Considering the decision adopted yesterday,

See document 11.

18 January, by the conference of krai leading officials on the question of grain procurements to be exceptionally important and crucial, whose political consequences could be of great importance in the working class's relations with the peasantry, I decided to offer you, comrades, a more detailed explanation for my objections to the use of art. 107 of the Criminal Code to its full extent against the kulak elements of the countryside who are major holders of grain surpluses.

This article provides for “confinement for a term of up to one year with or without confiscation of property” for “deliberately raising prices of goods by buying them up, concealing them, or failing to put them on the market.”

The main purpose of the proposals by Comrade Stalin, who laid out the necessity of using this article, boils down to striking at the kulaks, striking hard, but striking at the same time in such a way that the legitimate reason for the arrest, confiscation of property, and other measures we impose against the kulaks is clear to the bulk of the peasantry. In developing this idea further, Comrade Stalin recommended that attention be focused on the specific section of article 107 that sets forth the punishment specifically for “failing to put them (the goods—S.Z.) on the market.”

What will this pressure on the exploiting elite of the countryside give us? What are our calculations aimed at accomplishing?

According to the notions expressed at yesterday's session, this pressure on the kulaks will make the middle peasants take their grain to the market. The middle peasant will say: “Now that is a government. You can't fool around with it. It demands compliance with its laws” and so forth. These measures, therefore, are calculated to have a psychological effect among the masses of middle peasants.

I think this calculation is mistaken. I am most deeply convinced that we will get an effect from these measures that is absolutely opposite to the one we expect. And here is why.

As I said yesterday at the session, not once during the entire period of NEP—as far as I can judge—have we imposed measures against the village kulak so as to try him just for failing to put grain on the market. If we have exiled anybody to Narym, it has evidently been only urban grain speculators,

During the 1920s, while administrative exile (that is, exile carried out extrajudicially by the OGPU) was gradually restored in full, the use of internal exile to remote areas, such as the notorious Narym Region, for speculation was carried out cautiously and with discretion. Thus, according to the directions, from 1924 on the OGPU had the right only to banish speculators of the “black stock exchange.” At the same time, the composition of certain categories subject to banishment or imprisonment in concentration camps could be revised over time, provided there was a sanction of the USSR Central Executive Committee. In October 1924 the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee granted the OGPU the right “to operate with regard to individuals engaging in buying up, concealing, and maliciously raising the prices of grain products for the purpose of speculation as well as to struggle against kulak elements concluding exploitative deals with poor peasants.” However, the OGPU received only temporary permission (for a period not more than six months) to carry out extrajudicial reprisals against these social categories—only for the time of grain procurements and only in areas with poor harvests (GANO [Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti], f. R-20, op. 2, d. 3, l. 118). Repression indeed hit mainly urban speculators, including resellers and grain traders. According to data from the krai procurator's office, the number of administrative exiles in Siberia had reached 7,000 by mid-1927. The Narym Region had the largest number of exiles, about 1,800. Statistics grouped trade offenders together with hard currency dealers and smugglers into the category of “other crimes” (different from exile for political crime and pure felony) that made up about two thirds of Siberian exiles (GANO, f. R-20, op. 2, d. 135, ll. 13–14).

who are not directly backed up by millions of middle peasants. We have not only not taken the measures we are now planning against kulaks, whose exploitative essence is rooted not in trade but in the production of agricultural products, but we have primarily propagandized the need to exert economic influence so as to limit their growth. Therefore, even though we have a law, it will still be unclear to the bulk of the peasantry as a law that is not in keeping with the spirit of the new economic policy. I may be mistaken, but I am firmly convinced that the bulk of middle and poor peasants will view putting the kulaks on trial just for failing to sell grain as nothing other than a return, in one form or another, to the times of war communism and the period of forcible grain requisitioning [prodrazvyorstka]. Citing the law, no matter what kind of agitation is conducted, will not change the muzhiks' minds. I am not even mentioning that the kulaks, based on these actions, will develop increased agitation against us; that is a relatively secondary matter. The main thing is that convicting kulaks just for “failing to put grain on the market” will persuade the middle peasants that sooner or later they, too, as holders of a certain portion of grain surpluses, will have their turn as well. The first thing we will encounter as a result of carrying out the planned measures will be an increase in the value of grain in the eyes of the countryside itself, and hence a subsequent decline in its supply in the market.

[…] Based on the aforementioned considerations, I have felt and do feel that the kulaks must be smashed only as resellers of grain. Under the current market conditions, one or two out of every ten kulak farms are doing this for sure. I know from Slavgorod Okrug, where I, unfortunately, visited for a very short time, that this speculating by the kulak farms, as a result of the crop failure in the southern areas and in neighboring Barabinsk Okrug, has been developed on a rather wide scale. It isn't so hard to find such kulaks in every large village. The middle peasant, of course, will feel sorry for them, Comrade Stalin is right. Let him feel sorry, that is beside the point. What is important is that he will have no grounds in this instance to expect his turn to come, in the sense of being put on trial just for failing to sell grain surpluses. After all, he doesn't buy up grain to resell it.

And I would suggest that this measure—putting grain-speculating kulaks on trial—be carried out with particular caution, making it a mandatory condition for every okrug committee that each trial be personally guided by an authoritative member of the bureau. The impression made by a judicial decision on the broad strata of the peasantry must be carefully taken into consideration and reported to the krai centers.

On a parallel basis, and with no less attention and energy, we must pressure the countryside through more effective levers (this is being done, but not precisely enough): (a) the collection of any debts from the countryside. In particular, a directive must be issued to the localities that they immediately revise the decisions by credit associations to grant the public deferments on special-purpose loans of agricultural credit, beginning in August. The work should be completed under the leadership of the plenipotentiary of the okrug executive committee within 10–15 days; (b) a total cessation of credits granted to the countryside on all special-purpose loans, except for loans to collective farms and the poor out of a special fund, and then only for seasonal needs; (c) further revision of the credit scale for machinery supply toward increasing advance payments and expanding the assortment of machinery and implements that are to be sold for cash (while retaining the current restrictions for kulaks); (d) firm and swift implementation of other measures drawn up by the CC and the krai committee, with the dispatch of leading officials to the localities.

I would not like to be a prophet, but I know the countryside well, both because I grew up there and based on the letters that I have received lately from my father, who is a peasant (a poor one) living in Saratov Gubernia.

It seems to me that we are making too drastic a change.

S. I. Zagumenny's letter contains notations by I. V. Stalin: “We haven't ruled out admin[istrative] measures,” “ha-ha,” “NB,” as well as underlinings and question marks. Izvestiia TsK KPSS 5 (1991): 201.