Document 37

Letter to Stalin denouncing peasant promotee, 4 January 1930

GARF, f. A-406, op. 25, d. 131, ll. b/n-199. Typed copy.

Dear Comrade Stalin,

All the newspapers of our [Soviet] Union are filled to overflowing with articles about the fight against kulaks and kulak henchmen. We in the provinces fight using the slogan you unfurled and we fight not because we are afraid but because we are conscientious. Permit us to ask you and put before you our proletarian question. Are you fighting against kulaks and their henchmen in the center itself, in the very apparatus of Soviet power? You have no small number of them there. Take for example the Presidium of VTsIK where there's not just a kulak but an arch-kulak. This is Stepan Nikolaevich Izvekov from Orel, known all over Orel District [uezd] as Styopa Izvekov. How he got there and how he made his way into VTsIK is very mysterious and strange. Isn't it miraculous? Has Grishka Rasputin been raised from the dead, he who in Tsarist times made his way up to the Tsar and ruled Mother Russia? Who exactly is this Styopka? A prosperous arch-kulak from Orel Province [guberniia] and District, Pokrov Volost, Ovsiannikov Village who in the old tsarist times served in the army and after coming back from there served as a gendarme under Captain of the Provincial Investigation Department Schulz, infamous throughout the Orel area for reprisals against workers and peasants, especially during the memorable days of 1905. No better either was Styopka Izvekov, his co-worker, who accurately fulfilled the orders of tsarist magnates by snuffing out workers and peasants. Many to this day still recall Styopka's reprisals and who doesn't know about his mean tricks, and what things hasn't he dealt with, to count them all would be hard. And suddenly Styopka got himself into a position of Power, entered the circle of our proletarian leaders, the circle of the Rulers of the USSR and became Stepan Nikolaevich,"Comrade Izvekov."

Comrade Stalin, there's no place for him there. Where there's a place for him is Solovki [The Solovetsky Islands, located in the White Sea at the entrance to Onega Bay, the site of the Northern Special-Purpose Forced Labor Camps (SLON), founded in 1922] or with his forefathers, given his old dirty tricks and the position he used to hold. Otherwise, many of the peasants among us who are still ignorant may come to the conclusion that all our proletarian Authorities are people like Styopka, that it's people like him who sit at the Center, and they'll sure be speaking the truth.

Comrade Stalin, we peasants from the villages of Mostki, Lezhenki, Ovsiannikov, Fedorovka, Big and Little Kulikovka, Upper and Lower Shchekotikhin demand that you purge alien elements from our proletarian Government and not create the impression that it's kulak Styopka and people like him who sit on the VTsIK. We peasants demand that you not merely return him to the countryside but send him for his old mean tricks to Solovki and then even further.

Comrade Stalin, we peasants count on your firmness, count on the fact that you won't betray us and leave us alone, because in the provinces he and his henchmen have already planted informers. We are afraid that they are going to burn us out or might even kill us, for they are capable of doing this sort of thing.

Peasants Yefim Kotov, Yegor Novikov, Nikolai Nekrasov, Semyon Shchekotikhin, Andrei Ovsiannikov, Aleksei Shirobokov, Vasily Domov.

Comrade Stalin, we request that you respond to our request through the rural soviet or Orel Pravda and inform us how the purge of VTsIK staff is proceeding