Document 86

Letter from P. A. Misov to Kalinin on overheard conversation, July 1938

GARF, f. 7523, op. 23, d. 212a, ll. 96-97. Original manuscript.

To the People's and All-Union Elder Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin

Mikhail Ivanovich I am sorry that you don't know me maybe you have more serious things to do but my heart cannot keep it in I want to write somebody about an incident but I don't know who I decided to write you knowing your simplicity. It happened at the end of June I was on statutory leave the day was hot I like to go fishing I took my fishing rods and headed for the river but after I walked about two or three kilometers I decided to take a rest there was a little gully and some thick bushes I went down into these thick bushes it was really hot and I thought I would sit awhile and have a smoke I sat for about twenty minutes and I hear somebody talking above me at first I didn't pay attention but then I hear they are talking about war I started listening to what the people are saying about war I took out a notebook and a pencil I always carry these things with me. One of them says you want war to start soon but in my opinion it is better if it drags out for a year or two during that time we will be able to create spontaneous cadres so that our victory will be guaranteed. There are more than two million prisoners . . . no more than forty percent of ours ended up there the rest are Stalin's toadies [Each reference to Stalin in the text has been corrected from lower case to upper case.]. . . This material is no good for us whoever they do release will not go anywhere they will be afraid of being put in prison the rest of the cadres will come from relatives, friends and lovers, they're going to avenge their fathers there's a double benefit here they love their relatives and they will choose Stalin's honest functionaries from work. Everything will fall apart. Think about it yourself Lenin spent his whole life taking revenge on tsarism for his brother's death imagine how many such Lenins we will have.

. . . even now in prison they are dropping like flies from malnutrition the weak ones so they are done now we have to work and work in a way so that one of ours is joined by twenty Stalinists there will be a lot of bitterness and this will play a big role they will take even the emptiest denunciation and an enemy of the people will not be able to get away and his goose is cooked one of every two hundred people get out. The investigation drags on for nine months and then even though he is not guilty they send him to prison on an administrative basis as unreliable a lot of them have already been exiled that way. Let them punish and beat them so that they pull out the whole cabbage with the weeds they won't realize what they're doing for a while they've gotten carried away which is better for our people. And the situation is like this at work now if the NKVD took somebody away then it means he's an enemy of the people and if he's an enemy of the people then you can't say anything good about him even if he is one of the most honest workers otherwise they will take you away as well for consorting with an enemy of the people at this point they started to talk quietly I decided to follow these skunks and I also heard them talking about something here the workers' center and all the plants will work for defense and the people in Gor'ky need spontaneous cadres but what is spontaneous I don't understand this word they began to talk really quietly I dropped down into the gully so that I could come out from the other side as if it was by chance but when I went around the gully these scoundrels were already gone the gully was alongside the road two passenger cars and one truck passed by on the road maybe they were in a car I don't know where they went I even started crying what an old fool I am I wasn't able to follow them I got so upset that I took my fishing rods and went home. But after all it's true something is wrong in our country look they took away the son of one acquaintance of mine a young fellow he did a year they released him with galloping consumption and soon after he died his relatives are still crying it hurts after all if a man dies for no reason it's hard for the relatives he caught a cold in prison they took him away in the summer and they would not allow parcels through he slept on a cement floor after catching a cold another office worker was in for nine months they would not allow any food through they released him and he is already in stage three.

I could write a lot of examples like that to you my dear Mikhail Ivanovich but I can see that I've let myself go on for nothing I didn't want to talk about it but I couldn't keep it in so I wrote you don't be angry. Now I also wanted to write you about something else they are not thinking through what they broadcast on the radio for example they were broadcasting about Kuibyshev to honor his memory they said when Kuibyshev was sitting in a tsarist prison his sister brought him food, cigarettes and even a bouquet of flowers I listened to this and didn't take notice I came to work and one Komsomol member says to me under tsarism as we see it was nice even in prison all the food was allowed through cigarettes and a bouquet in the bargain not like what we have if you're guilty or not once you go you are gone and relatives are not told where a person went but there is no reason for all this now we old people didn't notice but the young people have stored it away my heart aches for all these mistakes I am not a party member but my heart aches badly for Soviet rule I live well and I could not have even dreamed of this under tsarism I feel that everything is not right here is an example about that conversation and as we can see [somebody] is working and working hard to make the people angry who is happy to make them into an enemy forgive me an old man if I knew that you are not angry I would write another time about everything that seems bad to me and that the people are saying.