Document 4

Letter to Pravda included in summary report "The Sukharevites Are in Charge," September 1930

RGAE [Russian State Archive of the Economy], f. 7486s, op. 1, d. 102, ll. 242-243. Typed copy.

. . . The denizens of Sukharevka, of the Central, Smolensk, and other markets are experiencing spring, are they not? The secondhand dealers have truly bred like hell, haven't they? Occupying themselves now with the very lively resale business are seasonal workers and dairy sales women and invalids and some of the non-class-conscious workers with their wives and those sent to work at various construction projects. They employ a huge number of work methods. So, here the cooperative's records have been cleaned up, here also entirely fake records, here two or more of these registers under one and the same name, here a false due date for your pregnant wife and here travel document abuse and unscrupulous use of someone else's ration books. It's got to the point that even a backward worker nearly five times in the course of a week or two stands [in line] for women's hose and, beating his breast, as a worker demands "Get it for me now. You are giving things to the profiteers. May you croak, give to me too." A whole mass of deathly ill invalids of one sort or another and people who have been patients at Kanatchikov's Summerhouse [The popular name for a psychiatric clinic in Moscow.] have appeared and with extraordinary arrogance abuse their position: >Give to us or don't expect us to account for our actions.'

What is more, in this "activity" there is a clearly marked tendency to remove from the Soviet state market any sort of goods by any means--and fast. Toss men's winter shoes on the market and let people buy as many as they want. Women will buy many pair each, in a few hours it will look like a fire has cleaned the shelves no matter how full they were.

"Someone" came up with the notion that you should take what's here today and take it no matter what the cost because on the morrow there won't be anything and who knows when it will appear again because, as they say, now it's all industrialization. In some cases it's even happened that store windows get broken, metal barriers are knocked down and there's a wild, inhuman crush. In the Central Department Store (in the retail part of Mostorg [Moscow Trading Firm] that's on the Petrovka) because of such uncontrolled force from this type of customer the fourth floor is in danger of collapse. The public is very definitely becoming more and more insolent with every day, and the ones who resell secondhand store goods are the first to unleash antagonism.

July 23 in Mostorg's Store No. 5 that's at the Smolensk Market customers beat one woman clerk unmercifully. Another clerk was beaten so badly by customers that she had to be doused with water.

On July 21 in that [same] store work went on thanks only to the presence of an entire detail of police. You work under siege and the thought of a very probable rout of the store doesn't leave the staff even for a minute. It's clear that this business is guided by those from Sukharevka who give their catchwords to the crowd. The huge Moscow group of activists should mobilize and crush these "Sukharevites."

July 23 in Mostorg's Store No. 5 that's at the Smolensk Market customers beat one woman clerk unmercifully. Another clerk was beaten so badly by customers that she had to be doused with water.