The year 1930 was mostly characterized by a decisive switch on the part of the kulaks and all other counterrevolutionary forces in the countryside from a policy of a kind of “time serving” and economic struggle (grain strikes, economic boycott, and sabotage) to an overt struggle against Soviet power.

What is becoming increasingly apparent in the activities of the kulaks and the counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside lately is an insurrectionary line of struggle that is oriented toward decisive action at the time of the [foreign] intervention that they are expecting.

The kulak is shifting from organizing local groups to fight particular policies in the countryside to organizing conspiratorial, counterrevolutionary organizations whose objective it is to prepare armed uprisings under the slogan of the overthrow of Soviet power (Northern Caucasus Krai, Lower Volga Krai, Siberia, the Urals, Dagestan, etc.).

In 1930 the brunt of active antisoviet manifestations in the countryside was directed against collectivization; mass disturbances and terror are, more and more clearly, taking on an anti-collective-farm orientation.

In 1929, out of 9,093 acts of terror, 3,971 (43.9 percent) were committed in connection with grain procurements and only 891 acts of terror (9.1 percent) occurred in connection with collectivization.

In 1930, out of 13,794 acts of terror, only 1,402 (10.2 percent) were committed in connection with grain procurements and 7,885 (57.2 percent) occurred in connection with collectivization and dekulakization.

In 1929, out of 1,307 mass disturbances, 403 (30.7 percent) occurred in connection with grain procurements, 307 (23.5 percent) were related to religion, and only 86 (6.5 percent) occurred in connection with collectivization.

In 1930, out of 13,754 mass disturbances, only 456 (3.3 percent) were recorded in connection with meat and grain procurements, 1,487 (10.8 percent) in connection with religion, and 9,721 disturbances (70.6 percent) in connection with collectivization and dekulakization.

In 1930 the number of mass disturbances during three months (March, May, and June) was far greater than, and in April was almost equal to, the total number of individual acts of terror.

For nearly the entire year of 1930, terror, mass disturbances, and the circulation of antisoviet proclamations maintained a substantially higher level than during all previous years.

Only in December was the number of mass disturbances in 1930 lower than in 1929, but it was much higher than in 1928. The number of acts of terror in 1930 was lower than the 1929 level only in June, September, October, and November, and in regard to proclamations, in October, November, and December, respectively. If we follow individually the dynamics of each of the principal antisoviet manifestations in the countryside, we will discover considerable changes here as well.

In 1928–29 [economic year] the dynamics in terror and mass disturbances show a certain pattern, based on the principal content of the struggle in the countryside (“the struggle for grain”). The greatest increase in mass disturbances and terror took place during the development of grain procurements (September, October, November) and at the very end of the procurements. […] (April, May, June).

The year 1930 produced a pattern of antisoviet manifestations that differed considerably from all previous years: a large increase in mass disturbances, terror, and proclamations began right away in January and lasted in regard to mass disturbances until the beginning of April and in regard to terror until the beginning of May. Then a sharp decrease began in regard to all active mass antisoviet manifestations in the countryside.

The decline in mass disturbances lasted until October; in October the number of mass disturbances increased somewhat and in November and December dropped again to the 1929 level of disturbances.

A decline in terror after April lasted only three months (May-July), after which terror increased again, all the way until November (during these months, mostly in connection with grain procurements).

From September until the end of the year, the dynamics of antisoviet manifestations were identical, and the pattern of terror in 1930 coincided with that of 1929.

Note: A total of 63 mass disturbances, 22 of them in Siberia, were reported in 1926 and 1927 combined.

All told, more than 2,468,000 people participated in mass and group disturbances in the countryside in 1930, as opposed to 244,000 who participated in 1929. Among the mass disturbances, 176 were of an insurrectionary nature.

Note: This latter number consists only of armed disturbances that were staged under the slogan of the overthrow of Soviet power, were led by insurrectionary groups, and were accompanied by the dissolution of village soviets, the seizure of hostages, attempts to expand the territory covered by uprisings, and active resistance to the authorities. In addition, 55 armed uprisings around the Union were recorded in 1930 (Northern Caucasus Krai, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Trancaucasia, Central Asia, and elsewhere).

