[…] 1. The quantity of special settlers and their accommodation

In May–April 1940, in compliance with SNK USSR Resolution no. 497-177-cc of 10 April 1940,

The resolution approving the NKVD instruction on deportations from western Ukraine and Belorussia (GARF, f. R-5446, f. 5446, op. 1, d. 513, ll. 123–127).

NKVD organs exiled to Kazakhstan 61,092 special settlers, most of whom were family members and relatives of the former people and prostitutes repressed by the NKVD. The above contingents have been placed in six regions of northern Kazakhstan. […]

2. Employment of special settlers

[…] The majority of special settlers are placed, for the most part, in kolkhozes and sovkhozes, and only a small part in industrial enterprises and public organizations.

A review of the employment situation of the special settlers showed that the majority of them still have not been employed. As a result, most of them have no means to support themselves.

Specialists among the special settlers—engineers, doctors, agronomists, metal workers, technicians, etc.—are not used in their areas of qualification, despite the urgent need in the aforementioned specialties.

Thus, in Kustanaisk region, there are 123 specialists among the exiles, and only 3 of them (a metal turner and 2 electricians) are used according to their specialty. They [currently] work rather well at the MTS [machine tractor station].

Some workers of the sovkhoz and the MTS made attempts to employ the exiles in their specialty, but the chairman of the Kustanaisk regional council, Dakhno, categorically prohibited it, saying: “We have plenty of specialists of our own.”

A number of enterprises and the MTS of the Bulaevsk region initially hired specialists from among the special settlers, but in August 1940 the North Kazakhstan provincial Kazakh CP(b) [Communist Party (Bolshevik)] committee ordered that all settlers be immediately fired wherever they worked according to their specialty. […]

Special settlers accommodated in the kolkhozes of the province have not worked for the entire summer. Those who work have not been paid for three–four months. As a result, there are cases of intumescence due to malnutrition. […]

Without precise instructions on how to calculate workdays or pay for special settlers for their work, kolkhozes in different regions do it as they will. Some kolkhozes provide bread according to the number of workdays, just as to the kolkhoz members; others, only 50 percent or less; and some [kolkhozes] refrain from any payment at all until the issue is clarified. […]

At a meeting of kolkhoz and rural executive committee chairmen, the secretary of the Fyodorovsky regional Kazakh CP(b), Antonov, issued a directive: “To discontinue all selling or advancing of products to Poles for their work, to give them the most difficult work, to demand the fulfillment of norms two times higher than those of the collective farmers, and to pay for the work thus accounted for two times less than to the collective farmers.”

As a result of this directive, kolkhozes almost completely ceased to provide special settlers with any products, gave them the most difficult work, and rejected any (even justifiable) complaints over these issues. […]

In the opinion of the directors of the sovkhozes, kolkhozes, and industrial enterprises, settlers for the most part show a good attitude toward work. Thus, in some kolkhozes of the Aktiubinsk province, in six months special settlers put out up to 500 and more workdays, while the average norm for the collective farmers is 300–350 workdays. However, lately, the majority of special settlers, not being remunerated for their labor, have been abandoning their work and conducting damaging anti-Soviet agitation. […]

3. The living conditions of special settlers

No special buildings to house special settlers were built. Therefore, provincial and regional organizations were charged with accommodating them in the existing sovkhoz and kolkhoz buildings. An inspection of the settlers' accommodations revealed that the living conditions of the exiles do not meet the minimum requirements to secure a normal life. The majority of them stay in buildings unsuitable for living (cattle farms, sheds, bathhouses, etc.), without windows, doors, or even ovens.

For example, at the central farmstead of the Kustanaisk grain-producing sovkhoz, Karabalyk region, 120 exiled Poles stay in the bathhouse and other buildings unsuitable for living. About 50 people live in the aforementioned bathhouse. Highly congested [living quarters] resulted in epidemic diseases and seven deaths. […]

In Golochshekin kolkhoz, the family of Anna Motyl, which consists of thirteen little children, stays in the street. Nobody lets her in. Neither she nor her children have clothes or shoes, and [there is] no food for the children. Motyl cannot work (she is sick and has a baby); her children go begging.

In Irtysh region, on 8 September, Polish settler Varvara Paniuk came to the NKVD regional department with small children and left four sons and two daughters, aged three to ten, at the RO NKVD, saying: “Take my children. They are starving, and I cannot feed them. If you refuse to take them, I will have to drown myself.” After leaving the children at the RO NKVD, Paniuk left with a baby and vanished. (Her body was never found.) […]

In the Charsky region, Semipalatinsk province, ten special settlers asked the NKVD regional department to take their children from them because they were unable to feed them during the winter. These special settlers have between six and nine underage children in their care. […]

The situation of the special settlers who were accommodated in the kolkhoz living quarters in the auls

Aul—village in Central Asia (Trans.)

is no better. There are occasions when collective farmers make settlers work in their vegetable gardens and attend to their cattle as payment for rent and food.

