Document 65

Letter from party organizer V. S. Kolesnikov to Krest'ianskaia Gazeta on "perverse" understandings of Constitution, 1936

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 232, ll. 71-73. Typewritten copy.

I wanted to personally write to the Central Committee about the draft of the new Constitution that has been released, with regard to the way it is understood in various backward areas, especially here by the minority Greeks on the Stalinist Kolkhoz, where I work as a party organizer, under the Prokhladnoe Village Soviet in Grechesky [Greek] Raion. First I will take the blame for the fact that I have not yet educated the masses, but in three months it is impossible to do that, because people have lived for centuries and re-education comes very hard, and besides I am myself not completely literate, both politically and especially in general education. You can conclude this from my letter. But now I will go on to the main issues.

1. When the new Constitution came out in the provinces, it was badly perverted, for example Article 136 has been understood and interpreted a hundred times to say that everybody takes part in elections, so priests can be voters too, not understanding that the church is separated from the state. And because priests live on unearned income, they should be deprived of voting rights and of being elected.

Articles 9 and 10 are being perverted to mean that in the spring everyone who wants to be independent peasants, they can quit the kolkhoz and add Article 10, that citizens' personal property is protected by law, which means that we are going to pay the same taxes as kolkhoz farmers. The articles relating to krai, central and other organizations are distorted less, because these are issues right close to them, and that of course is completely understandable. But in general there is a lot of idle talk on the part of certain leftover sons of plantation owners and former exploiters, who have sort of edged their way onto kolkhozes and are setting down roots in socialism as crooks. The long-haired priests and church elders are playing an especially big role in this. Soon after the Constitution [evidently after publication of the draft] they managed to take up renovation of the church and restoration of the fence, and on that basis they conducted agitation to the effect that all churches should be restored and special schools established for priests. The self-proclaimed apostle Yura in particular had to appear at our kolkhoz about these inventions, and a private discussion was held with him three times. . .

You will especially run into a lot of talk on the part of the ataman's drazhnily [meaning unclear] or the older factory workers, as they call themselves. But these are workers in quotation marks, and they walked around with sticks and beat up workers, but by various excuses they stayed on the kolkhoz. Such individuals are first Aleksei Shkrum and second Potap Nedel'sky. These individuals were not left much land, half a hectare. But what is typical is that Shkrum only worked since the spring until the crops ripened in his truck garden, then he quit the kolkhoz altogether and is working exclusively in his own garden and the labor-intensive crops that are sown to 0.50 hundred[ths of a hectare] are quite enough for him and his wife they only have to cultivate and sell them at the market for profiteers prices, and such people have crops, as well as grapes, fruit trees, strawberries, vegetables and various other combinations, and if he and his ilk are given a hectare or more of land, then of course he will not find the time or the need to work on the kolkhoz, so that is why they spread the word that the government was wrong to leave 0.50 hundred[th] of a hectare of land apiece for personal use by kolkhoz farmers. Of course, we managed to rebuff such shenanigans on the spot and expose such people and their ilk. But these elements don't want to understand and go, to put it crudely, underground, although they aren't dangerous, but there are already plenty of sneaks like that [The last part of the letter, about abortions, has been omitted].