In 1,616 cases mass disturbances were accompanied by physical violence against members of the local government, communists, collective farmers, and soviet activists among the poor and middle peasantry. During these disturbances, according to data that are far from complete, there were 3,155 casualties, of whom 147 were killed, 212 were injured, and 2,796 were beaten up.

In 993 cases the disturbances were liquidated through the intervention of armed force (the militia, OGPU operational groups, detachments of communists, etc.). In most cases this intervention was confined to a demonstration of arms.

The terror in the Union's principal grain-growing areas shows a clear wrecking orientation in 1930. Against the background of a general rise in kulak terror in 1930, there were increases especially in the number of incidents in which fires were set to grain, forage, buildings, and other properties on collective farms and village activists' farms.

In addition to huts being set on fire, there has been a significant increase in other manifestations of kulak wrecking activities (damage to tractors and other agricultural inventory, crops, and livestock).

In April, property terror surpassed physical terror for the first time ever. Property terror then predominated for almost the entire course of 1930.

Only in the eastern national republics and oblasts (Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Transcaucasian SFSR, Tataria, Bashkiria, the Crimea, and the national areas of Northern Caucasus Krai) does physical terror predominate over property terror.

In 1929 acts of physical terror (assassinations, wounds, beatings, attempted murders) made up 64.1 percent of all recorded acts of terror across the Union as a whole, while acts of property terror made up 35.9 percent. In the USSR without the East, physical terror made up 60 percent, whereas property terror accounted for 40 percent; in the eastern national republics and oblasts physical terror made up 86 percent, property terror 14 percent.

In 1930, acts of physical terror accounted for 50 percent of all recorded acts of terror across the Union, and property terror made up the same share. In the USSR without the East, property terror made up 54.3 percent, whereas physical terror made up 45.7 percent of the total.

In the eastern national republics and oblasts, physical terror accounted for 74.1 percent of acts of terror, and property terror 25.9 percent.

Cases in which property, and grain in particular, was set on fire occurred on an especially massive scale in Ukraine (1,884 incidents), in the Central Black Earth Oblast (700 incidents), the Lower Volga Krai (383 incidents), in the Belorussian SSR (358 incidents), and the Urals (343 incidents).

Arson incidents in Ukraine destroyed more than 100,000 poods of grain. In Siberia, where arson incidents were not especially numerous in comparison with other areas of the Union, arson destroyed more than 68,000 poods of grain (including about 38,000 poods belonging to collective farms) and more than 100,000 poods of hay. Arson incidents at state farms, and at depots for machinery, seeds, and so forth became more frequent. By setting fire to collective-farm property, especially stockyards, machinery depots, and grain on collective farms, the kulak is pursuing a twofold objective: to undermine the economic foundation of collective farms and cause them to collapse and, on the other hand, to keep the entire active Soviet element in the countryside in constant fear of arson.

In a number of cases in the Ukrainian SSR, Leningrad Oblast, and the Central Black Earth Oblast, arson incidents were preceded by the circulation of anonymous notes with arson threats against certain individuals or an entire group of soviet activists and collective farmers.

In the village of Pichkiriaevo in Sasovo Raion, Moscow Oblast, fires and especially rumors spread by kulaks that “all activists will burn” terrorized the entire population so much that peasants went to sleep without getting undressed. In the village of Ostroluchie in Baryshevka Raion, Ukrainian SSR, kulaks circulated proclamations in September that said, “Whoever transports grain will be set afire or killed.”

The number of proclamations and anonymous notes threatening violence against soviet officials, collective farmers, and poor-peasant activists more than doubled in 1930 over 1929.

In 1929, 2,390 proclamations and anonymous notes being circulated (1,331 proclamations, 1,059 anonymous notes) were recorded.

In 1930, 5,156 proclamations and anonymous notes being circulated (3,512 proclamations, 1,644 anonymous notes) [were recorded].

It is noteworthy that the circulation of proclamations grew much more rapidly in 1930 than the circulation of anonymous notes. Proclamations were primarily of an anti-collective-farm and insurrectionary nature. Out of a total of 3,512 proclamations discovered, 1,250 (35.8 percent) were anti-collective farm and 1,078 (30.7 percent) contained calls for an uprising. The greatest number of insurrectionary proclamations were found between January and May and in November 1930: in January, 70 [were found]; February, 159; March, 281; April, 163; May, 100, and in November, 69, and in the following areas: Ukraine, 282; Northern Caucasus Krai, 185; Transcaucasia, 83; Kazakhstan, 75; Siberia (as a whole), 87; and the Urals, 48.

It should be noted that the number of proclamation authors who have been identified remains extremely low (in the range of 3–10 percent), and in certain areas it even declined from 1929.

In accordance with the main orientation of counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside to overthrow Soviet power by force of arms, the kulak slogans in proclamations have also changed noticeably. The kulak slogans are assuming a clearly counterrevolutionary substance and, in aggregate, provide a detailed program of kulak demands.

Kulak-insurrectionary and White Guard organizations that were uncovered in the Central Black Earth Oblast, the Lower Volga Krai, and a number of other oblasts are orienting their activities toward the possibility of weakening the fortitude of the VKP(b) and splitting it as a result of the struggle by the rightists and have borrowed certain opportunistic propositions from Bukharin for their program and for popularization among the masses.

Here are the most typical antisoviet kulak slogans in the proclamations that were discovered in 1930:

The areas hardest hit by antisoviet manifestations in 1930 were: the Ukrainian SSR, Northern Caucasus Krai, Central Black Earth Oblast, Lower Volga Krai, Middle Volga Krai, Siberia (as a whole), Tataria, Belorussia, the Urals, and Western Oblast. In regard to individual active antisoviet manifestations in the countryside, the following areas especially stand out:

The kulaks had a more or less constant ally only in a relatively small stratum of the well-to-do middle peasantry, which is a mouthpiece and purveyor of the kulak line at meetings and most of which follow the kulak slogans.

Since the kulak realizes that support from the well-to-do peasantry alone is not enough to achieve his counterrevolutionary objectives, he is doing everything he can to lure into the orbit of his influence, at least for a short time, more substantial groups of the middle peasantry and especially women, young people, corrupt Soviet officials who have been expelled from the VKP(b) and are “aggrieved” and unhappy with Soviet power, dé-classé elements, criminals, and poor peasants who are connected in one way or another with the kulaks (relatives, drunkards, etc.), recruiting from them their own cadres of “kulak followers” [podkulachniki].

The numerous excesses during collectivization and dekulakization in the spring of 1930 have given the kulak the opportunity to mobilize substantial groups of middle peasants for active antisoviet disturbances under anti-collective-farm slogans.

The unpopularity of overtly counterrevolutionary slogans among the masses of middle peasants forces the kulak to mask his actual objectives. Mass antisoviet disturbances by the peasantry (the main form of the mass antisoviet movement) are therefore organized under the pretext of fighting against the distortion of the class line in the implementation of grain procurements, taxes, and so forth, under the pretext of fighting the removal of church bells, the closing of churches, forced membership in collective farms, etc. The kulaks and other counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside try already during the disturbances to give them organized forms and a counterrevolutionary character.

Typically, the vast majority of mass disturbances began over a minor matter, but then in many cases proceeded under patently antisoviet slogans and grew into serious antisoviet disturbances. This transformation of minor disturbances [volynki] into active antisoviet disturbances occurred especially often in cases where the participants in the mass disturbances were predominantly women. Counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside already made wide use of women in mass disturbances in 1929. In 1930 the kulak devoted most of his attention in training cadres to pressure the backward masses of women in an antisoviet direction, relying on them as his main base of support in antisoviet activities. Of 1,307 mass disturbances in 1929, 486 had only female participants, and in 67 mass disturbances women predominated among the participants.

In 1930, according to data that are far from complete, more than 3,700 mass disturbances that consisted almost exclusively of female participants were recorded; in all of the other disturbances women were either the majority or a substantial percentage of the participants.

The role and participation of women in antisoviet activities in the countryside is continually rising. In the first half of the year 32 percent of the total number of mass disturbances had a predominance of women among the participants. In the second half of the year the percentage of female disturbances rose to 40 percent, reaching 54–55 percent in September and October.

Of the mass women's disturbances in the first half of 1930 (2,897), the majority [sic] were of an anti-collective-farm nature (1,154) and primarily took the form of the unauthorized divvying up of socialized livestock, seeds, and implements and the dismantling of collective farms; there were a significant number of mass disturbances based on religious factors (778), disturbances in defense of kulaks being dekulakized and exiled (422), and disturbances linked to food shortages (336).

In the second half of the year disturbances related to grain procurements made up 36 percent of the total; those related to dekulakization and restrictions on antisoviet elements, 20 percent; religious factors, 12 percent; food shortages, 10.7 percent; collectivization, 10 percent; and other disturbances, 10.3 percent.

Disturbances by women opposing grain procurements (resistance to inventories of property, to confiscation of grain, etc.) and the removal of, and restrictions on, kulaks and the antisoviet element, and disturbances based on religious factors were notable in many cases for their level of organization and the tenacity of resistance to local authorities and were accompanied by beatings of soviet officials and soviet activists and by the ransacking of village soviets and other public organizations and institutions (Central Black Earth Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Northern Caucasus Krai).

According to data that are far from complete, in the second six months of 1930 more than 50 mass women's disturbances were recorded that were marked by physical violence against local soviet and party officials, representatives of raion executive committees and raion party committees, members of commissions to aid in grain requisitioning, militiamen, activists among the poor peasantry, and against collective farmers. There were several incidents in which women would stage disturbances while armed with pitchforks, sticks, stakes, and knives, and the disturbances would last for several days; the women would set up guards to protect kulak property “against Soviet encroachment,” would set up “picket lines,” patrols, etc.

Typically, at the time of the women's disturbances, men would stay on the sidelines. A severe penalty for participating in mass disorders keeps men from taking part in the disturbances. On the assumption that “women are allowed to do anything, nothing will happen to women, they bear less responsibility,” men would merely incite women to take vigorous action, without intervening in the mob.

The excessive leniency of the punitive organs toward women who participate in antisoviet disturbances (often including kulak women) has helped to bolster the opinion that women go unpunished.

During a disturbance by women in the village of Antonovka in Buki Raion (Ukrainian SSR), the participants in a melee [volynka] shouted: “We aren't afraid of anybody, we've already been to the GPU and they didn't do anything to us and won't do anything.” During a disturbance in the village of Krasnoe, Nikolo-Pestrovsky Raion, in the Middle Volga Krai, women shouted: “Women [Baby], we won't give up church bells, nothing will happen to us for it.” In the German colony of Sonnental, Kropotkin Raion, in the Northern Caucasus Krai, women categorically banned men from joining the mob, declaring: “This is our peasant women's cause, you have no business interfering.”

Of the 307 women's disturbances for which the methods of quelling them are known, in 213 cases (68 percent) they were liquidated on the basis of explanations and persuasion of the participants; in 57 [cases] (15.5 percent), by meeting the participants' demands; and only in 40 (14 percent), by arresting the instigators and the active participants, and in 7 cases (2.0 percent), by the use of armed force: 5 in Ukraine and 1 each in the Central Black Earth Oblast and the Northern Caucasus Krai.

In several villages almost no campaign (agricultural taxes, self-taxation, grain procurements) goes by without melees [volynki] or attempts to disrupt meetings or plenums of village soviets, and the most active role in all this is played by women. In the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, Western Oblast, and a number of other areas, a large number of meetings on grain procurements, self-taxation, and so forth have been recorded that were disrupted by women. In several villages men have stopped going to such meetings altogether, sending women instead—“They're a little more forceful, a little louder.”

In their effort to bring women under their influence, kulaks and anti-soviet elements make skillful use of the church by working on religious women through a priest, through parasitical nuns who hang around the church, through women who command authority among the masses— wives of kulaks, well-to-do peasants, and antisoviet elements.

A kind of women's aktiv of “leaders” has emerged from the milieu of kulak women, and all the women in the countryside listen to them. By strengthening their influence on women, antisoviet elements also influenced, through the women, the male segment of the poor and middle peasantry.

In Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Lower Volga Krai, and other areas, a large number of cases have been recorded where antisoviet elements have subverted collective farms with the aid of women. By using their wives or a priest to scare poor-peasant women and middle-peasant women with the horrors of collectivization, kulaks kept poor and middle peasants from organizing collective farms and from joining them.

Until 1930 women in the antisoviet movement participated almost exclusively in “melees” [volynki] (mass disturbances). In 1930 and especially in the second half of the year, women were lured into antisoviet groups, and kulak women took part in acts of arson and wrecking (Lower Volga Krai, Middle Volga Krai, Western Siberia).

The women in antisoviet kulak groups and organizations are primarily members of kulak and well-to-do families, but among participants in religious antisoviet groups there are also quite a few middle-peasant women and poor-peasant women. Female members of antisoviet groups are used to spread every possible kind of antisoviet and provocative rumor, to discredit local officials, and to subvert collective farms (Central Black Earth Oblast, Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, Bashkir ASSR). Women were also used as liaisons between members of groups and organizations (Middle Volga Krai, Central Black Earth Oblast).

In their struggle against the policies of Soviet power, the kulaks and other counterrevolutionary elements in the countryside are also seeking a support base among young people. Kulak youth, members of clergymen's families, and disfranchised persons are especially favorable resources from which to form new counterrevolutionary cadres.

Kulak youth, who lack political rights and are economically restricted, are implacably hostile toward Soviet power and represent a ready-made reserve for counterrevolutionary work in the countryside. Some of the young people in rural social-class strata that are close to us—the poor peasantry and the middle peasantry—are also being lured into counterrevolutionary work. These people are initially enticed in a drunken environment, through groups of young hooligan types; this is followed by political hooliganism, terror, and other active counterrevolutionary manifestations.

The kulak does everything he can to encourage the “daring” of the hooligan groups, finding them to be ready executors of their wrecking, pogromist, and terrorist schemes.

Fascist and Black Hundred tendencies are noticeably growing and intensifying among kulak youth, and especially among young people from families of bourgeois specialists, intelligentsia, and among déclassé elements.

Counterrevolutionary cadres from among young people are being formed at a rather fast pace. In the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, for example, 56 young people have been repressed, including 24 former members of the VLKSM, mostly for terrorist activities, participation in antisoviet groups, and circulating proclamations. In Tataria, 190 of the 577 people who were on file as antisoviet elements as of 1 January 1931 were young people under 25 years of age. Roughly the same situation prevails in the other areas of the Union. In the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, youth groups have been uncovered that were circulating antisoviet proclamations, preparing acts of terror (Rybinsk Raion), and terrorizing young Komsomol members. In Nekouz Raion, a youth group was preparing [to carry out] an expropriation, for which it was stocking up weapons, engaged in active anti-collective-farm agitation, and issued 48 antisoviet proclamations. The antisoviet activities of young people are mostly oriented toward terror, political hooliganism, the formation of terrorist groups, and the circulation of antisoviet proclamations. Acts of terror perpetrated by young people have been recorded in the Urals, the Western Oblast, the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, the Belorussian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR, Nizhny Novgorod Krai, the Central Black Earth Oblast, Tataria, and a number of other oblasts and krais.

Kulaks have sometimes incited children to carry out wrecking activities and acts of arson on the assumption that an act of arson committed by a child will be regarded as a routine “prank,” and the investigative organs will not look for the instigator (Ivanovo Industrial Oblast, Ukrainian SSR).

Lately young people have begun to take an active part in mass disturbances and are the most active element during disorders. Disturbances in which young people were the primary participants have been recorded in the Central Black Earth Oblast and in Ukraine.

In 1930, especially the second half of the year, acts of terror by common criminals who had been bribed or induced to get drunk became more frequent (Leningrad Oblast, the Ukrainian SSR, the Urals, Central Black Earth Oblast, Northern Caucasus Krai, and elsewhere).

