Document 45

Letter from soviet chairman G. S. Onishchenko to Kalinin, 15 October 1933

RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 524, ll. 2-4. Certified typed copy.

15 October 1933

Mikhail Ivanovich:

Please forgive me if my letter tears you away from a more important matter. I was inspired to sit down and write you personally by a circumstance I can find no way out of. I believe you can give me a clear reply which will be beneficial not only to me but also to my work to which I am devoted totally . . . my own personal interests can be postponed, put off to the distant future. I'll describe now the essence of the matter.

I am young as a Communist; I joined the party on 18 January 1931. 1 am forty years old and have been working for twenty eight years. I was mobilized by the town party committee (gorkom) to go to the country as chairman of the rural soviet of Tsvetnoe village, and have served in this post since 1 January 1933. This work was completely unfamiliar to me, but after nine and a half months I've become somewhat familiar [with it].

To be a worker and to work as an executive are two quite different things. Since 1913 I've worked as a loader with interruptions caused by the imperialist and civil wars. It was easier for me then than it is now. The work I'm doing now requires that you know how to work yourself and to teach others to work, to give sensible answers to kolkhoz members, to be conversant with all the laws, to know the psychology of the village in all matters, to study the people you work with. You have to know how to skillfully expose everything that causes harm, to conduct a daily battle with the kulak element, to study his tactics, to unmask him, and expel him from the kolkhoz ranks. You have to know how not to violate revolutionary legality and order and acquire a lot of other knowledge and sensitivities. You have to know how to forge a new group of party activists, to learn to teach them how to work--to work in a practical way to fulfill the General Line of the party in the countryside.

How I have worked these nine and a half months I will not describe to you. I will only bring up the fact that out of eight rural soviet chairmen working in 1932, four were given sentences of two to three years for misappropriation, theft, and embezzlement.

So, when I came there, everything, as they say, was in a complete shambles, and I have put it all back together solidly.

On the rural soviet's territory there is a fishing kolkhoz which numbers 774 households; the total population here is 3740 persons, making it the largest rural soviet in the raion. Before the Revolution the residents had a substantial fishing industry and caught primarily sturgeon. During the Civil War a quarter of them participated actively in the White Army and were infected to the core with acquisitive greed.

This rural soviet is under special observation by the town soviet and the town party committee. The raion is populated by national minorities. There are thirty two rural soviets in all, four of them Russian including the one described above. Russians also work in the raion center.

And so, Mikhail Ivanovich, I work honestly, devotedly, regardless of time or health, I'm completely aware who and what I>m devoting my strengths to, and I always ask myself if in the end I'll be tried. If you asked why, I'd answer you straight out: because I am the chairman of the rural soviet.

I have received a reprimand from the Party RK (Raionnyi Komitet [Raion Committee]) for the way I dealt with those deliberately and continually in arrears in payment of state taxes. All I did was produce property descriptions in accordance with the law you signed. The farms I described belong to solidly established peasants of average means; their minds are not going to change--no matter how much propaganda. Further, I'm hanging by a thread with the party since, as much as I would like to, I won't be able to fulfill the plan assignment for mobilizing resources. To give an example: in the third quarter RAIFO (Raionnyi Finansovyi Otdel [Raion Finance Department]) levied a 13,800 ruble cultural and recreational tax. So we collected the money and [as early as] the second quarter 13,800 rubles was accounted for. The same was true for the other levies. When you tell them that according to law we shouldn't demand any additional taxes, they declare straight out "If you don't fulfill this, we'll have you tried." In the fourth quarter they assigned in accordance with their plan a rural tax of six thousand rubles. All we had left was three thousand rubles; then they charged us an insurance premium of 29,000. I've checked my own and the kolkhoz's accounts, and all we have now is 14,353 rubles. When you raise this question with the finance officials, they state: "We got the estimates from the city. We have to fulfill these levies. We don't go and think up tax figures on our own."

You're between the devil and the deep blue sea. If you add taxes, you're violating revolutionary legality, and you're put on trial. And if you don't fulfill the raion's assignments, you're tried all the same, and besides that you'll be shamed and so forth.

Mikhail Ivanovich, I consider myself worse than someone with an extra-hard assignment. Someone with an extra-hard assignment gets what he's told done so he won't be tried, while even if I get things done I>ll still be tried because I added on taxes which is a violation of revolutionary legality. I've come to the conclusion that they'll kick me out of the party and try me because probably I don't know how to work. After all, I haven't taken any training courses and haven't gotten any help so far. To be sure, there've been 52 representatives in the last nine and a half months--five of them really had something to offer, the rest were just a waste of government funds. Written directives come down from the raion like this:"Do this by the fifth"--and they send it on the twenty-fifth. It's 30 kilometers to the raion center, and in these directives they don't spell out how to carry things out--they just write five or six lines and nothing more. The consequence: for non-fulfillment an administrative penalty, a trial, the Control Commission (KK) and prosecutor, etc.

You work like you're on the edge of a straight razor. Because of this constant threat I've contracted third-degree tuberculosis, and I've had an attack of neurasthenia. You can't please anybody in this work.

Mikhail Ivanovich. . . , I'm writing you the absolute truth. Maybe I don't understand enough about how to do this work. Maybe we were dispatched to the country simply to be sacrificed at the present stage, maybe this is what the party requires. I've reached a dead end.

I suffer terribly now because of my illness, but still I won't give up working and await your reply to my letter. No matter what form it's in, your reply will be the supreme reward.

Sending you Communist greetings,

Onishchenko