Document 127

Autobiographical letter from livestock and dairy sovkhoz worker, K. F. Maksimovskaia to Odintsov, 1 November 1935

GARF, f. 7689, op. 11, d. 129, ll. 133-137ob. Original manuscript.

After going through a harsh school of life in my childhood I was very glad that I survived to the time when I joined the Victory Sovkhoz to work as a milkmaid. I was only seventeen years old.

I started trying to work and got to be the best milkmaid on the sovkhoz, but I couldn't read or write. The Komsomol organization on the sovkhoz required me to learn to read and write and I had a passionate desire to learn reading and writing and I quickly did. Then they made me a brigade leader for a milk herd, and again I started trying to make my brigade the leading brigade on the sovkhoz. And I did it. My brigade was the leading brigade on the sovkhoz throughout the period of my work. The Victory Sovkhoz has four young girls shirkers whom I took into my brigade and now they are all shockworkers. One of them got a certificate of honor from the political department and one is now a candidate for Stalinist shockworker. I have received awards fifteen times for good work, I have certificate of honor as one of the best shockworkers and a certificate of honor for builders of socialism issued by the political department of the Victory Sovkhoz.

I have always won the competition although after sharing my experience with a competing brigade leader at one time they beat us in milk output but after that we started using other new methods to beat them again. At first the agreement on socialist competition was checked once a month but then we started checking it every ten days in spite of the fact that we were working in different sections and were getting good results in both brigades. Then I was sent off to take six months of brigade leaders courses, where I got excellent grades in all the exams.

After mastering the techniques of my field I started performing even better.

But the class enemy has not been finished off yet and in February there turned out to be large crumbs in a can of milk that was sent to the collection facility. The sovkhoz administration did not attach much importance to this but in May some water was poured into one of my cans of milk and people started saying right off that Maksimovskaia is fulfilling the plan with water. We have had a lot of dekulakized people working at the Victory Sovkhoz who were admo-exiled [administratively exiled], who do not like shockworkers and who tried to spread these rumors as widely as possible.

Comrade Odintsov! You can imagine how hard it was to endure this when I sat at home by myself for the whole day and nobody from the administration came to see me. They at least could have asked how this happened. The section's party organizer came andY asked to borrow some money and didn't say anything else. When I asked him if they had started sorting out this matter he replied: there will be time to give attention to you right now it's sowing time.

Only some Young Pioneers came with tears in their eyes and said that the old women at the shop are saying that the Komsomol brigade is fulfilling the plan with water and at that time a letter carrier brought me a newspaper where they wrote about an Order of Lenin being awarded to the Komsomol of the [Moscow] subway. And my Komsomol brigade was just defamed.

Comrade Odintsov! I couldn't endure this anymore. I recalled my unhappy childhood. The sovkhoz took me in, raised me, educated me. The sovkhoz was dearer than life itself to me, I lived and breathed the sovkhoz.

I looked at the weeping Young Pioneers and it became painful for me that everybody else forgot, those who saw that I devoted all my energies to the sovkhoz, and I made up my mind to commit suicide but thanks to timely assistance I was saved.

Of course I now realize that I did not conduct myself like a Komsomol member should. After I recovered, the Northern dairy/meat trust transferred me to a permanent job in Dikoe where I have worked since 7 June 1935. I am working on the Dikoe Sovkhoz as the brigade leader of a calf shed and the delivery section. When I arrived there were a lot of sick calves, I started a competition among calf attendants and entered into a brigade agreement on socialist competition with the brigade leader of a calf shed at the Bushuikho Sovkhoz, Comrade Viktorova. As of today I defeated Viktorova, the losses from sickness, stopped the diseases have been eliminated. I had an average weight gain in my calf shed of 715 gram that has never happened in Dikoe, but that is not the limit. I will attain an even better fatness level. But Comrade Odintsov my goal is not only to make the calf shed where I work a model production area but to make it a school for training personnel so that they are not afraid of difficulties. Raising Stakhanovites I am trying to see to it that every member of my brigade becomes a Stalinist shockworker. I already have results on this sovkhoz. A few days after I arrived in Dikoe there was a Komsomol meeting and the issue up for discussion was the expulsion from the Komsomol of a girl Galina Sedunova. She wasn't able to work anywhere. Either she was being kicked out for a negligent attitude or she ran away herself and got to the point where even her mother started to kick her out of the house. I spoke with the secretary of the Komsomol committee that I will take her into my brigade and spoke with her and the Komsomol organization assigned Sedunova to me. Now Sedunova is producing models of fine work and is a candidate for shockworker.

Comrade Odintsov the trade union organization on our sovkhoz is not doing a good job[.] In my five months of work here the chairman of the Workers Committee has not visited my brigade a single time, there has yet to be a review of shockworkers in my five months of work and new shockworkers of animal husbandry have yet to be named, and there are a lot of workers who deserve the title of shockworker.

There has been no meeting of the section's workers either that would sum up the results of work for the month and where workers could talk about achievements and shortcomings. The chairman of our R. K. [raion committee] only exists on paper, he is also the assistant bookkeeper and doesn't do anything in trade union work with the masses. He doesn't stay in touch at all with the trade union group organizers, doesn't give them assignments, doesn't get them together, doesn't hear them report on their work and the group organizers don't even know their duties.

My living and everyday conditions: a small room, a table, a bed, a bookcase and stools. I am satisfied with my room but it is only a room and there is no place where I can keep vegetables or anything else.

I eat at the cafeteria. There is no difference in eating there from any others, they won't even give you priority in serving lunch in the cafeteria or at the bread store. You come to the store or to the cafeteria, and standing in line there are housewives and even people who don't work on our sovkhoz and if you ask to be served without waiting, the salesperson replies "only when your turn in line comes"[.]

I don't have any animals or poultry, and there's nowhere to keep them anyway.

I didn't study much. I studied by myself under the dept. for elimination of illiteracy and compleeted six month courses for brigade leaders in animal husbandry. I passed all the exams with excellent grades, now I am preparing to take the technical veterinary minimum exam under the Krai land bureau, to earn the title of master of socialist animal husbandry.

I attend the political circle in the history of the VKP(b) I read the newspapers: Komsomolskaia Pravda and Sovkhoznaia Gazeta and the krai's Severnyi Komsomolets I read newspapers in my brigade where I work and in the milkmaids dormitory.

I would like to go further in my studies but right now they are taking people with no less than seven years of education. That is first of all and second of all I really don't want to leave animal husbandry because lately my health has gotten very poor and I am trying rite now in my brigade to raise a deputy for myself. I need treatment very badly right now. My heart is giving me trouble. I have "heart disease." At the Victory Sovkhoz Gorokhovskaia the chairman of the R.K. promised me a voucher to the senatorium but I never got to go so if you could give me a voucher please Comrade Odintsov life rite now is so intiresting and I want to live so much and life is already so hard for me because I'm sick but in spite of that I can do any job even as well as a man. And one last thing I am informing you that I didn't get the prize yet that was sent out by the central contest comision and I don't even know if I will get it. I asked the director of the trust so he promised to reply and he still hasn't given me any reply.

Well so long all the best!

With Komsomol greetings [signature]

I am sorry that I wrote so much I wanted to let you know about my autobiography and my work.