Now that they have organized and rallied common criminal and bandit elements around themselves as a force suitable for the constant terrorizing of the poor-peasant aktiv, collective farmers, and Soviet officials, kulaks have used this “kulak guard” of sorts in a number of cases to destroy collective farms and Soviet institutions and have perpetrated atrocious acts of violence against local activists.

Many of the acts of arson were carried out with the provocative goal of framing communists, poor-peasant activists, and collective farmers. By accusing them of arson, kulaks stirred up an aroused mob against them.

There were cases in which kulak arsonists and criminal elements and kulak followers bribed by the kulaks did all they could to obstruct the extinguishing of fires at collective farms and farms of soviet officials and communists.

In the village of Aleshkino in the former Buguruslan Okrug, Middle Volga Krai, acts of arson on 13 August destroyed 12 collective-farm houses, 5 former kulak houses in which poor collective farmers were living, a public yard, a granary in which more than 1,000 poods of grain was destroyed, and 51 buildings belonging to individual peasants. During the fire, kulaks (primarily dekulakized kulaks who had fled from exile) and common criminals prevented collective farmers from putting out the fire and beat up the chairman of the village soviet and several collective farmers.

In the settlement of Bereznoe in the former Chernigov Okrug, Ukrainian SSR, common criminals incited by kulaks set fire to a collective farmer's buildings on 31 July; when the collective-farm chairman and his father arrived at the site of the blaze, shots were fired at them. The collective farmer's father died of his wound.

Degenerate elements from among former Red partisans, people expelled from the VKP(b), and the rural intelligentsia play a significant role in kulak groups and organizations and often become leaders of the groups and of counterrevolutionary organizations. Persons expelled from the VKP(b), teachers, agronomists, and rural doctors from alien strata of the rural intelligentsia often become ideologists of the kulak movement, providing political formulations for the counterrevolutionary movement in the countryside.

The kulak made wide and skillful use of the distortions and excesses in grain procurements that were numerous at that time in almost every principal grain-growing area, the bungling and the distortions of the government line by the local apparatus in closing down churches, removing church bells, etc. Nevertheless, the kulak managed to attract only the most well-to-do strata of the countryside and to obtain brief (until the distortions were rectified and the excesses liquidated) support only in certain circumstances (mass disturbances) from more or less substantial masses of poor and middle peasants.

The kulaks' methods of struggle have varied and have become increasingly diverse, depending on the general situation.

By the end of 1929, increased agitation to refuse to deliver grain was already accompanied by nearly overt insurrectionary agitation and calls to disobey Soviet power. Kulak groups that were operating regularly were developing more and more often, in regard to the form and content of their work, into counterrevolutionary organizations that in some places spread the sphere of their influence far beyond the boundaries of “their” village, stanitsa [Cossack settlement], or aul [Central Asian or Caucasus settlement] (especially in the Northern Caucasus Krai, Lower Volga Krai, Siberia, and Kazakhstan). Practically speaking, the kulaks' activities, in addition to daily antisoviet agitation, boiled down to a number of measures to disrupt economic activities in the countryside; to attempt to disorganize the grain market; to destroy and squander their grain, livestock, and inventory; and to sabotage the sowing campaign. The counterrevolutionary elements that were partly smashed during the grain procurements period were rebuilding their ranks and refining their slogans, making them more comprehensible and “closer” to the masses and focusing on the struggle against collectivization. The kulak was not only becoming conscious of his class identity but concluded that his liquidation in connection with collectivization was inevitable and therefore embarked quite definitely on a path of active counterrevolutionary activities. “I know you can brutally punish me. It's up to you. Either way, the kulak is finished,” said one of the arrested initiators of a mass disturbance in Lower Volga Krai.

In addition to an open struggle against Soviet power by means of systematic preparation of counterrevolutionary cadres, with attempts to lure the middle peasant into the movement, the kulak was attempting with increasing persistence to worm his way into collective farms and the soviet apparatus in order to subvert them and “blow them up” from within. By the end of 1929 the kulaks were already displaying certain tendencies to shut down their farms; some of the befuddled kulaks were giving away and “writing off” their agricultural machinery to KKOVs [Committees for Peasants' Mutual Social Assistance], collective farms, village soviets, counting on the recipients to defend them as “conscientious, repentant kulaks,” and seeking through these peculiar kinds of bribes to infiltrate collective farms and wait until the “wicked times” are over.

