Document 9

Letter to Stalin and Kalinin (ostensibly) from workers at Red Putilovets factory, Leningrad, March 1930

GARF, f. 1235, op. 4, d. 47, ll. 164-165. Typed copy.

Translator's note: Much of the word use, word order, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in this letter is that of a person with little education. To convey the meaning of the text, these characteristics are only reflected minimally here.

To the Secretary and to the Head of the VTsIK (Vsesoiuznyi Tsentral'nyi Ispolnitel'nyi Komitet [All-Union Central Executive Committee]) Stalin and Kalinin.

We, the workers of the Red Putilovts Plant, fifty in number, have discussed and have decided that we once and for all protest against the terors and persecutions of the peasants and the one who you deprive of the vote and consider them kulaks. We all as one, members of the VKPb (Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia [bol'shevikov] [All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union]) have a tie with the countryside, to us write our fathers and brothers how they're deprived of the vote and are not asked if they are agreed to be on the kolkhoz or not, but right off the bat their property is taken away by the careerists, and they're driven into prisons the shame of soviet power, as capitalists do not do as you do in a free country, you throw into prison those who worked from morning till late night, the toilers who've put their whole life into their home and into their farm. You've called them kulaks only because they slept on their fist [the literal meaning of "kulak" in Russian] not having a pillow to themselves in their home, You regard those as kulaks who made their farm prosper and gave income to the state. You drove them into cellars and want them to rot alive, these fathers and brothers of ours, and posted their grandson with a rifle to guard them like wild animals. We're indignant against this, for what have we fought, for what have we shed blood when we did not expect this, that our worker-peasant reign would torment our fathers and brothers so. Why then do we need the VKP since it makes life impossible for all of us?

They kill, throw people into prison, and take all that we have gained with hands hardened by toil. We demand an order be given immediately to the local organizations and stop the teror in our free country, pay attention what they're saying, all the Leningrad workers they're leaving the party only because nowadays everyone's being persecuted. No one has a liking for Soviet authority, but consider you torturers of the Russian people. Why do we have to do the five-year plan so thoroughly when we've become poor after such wealth as we have in Russia even if you take only sugar that they used to feed the pigs with, and now you can't buy it even if you have the money, and also our children are starving and we have obsolutely nothing to feed them with. We want Comrade Trotsky to be right and Comrade Bukharin and other comrades, but you squeeze everyone tighter and tighter, you want to complete the five-year plan in four years. You like it that the Komsomol members shout, but they are really dumbbells and sheep who don't understand anything, and you must pay attention to all of the proletariat and peasantry now this is why they send you a thousand curses and consider you violators and not rulers of the Russian people. You've robbed all the capitalists and you have your hands on small-time property owners and on the peasants. You're sending millions of toilers before their time to the next world at the same time you are writing that we are a nation of free laborers. We didn't know that poor peasants will be shown so much respect. It seems like it would be better if everyone was a poor peasant and beggars. You can't get nothing from a poor peasant, a poor peasant is a loafer and that's just why he's poor he is used to getting everything from others for nothing. You are now collecting scrap metal and rags. Doesn't that mean that you're begging alms from workers? But what you ought to do is give to him. Where is the wealth that we inherited from the capitalists? Even the poor peasants, they are gasping, specially in the country they don't look a lump of sugar in the eye, why the hell a five-year plan when they don't let you live here and now, who have we built the damn five-year plan for. You are destroying millions of people. It's become ridiculous you forced registering of old men workers for the Party, and who doesn't join up you threaten to fire. [. . .]

One day I was talking with an elderly worker he openly declared how we now have a time of persecution of everybody they don't let you live out your days peacefully. There's a fact no one can deny. [. . .]