Document 70

Letter from kolkhoznik I. Savurin proposing revisions to Constitution, 1936

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 232, l. 87. Typewritten copy.

A kind of Constitution should be put out so that everyone can live freely and so that the brigade leaders don't shout at us--Hey, why didn't you go to work, otherwise I will deal with you. You can't say a word in your own defense, or they will start to threaten: "Don't talk so much, or I will nail you with Article 58. Van'ka got ten years of pulling wheelbarrows and it's time for you to land up there. Grishka did five years, so now he's not saying, why doesn't your wife go to work, we're going to let people like that have it soon, all we need is a scrap of paper and you'll find yourself on the canal."[Reference to the White Sea-Baltic Canal project.] For my part, political prisoners need an amnesty. The kind of politicos we have, they are fifty eight times a fool, and he was charged with Article 58 and got ten years. I can't read or write very well I read the newspaper and some old men talk about how bad life used to be, you would owe money to a shopkeeper, a village chief would demand his debt, and if you didn't pay he would slug you in the teeth. Now, if the litter hasn't been swept up around the farmstead, they put you in the bughouse for about fifteen days, I got to thinking and I started feeling ashamed, we live in a free country, but there are so many prisoners and for what. If your crops get diseased it's ten years, if your horse wears out its withers it's ten years, if you didn't give somebody a cigarette it's ten years, and so on, if our dear leader Comrade Stalin knew what is going on in the countryside, he would never forgive it.