Document 129
Letter from O. S. Mokrousova to Krest'ianskaia Gazeta, 16 May 1938
RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 32, ll. 248-249. Typewritten copy.
From 1936 until 6 May [1938] I was in charge of the hog-breeding section on the Victory Kolkhoz in Kamenskoe-on-Dnieper Raion, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. My section was first in the whole raion, I made pledges every year and overfulfilled them every year, and I received three prizes: one time a pig, one time a watch and the third time a voucher to a resort from the oblast executive committee worth 1,500 rubles. The disruption of my work started in the person of a former secretary of the RPK [raion party committee], now an enemy of the people. He tried to remove me from the hog-breeding section and sent me to work at the village soviet as chairman, where I worked for two months. Based on my personal request, for health reasons, I asked that I be relieved of this job. During this span of time the section went into decline, and the board of the Victory Kolkhoz repeatedly asked me to accept the hog-breeding section. I love that job, and, seeing the condition the hogs were in, I agreed. The kolkhoz has the acceptance report and what kind of condition the hogs were in (terrible). I took up the job again, went at it selflessly myself, sparing no effort and, of course, demanded work from support personnel and demanded everything from the board that the hog section needed. This annoyed board chairman I. Kuz'min and business manager N. Sidel'nikov and they started persecuting me: "Everybody can fatten their livestock with our grain." They are conducting agitation among the kolkhoz farmers to the effect that the section is very costly for them. "She is"--i.e. I am--"an outsider" (I am a refugee from Grodno Gubernia, I have lived in Dneprovka since 1916), but I am still an "outsider." And as a result of its work, this campaign has had its effect. At a kolkhoz farmers' meeting on 6 May 1938, a resolution was passed to remove me from my job. What on earth did they base their resolution on? All kinds of rubbish. Nobody can say anything about my work and nobody did. "She demands work of the hog tenders," "she doesn't work much herself," in short, the resolution wasn't based on anything. When I went to get a copied passage from the minutes, accountant Likhatsky wrote something that never happened at all and nobody said anything of the kind. I complied with the decision of the general meeting and gave up the section, of course, in accordance with the document, but decided not to let this matter go and to expose in your newspaper all of the injustice, all of the filth that is being poured on me, a Stakhanovite. The hostility started already with the fact that my brother, a captain who has served in the Red Army for twenty years, came to visit while on leave, exposed many wreckers, former kulaks in leadership work--and they were ousted from their jobs. After an article was printed in your newspaper, "Enemies of the People and Their Protectors," on 2 October 1937, life just became impossible for me. I had to endure so many insults, and for the sake of the work I tolerated and endured all of it. And, finally, the board members found another solution--to remove me from the hog section,[because] I interfered with them getting drunk, with their perverted behavior, etc.
I used to be a farmhand, I had to break my back for the landowners, could it really be that I won't get my well-earned right and protection in the USSR. Who gave them the right to abuse a Stakhanovite woman?
I ask the editors to report in your newspaper on the basics of my case. An article in your newspaper will give a jolt to an investigation of this case.
O. S. Mokrousova.
Dneprovka, Kamenskoe-on-Dnieper Raion, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast.