Neither the policies nor the laws of the Soviet state, nothing justifies what happened in Tula in this year of 1938. Thousands of arrests in a month or two, of which a very small percentage were based on law and substance. Information, rumors and facts are seeping into the masses, and only create unhealthy attitudes and distrust. Even in the party ranks there is a lot of cautious talk about excesses and a lack of faith in the claim that people are being fairly tried and exiled. After rumors spread among the masses about the removal and arrest of the chief of the NKVD bureau and the removal of the former people’s commissar of the NKVD and the arrest of representatives of the authorities in other cities, people began speaking openly that thousands of people are languishing in prisons and in exile. Completely Soviet people, devoted people to the Soviet state, sense that something is wrong here, something is the matter. One gets the impression that everything here has been deliberately muddled, that large enterprises have been deliberately stripped.

Comrades, none of this helps Soviet rule, but only alienates people. I am a party man, but I am beginning to vacillate, I am starting to feel some kind of apathy. I know what kind of talk and sentiments there have been in our party organization since totally honest people have been arrested and exiled. If somebody says there are no shoes to be had, that is not anti-Soviet agitation.

After all, we knew the people who worked with us, we trusted them, the whole party organization trusted them, just one person doesn’t trust them and they are held for a year, often coerced to admit to something, but they never even knew what.

Everything is done in secret, but a great deal is still known.

Something has to be corrected, the common cause of the Soviet system has to be helped, people must be compelled to respect legality and to release people who were wrongly taken away.

If a person is not trusted, something should be done so that he is a friend of the Soviet system rather than making him an enemy.

Dear Comrades! Discuss this letter, show it to Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. Send a commission, believe me that I want to live in a way that I can be happy and continue to build up our life.

A copy of this letter has also been sent in Moscow, because people say letters are not reaching the center, which may be incorrect.