Document 56

Letter from I. Vasil'ev to Krest'ianskaia Gazeta on discussion of

Constitution, July 1936

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 232, ll. 77-78. Typewritten copy.

"The Ghost That is Not Coming Back"

A film drama by that title was to be shown on 5 July of this year in the Park of Culture and Recreation at Prokhladnaia Station in Primalkinsky Raion, Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Oblast.

Well, the raion leaders decided to use this movie to work on the Constitution. They began to assemble people at about 4 p.m. Some organizations arrived in an organized manner, in formation and singing songs. They were taken to the summer theater, and the order from above was not to let anyone leave the hall, yet by about 8 p.m. it had emptied out. What should they do? The decision was, when the people come in for the movie, we'll do some work with them. After two bells the people took their seats based on their tickets. The theater was full, the presidium was assembled and exultant, but the audience was perplexed at seeing a table draped in red and the raion leaders on the stage instead of a screen. The secretary of the VKP(b) RK was Comrade Kashkozhev; the chairman of the RIK was Comrade Biriun, and his deputy, Comrade Opal'ko [was also present].

After the third bell, instead of the movie, Comrade Kashkozhev made introductory remarks, basically saying, we're going to work on Stalin's Constitution. One person in the audience dared to point out that people don't pay money to work. Comrade Kashkozhev shot back that anyone who didn't wish to could leave--and many people left the theater to get their money back at the box office, but the box office had been warned not to give refunds.

Just look at how lacking in consciousness our people are: they don't want to double their pleasure for their eighty kopeks and both work on the Constitution and see a movie. Instead they demand their money back.

Comrade Opal'ko, needless to say, delivered a good report. At a raion level she is a brilliant speaker, but people listened involuntarily, because they didn't want to see their eighty kopeks go to waste. The movie, too, was a good one, based on Henri Barbusse [(1873-1935), writer and veteran of the First World War, joined the French Communist Party in 1923, after which he worked tirelessly to defend the U.S.S.R. Many of his realist novels were translated into Russian and were widely known in the U.S.S.R.]. The report lasted an hour. The presidium appeals, urges and requests the public to speak out, make statements and express its opinion. That took half an hour. Finally some factory worker, whose name wasn't announced, came up and began to speak; but the way he spoke did a disservice to the presidium. The theater was filled with an incredible din, shouting, laughter and hissing.

The militia appeared, and so did Comrade Samarinko himself, chief of the Narkomvnudel RO [district branch of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD)], surrounded by his associates. They spread out among the crowd, kept an eye on the people who were acting restless, and after the movie, at one o'clock in the morning, certain people were detained to provide an explanation.

Comrade Biriun, the RIK chairman, seeing that no one was making any statements, made his own statement and declared: I am the head of the raion and tomorrow I will make you all chew on the Constitution at shop-floor meetings. Where do you think you have come to, to some wretched movie. . . .

This is the cinema, which Lenin said is the best of all the arts, yet to Comrade Biriun it is a wretched movie. So we never did work on Comrade Stalin's Constitution at Prokhladnaia Station on 5 July, the raion's workers flopped and made a spectacle of themselves and, it must be said, the way things came out was not nice.