Document 39

Informational report on response to elimination of okrugs, 1930

RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, ll. 22-23. Typed copy.

At the moment that the okrugs were eliminated, officials in a number of organizations experienced feelings of panic and a reluctance to go to the raions. KK Commissioner Ilichev (in the Urals) stubbornly resisted going to a distant raion because "the wife won't go," "there're a lot of sick people there, she says." Korbotin (Tataria) considered his being dispatched to a raion as Chairman of the Raion Control Commission [PredRKK] to be "a most cruel and undeserved punishment."

In the Lower Volga Krai there were several instances of officials not wanting to go to a raion because "I found a better apartment in Saratov," "there're no shoes there," etc. These comrades were sent to a board of inquiry and after "a lot of persuading" the board would succeed in getting them to agree to depart for the raions.

In Vladivostok out of 249 assigned to be transferred only 169 were given moving vouchers, the others showered the okrug [party] committee with petitions with all sorts of certificates attached about ailments, etc., doing everything possible to avoid going to a raion. Thirteen were sent to Beloiarsk Raion (in the Urals) , but only two actually arrived.

In Leningrad Oblast out of 126 persons earmarked to leave for a raion, only twenty nine went. The officials with most seniority absolutely refused to go to a raion; for example, the director of the organizational department [zavorgot] of the Lodeinoe Pole Trade Union Council, Smirnov, did not want to go to a raion.

A State Bank instructor (in Borisoglebsk) named Lifonovsky "went on leave" secretly, and his family even refused to divulge his address, claiming they didn't know it.

A Popov (Bezhetsk Okrug) fled from a raion, giving as the reason: "my wife doesn't like it here."

Moving raion staff to the village level also met with opposition from some party members. For example, in Shakhun Raion (Nizhni Novgorod) labor inspector Lakeev refused to become chairman of a vast rural soviet, claiming: "I am a raion worker, I will not walk ten versts on foot. There is no cooperative store in the rural soviet, you could die of starvation. People will laugh at me. I'm not the son of a priest, I can find work without a party card." And, in the same place Belaev, the Chair of the MK (Mestnyi Komitet [Local Committee]), a high school graduate, was appointed RIK planner and refused:"My ideal is to become better qualified. They've worn me out with social service work. I don't want an official post the way the others do. If it turns out I lose my party card, well, I'm still no worse than other Communists."