Document 41

"On violations of revolutionary legality in Odessa Oblast," June 1932

RGASPI, f. 613, op. 3, d. 135, ll. 1-7. Typed original.

Until April, 1932 I worked in Kharkov investigating the most important cases handled by the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic. When oblasts were being organized in Ukraine, I was transferred as Senior Investigator to the Office of the Odessa Oblast Prosecutor. During my brief sojourn in Odessa I encountered a number of very crude violations of revolutionary legality by those heading organizations in Odessa and by those running the Odessa Oblast Prosecutor's Office. Due to special circumstances, which I can explain separately if needed, I decided to appeal directly to TsKK VKP (b), bypassing Ukrainian organizations.

This past spring among work assigned to Senior Investigator Yestraikh of the Odessa Oblast Prosecutor's Office was a case involving major abuses of power in the "Moscow Tailoring and Knitted Goods" Artel: theft of merchandise, bribe-taking, and other such crimes. Among those who should have been called in as defendants in connection with this case was a man named Todosiuk who had been found guilty of a number of crimes and was one of the leaders of the criminal band in question. However, Deputy Oblast Prosecutor Khimich without any legal basis whatsoever ordered Yestraikh not only not to include Todosiuk as a suspect, but not even to question him. In accordance with Khimich's order, material about Todosiuk was singled out and set aside, and, as a result, the other defendants were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment, while Todosiuk continues to go scot-free [Omitted is a section describing other unsuccessful attempts to make Todosiuk accountable.].

Meanwhile, after the "Moscow Tailoring and Knitted Goods" Artel [was shut down], Todosiuk landed himself a cushy job as director of a store closed to the public that serves the City Council's staff exclusively, where he committed a number of new abuses of office. . . . But Todosiuk's crimes do not end here. Todosiuk is involved in yet another case dating from the time he served as director of a fur goods plant. [The illegal receipt of a tank of sulphuric acid is described next.] One can only conclude that this failure to prosecute Todosiuk for repeated criminal activity is the result of his direct tie to a number of prominent staff members in the Odessa prosecutor's office and on the Odessa Control Commission who participated in the case and who are themselves customers of the City Council's closed distribution store of which Todosiuk is the boss [The special emphasis is Yegorov's, and was noted by TsKK]. This closed store is the best in the city in terms of quantity and choice of goods, and the scandalous things going on there have caused resentment among the workers for a long time. The same closed store, though labeled as being solely for the City Council, in fact supplies various prominent Odessa party officials, and no one knows who authorized this. By the way, in Odessa in general I believe the directives for closed stores are stretched a great deal. Workers are under-supplied so that certain categories of prominent officials can have far more than is normal. The best closed stores, such as those for the City Council, pre-revolutionary political prisoners, and pre-revolutionary political emigres, supply the prominent officials of Odessa. In the store for pre-revolutionary political prisoners the last thing you will find is pre-revolutionary political prisoners, and in the store for political emigres they are in fact the smallest group. Most of the customers work for the Odessa Trade Department and other institutions. The same is true with the City Council store. Even the closed store for foreigners, for consuls, etc. "Insnab" (Inostrannoe snabzhenie [Foreigners' Supply]) is supplying local council and party officials [Omitted is a discussion of unsuccessful attempts to investigate abuses in the closed store of the City Council and also of judicial and investigative bodies concealing data about corruption and other abuses of office.].

One of the crudest violations of revolutionary legality has to do with the housing policies of the Odessa City Council. In February 1932 when oblasts were organized in Ukraine, Odessa became an oblast center, and space was needed to accommodate newly created oblast organizations and incoming staff. In dealing with this matter, local organizations blatantly ignored existing housing legislation, basing their actions on the applicability--condemned by Lenin--of a separate,"Kaluga" law because of alleged unusual local circumstances. The established order of evicting and resettling workers by legal procedure (with the exception of those instances strictly defined by law) was countermanded by Odessa's leaders. Instead, evictions and resettlement by administrative fiat were instituted. Class distinctions were totally disregarded; workers, specialists, scholars, and other toilers subject to eviction were treated arbitrarily and crudely in spite of privileges guaranteed them under the law. Evictions took place immediately after sought-out "objectives," i.e., rooms or apartments, had been found, and often people were resettled in housing that was clearly unsuitable. . . .

An example demonstrating how the Odessa officials cast aside all restraint is their system of "bonus awards" for finding an "objective" leading to eviction, the "award" being some of the rooms from which others had been evicted. [An example of eviction paid for with a bribe is cited.] To sum up, the bacchanalia of administrative evictions continued for several months in Odessa. Thousands of working people were resettled. The Prosecutor's Office, RKI, and City Council received a mass of complaints about illegal resettlements and corrupt practices. However, the local [party] organizations failed to respond to these in any way. Only after Pravda published TsK VKP (b)'s resolution of 14 April containing details about how the Rostov City Council had tampered with housing policy did the "zeal" of the Odessa administrators abate somewhat [Omitted are discussions about how this campaign was never condemned, about an attempt to save face by blaming "switchmen," and about how the campaign in fact continued but failed to achieve its object of accommodating incoming staff members. Many of the latter continued to live in hotels, the local nomenklatura cleverly using the campaign to their own advantage ].