in the workers' department of the agricultural engineering institute, he added: "Now he will really be an engineer! He knows what's what."