They charge special settlers extremely high rent—from 50 to 100 rubles per month—and require payment in clothes, luxury items, or merchandise. As soon as the landlords see that the settlers run out of items with which to pay the rent, they evict them with the help of the authorities. […]

In view of the hard living conditions of the special settlers, the local population is greedy in petty ways and coerces them to sell various items for nothing in some areas. Thus, in Semipalatinsk one special-settler woman had to sell a gold watch for three poods

Forty-eight kilograms.

of potatoes, and another sold a gold watch for sixty rubles. […]

There are cases where individual workers, capitalizing on the difficult situation of the special settlers, coerce women to sleep with them. […]

In some locations, special settlers want to buy or build a hut, but the local soviets do not allow it. […]

4. The attitude of the local party, soviet, and economic organizations toward the accommodation of the special settlers

Owing to the lack of clarity about the status of the special settlers transferred to the regions, the local economic and even party and soviet organs perceive them as “guests,” who soon will either move to other locations or will all be arrested by the NKVD. This position determined the attitude of the local authorities. […]

The chairman of the Mamliutinsk regional executive committee, Orlov, and the secretary of the regional party committee, Mashkov, instructed chairmen of the village soviets to use special settlers for road construction without paying them for their work. This led to using some special settlers in other jobs without pay.

In Mamliutinsk and Presnovsk regions a number of landlords make the special settlers work for rent in their kolkhozes, in their homes, or in the vegetable garden, digging potatoes, providing fuel, and milking cows. Often collective-farmer housewives stay idle at home, do nothing in the household, and do not even report for the kolkhoz work. […]

In the “Krasnoe Utro” kolkhoz, women special settlers were ordered to winnow grain, and accomplished three–four times the daily norm. Having seen the settlers' work, collective farmers protested, and [they] reproached the chairman for giving them easy work. Then the kolkhoz chairman made the Poles clean the threshing floor and made the collective farmers winnow the grain. It turned out that on the threshing floor the Poles yielded two times more [grain] than the collective farmers, who, at winnowing, could not fulfill a single daily norm. […]

5. The situation regarding agent and operative work among special settlers

A review of agent and operative work among special settlers showed that a number of local departments have not paid serious attention to this work, as seen from the following table:

The table is simplified. Data on provinces are omitted.

The recruitment of agents is conducted in a very primitive fashion. In some regions where special settlers are located, regional NKVD departments conduct hardly any agent and operative work among them. […]

A large number of special settlers conduct broad anti-Soviet work by spreading various provocative rumors and attempt to knit together an anti-Soviet underground.

Thus, the special settler under surveillance, Vitkovsky, talking to the source “Bolislav,” stated: “We have to be ready [to work] against the Soviet regime. We have to create an organization and conduct work so that, in case of a war against the Soviet Union, we will be ready to act against [the Soviet Union]. For that purpose it is essential to have a list of all Polish men.”

The exiled former policeman, Khuba, conducts agitation among the settlers: “If we work well, the Soviet Union will get stronger, which is not in our interest. People here are dissatisfied and have a grudge against the Soviet regime. They have nothing and have seen nothing; the Soviet regime lies to the people.”

Khuba hardly works himself and makes, just for necessities, 20–30 kopecks a day. When they ask him why he works so poorly, Khuba responds: “That's enough for me. I'm not going to stay here long anyway, and I will need my health in the future.”

On 5 August of this year, special settlers disseminated anti-Soviet leaflets in Tavolzhan village, Lozovsky region.

Lately a connection between special settlers and the anti-Soviet elements under NKVD surveillance has been revealed. Thus, an exiled Trotskyist under NKVD surveillance, Khmelnitsky, in the very first days after the arrival of the Poles, established daily connections with them, and [now he] makes anti-Soviet statements: “Relocation of the Poles is barbaric. They ruined hundreds of families and deprived them of everything. Our Russia was and remains a barbaric country.”

A freight forwarder at the Magadzhanovsk sovkhoz, Kalmynkin, came to the Poles' residence and said: “I wish I could help you to find work and apartments, but unfortunately I cannot do so in my position. All of us here live poorly.” Then Kalmynkin invited the special settlers to his apartment for a heart-to-heart talk. […]