Document 75
Letter from P. P. Zagumennov to Krest’ianskaia Gazeta on Short Course in the History of the VKP(b), 15 November 1938
RGAE, f. 396, op. 11, d. 26, ll. 545-547ob. Original manuscript.
<doc> 15 November 1938 to the editors V. Poliany at Polianskaia Pravda from Pyotr Prokhorovich Zagumennov, Panderka station under Asipersky Village Soviet, Viatskie Poliany Raion, answer to the editors of Krest’ianskaia Gazeta to your appeal to me of 3 November 1938 about the importance of the new book on the history of the all-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The importance of that history of our party is very great as we were told by the propagandist Ivan Ivanovich Selivanov in which circle I am in the history of the VKP(b) for the study of the new textbook. We had three classes and I had to attend one of them where it made a tremendous impression on me the struggle that our Communist Party went through. By studying this book of the history of the VKP(b) we will eliminate even faster the shortcomings in every sector of our national economy especially in agriculture we now have a great many shortcomings in agriculture where I live on a kolkhoz. The name of the kolkhoz is Red Ear of Wheat under the Asipersky Village Soviet in Viatskie Poliany Raion. What kind of shortcomings do we have at our kolkhoz: a lot of drunkenness by our leaders, grain hasn’t been harvested from the field which has rotted from the rains. They let all the fodder rot in 1938 both the rye straw and the spring straw and all of the roughage in the storage bins. . . they divide the wheat by labordays for good wheat they give 150 grams and for rotten they give 150 grams. As for rye, they gave only five hundred grams and kept promising to pay two rubles forty kopeks for a laborday. But they gave only forty kopeks they badly cheated the kolkhoz farmers. I hereby sign Pyotr Prokhorovich Zagumennov
I heard another reading of history from the new book at a class in the Asipersky Village Soviet. There was a study of people’s judges of the V [probablyViatsky] section by Kuznetsov. I heard it from the book of new history of the VKP(b) that such an important resolution of the TsK came out about studying the history of the VKP(b). You can only welcome it and thank the party and government and Comrade Stalin personally for issuing such a document as the history of the VKP(b). I am an old man already seventy, semiliterate. I feel that without studying such an important document as the history of the VKP(b) it is impossible to manage in any institution. When you read the textbook you can see that everything written in it can be applied to any sector in work so I a seventy-year-old man suggest everybody study this textbook and every party and nonparty member, every worker, office clerk, kolkhoz farmer and nonkolkhoz farmer should know it. Learn this textbook [and] we will not have any distortions in work. I am an old man I pledge to learn it beginning with the first group of what is recommended in the party resolution on the study of history, and then I will go on to the second and third group and call on all the other old people of my age to follow my example. Dear editors I would like to get acquainted with you. Please give my regards to our dear Stalin and Kalinin ardent greetings through the newspaper. I am a pensioner and have no children with me. My old lady and I live alone we receive twenty five rubles a month but it still is not enough to support old age. Is it possible through you to raise it a little[?] I will describe my idea. I am Pyotr Prokhorovich Zagumennov, seventy years old, my wife is also seventy years old. We have no children with us. I [became one of the] Organizers of the kolkhoz when I in 1918 I was elected to the first soviets when Red Army deputies brought [Soviet] rule to our volost . . . from the town of Malmyzh. I was elected to the commission to elect the power of the soviets so the kulak couldn’t get in. They elected me from complete poverty. I fought the kulaks they were liquidated as a class in 1919. Kolchek [Kolchak] Admiral advanced on our area. The kulaks all went out to fight and they fingered all the soviet functionaries and our people in authority. The kulaks betrayed us to be executed. I was chairman of the poor. Five people sat in a punitive detachment for three days but the forest manager spared us. Instead of a bullet they gave us fifty birch rod lashes on the backside and they took all my things, livestock and all my seeds and took my son because I was a communist. My son escaped from the butchers but I vowed to take revenge until I die. We will root out the enemies and bury them under a green spruce. We had them on our kolkhoz we found them and gave them article 58 clause 10 [Propaganda or agitation containing a call for the overthrow, subversion or weakening of Soviet authority or for the commission of specificcounterrevolutionary crimes.], 58 clause 8 [The commission of terrorist acts aimed at representatives of Soviet authority.] The Zagumennov brothers got eight years and were stripped of their rights for two years.
Dear editors forgive me that I wrote badly but I still ask you to answer what will you do but I apologize for taking a long time to answer. We seldom had these classes and I will also tell you when a deputy came to visit us Comrade Solodilov I was entrusted to run the meeting and I would also like to know how you found out about me an old man an Activist. Tell me or did Polianskaia Gazeta tell you.<end>