Document 87

Memorandum from G. L. Skriabin to Stalin on Kuibyshev obkom, 1940

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 19, ll. 95, 98, 100-101, 102-103. Typewritten original.

Since I have been compelled to transfer to the Leningrad organization and am thereby deprived of an opportunity to continue a direct struggle against the nonparty line of Comrades [N. G.] Ignatov [first secretary of the Kuibyshev obkom and gorkom of the VKP(b); in January 1941, transferred to the post of first secretary of the Orel obkom of the VKP(b)] and Mel'nikov, secretaries of the Kuibyshev Oblast Committee of the VKP(b), I consider it my party duty to disclose to you certain facts so that they may be investigated by the Central Committee of the VKP(b).

For a long time Ignatov and Mel'nikov have been waging an unscrupulous struggle with each other for the job of obkom first secretary. The struggle between them has reached the point where one calls the other a double-dealer at official meetings. This struggle could not help but lead to intrigues, abuses against certain functionaries of the apparatus and to the forcing out of unwanted people from the apparatus of the obkom of the VKP(b). . . .

The struggle between Ignatov and Mel'nikov has compelled them to curry favor with cadres, securing their support on an improper basis. In January 1939 Comrades Ignatov and Mel'nikov organized a drinking spree at which ORPO [department of leading party organs [otdel rukovodiashchikh partiinykh organov] head Surin beat up two policemen on guard duty. This was repeated during the May holidays, with the sole difference that policemen were not beaten up, but they avoided a fistfight between themselves only by chance. This also occurred in the past. After one drinking party at the home of Comrade Ignatov, Comrade Ignatov along with Bocharov and Detkin [an arrested NKVD representative and his deputy] drove down to the Volga and began taking motorboats from people riding down the river. . . .

One would have thought that the extremely flagrant mistakes that Ignatov made when he was an enemy of Postyshev [first secretary of the Kuibyshev obkom of the VKP(b) from 1937 to early 1938; removed in January 1938, expelled from the party in February and executed a year later] taught him something. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Personal and professional ties and joint drinking binges with Zhuravlyov [former representative of the NKVD for Kuibyshev Oblast], and then with the enemies Bocharov and Detkin, prevented Comrade Ignatov from becoming head of the obkom of the VKP(b) . . . .

Ignatov and Mel'nikov proved to be too Amodest@ about the criminal activities of Bocharov, Detkin and other NKVD functionaries. Bocharov's arrest was kept secret for a long time from certain members of the obkom bureau. The NKVD bureau for our oblast, under the leadership of Zhuravlyov and his deputies--and enemies of the people--Bocharov et al., perpetrated extraordinary outrages: drunken revelries lasting several days at a time; an assembly-line system of interrogation; physical beatings of arrestees; frequent cases in which cold water was poured on individuals who had been beaten up; intimidation; the staging of confrontations between arrestees with conflicting statements; the falsification of interrogation summaries; the theft of belongings from arrested individuals, and others. These perversions and improper arrests, it seems to me, are directly related and linked to the consideration of the appeals by former arrested Communists and to holding the slanderers accountable. I must assure the TsK that the slanderers "have not been found" in Kuibyshev Oblast and almost none of the NKVD functionaries have been held accountable for their extremely flagrant perversions. The reason for this is to be sought in the fear of the Kuibyshev leaders over their mistakes . . . .

I would like to call the attention of the TsK to how Ignatov and Mel'nikov managed certain areas of work.

People are our most valuable assets. Take a look at how they are treated in our oblast. In 1938, one hundred kolkhoz farmers who are members of ethnic minorities in Baranovka and Kuznetsk raions, incited by class elements, got into a brawl among themselves. The incident did not end without fatalities. In 1939 in Krasnoiarsk Raion, kolkhoz farmers beat up Kazakhs for taking their straw. The court and procurator's office did not attach significance to these cases and dragged their feet in looking into them.

Two raions in the oblast--Chelnovershiny and Novyi Buian--are especially plagued by murders and suicides. There have been thirty five homicide and suicide cases in Chelnovershiny in the past two and a half years. And typically, the investigative agencies drop all the cases since the murder and suicide victims are represented as mentally disturbed. I remember one suicide case in that raion. Comrade Gerasimov, a Communist who managed a school, and his wife committed suicide under the following circumstances: after being persecuted and wrongly expelled from the party and finding no support from the raion committee of the VKP(b), Gerasimov by agreement with his wife first shot her in bed and immediately killed himself. A note left after their death gave some details of their persecution. The homicide and suicide cases are all different. You will find murders of children by their mothers, seductions of minors, murder with armed robbery, terrorist acts and others. How attentive the investigative agencies are in these cases is apparent from the fact that one arrested individual in the same raion committed suicide in a pretrial-detention cell. Absolutely savage methods were used during the investigation. In one homicide case the deputy oblast procurator and the raion procurator enacted a murder in front of a deaf-mute in a pretrial-detention cell. The deputy oblast procurator donned bast sandals and rags, sat down on a chair, then the raion procurator walked in, rushed at him, removed the bast sandals, pulled a noose around his neck and choked him. . . .

The situation is almost the same in Novyi Buian Raion, where thirty homicides took place in 1938-1939. Such incidents also occur in other raions of the oblast. For example, the party organizer of the TsK for Maina Raion committed suicide, and a policeman committed suicide in Inza Raion.