Document 69

Letter from kolkhoznik N. G. Zhiliaev proposing revision to Constitution, 1936

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 232, l. 70. Typewritten copy.

A special paragraph needs to be included in the Constitution saying that all able-bodied men and women who do absolutely no work and are not engaged in any activity for the general benefit shall be deprived of political rights. The point is that a new Soviet bourgeoisie--loafer-parasites--is taking shape.

At our kolkhoz, for example, blind sixty-year-old women are sent out to go spear tobacco stalks while these tortoises are growing fat and don't want to lift a finger, in two years at the kolkhoz they have not logged a single work-day, and through their husbands they are always the first to pull out of the kolkhoz pantry whatever goes in there. They are citizen Il'ina, the wife of the kolkhoz bursar, Shevchenko, the wife of the kolkhoz party organizer, and citizen Ivereva, the wife of the kolkhoz chairman. The last one worked on the kolkhoz in 1935 and she had about two hundred work-days, but in 1936 she hasn't had a single work-day. She says to her husband, why aren't their wives working on the kolkhoz, and you after all are more their boss, well then I won't go, either.