In January and February, as collectivization and dekulakization measures unfolded, the kulaks' tendencies to cut back and liquidate sharply increased. The kulak hastily liquidated his farms, ruinously annihilating livestock, frequently destroying grain and agricultural equipment like wreckers, and fled from his raion, oblast, or krai.

The kulaks have fled in the greatest numbers in the Middle Volga Krai, Lower Volga Krai, Northern Caucasus Krai, Central Black Earth Oblast, Siberia, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR, and the Western Oblast. At the same time there has been a revival of the emigration movement among the kulak and well-to-do peasant echelons of the German population in a number of areas of the Union; the tendencies of kulaks to flee abroad from the Ukraine and the Belorussian SSR have increased; and emigration in the border zones of Armenia and Turkmenistan and in Kazakhstan and the Far Eastern Krai has increased. Kulaks fleeing to other areas of the Union headed mostly to Siberia and Central Asia. The kulaks who remained within their own krai made off for the woods, the mountains, the taiga, and the hills (Northern Caucasus Krai, Transcaucasia, Ukraine, Central Black Earth Oblast, Middle Volga Krai, Siberia, Far Eastern Krai, Kazakhstan), thereby creating a solid base for bandit formations.

A large portion of the fleeing kulaks tried to get jobs in the cities or in forestry. In the Middle Volga Krai, the Northern Caucasus Krai, and the Lower Volga Krai during this period, a significant number of kulaks infiltrated institutions and especially enterprises. The kulaks who moved to the cities displayed a high level of antisoviet activity there with regard to subversive work among workers in the Middle Volga Krai. At the same time the kulaks are trying with even greater persistence to infiltrate collective farms (during this period there were numerous divorces in kulak families, separations from fathers and relatives, daughters married off to poor peasants, landless laborers, and so forth).

The excesses in collectivization and the distortion of the class line in dekulakization, which had become widespread by February and stirred serious discontent among substantial masses of the middle peasantry, created a favorable atmosphere for the kulak to develop counterrevolutionary work.

After the kulak recovered once and for all from his temporary befuddlement, he launched a counteroffensive in a whole host of areas, organizing resistance to the measures that were being carried out.

The kulaks' antisoviet activities proceeded in three directions: (a) organizing an outright insurrectionary movement; (b) demoralization of the collective-farm movement and (c) a well-tested method—economic sabotage and “a hunger siege of the cities.”

Anti-collective-farm agitation took on a mass scale. Agitation against collective farms was conducted almost overtly at meetings. Cases in which kulak and antisoviet elements called illegal meetings and gatherings and raised the question of the struggle against the collective farms became more frequent. Substantial groups of poor and middle peasants often participated in the meetings. Numerous cases were recorded in which meetings devoted to collectivization and dekulakization were disrupted. Kulaks made the rounds of poor and middle peasants' houses and conducted agitation among them against collective farms, called for active opposition to collectivization and dekulakization, and tried to persuade collective farmers to quit collective farms, scaring them with the specter of an impending war and retribution of collective farmers should Soviet power fall.

In Ukraine, Moscow Oblast, and the Lower Volga Krai, in order to discredit collective farms, kulaks sent their followers as agents to neighboring villages posing as indigent collective farmers who have been brought to ruin, so as to agitate against collectivization. The circulation of provocative rumors is accompanied at times by overt calls to resist the authorities and to commit violence against communists and activists. In a handful of places kulak and bai [Central Asian landowner] elements carried out raids on poor-peasant meetings.

The clergy and sectarians joined the kulaks' antisoviet struggle on a wide scale. There were a whole host of cases in which priests conducted antisoviet agitation in churches. In a number of instances sectarians openly proposed banishing Komsomol members and communists from the village.

Even before articles and government decrees on collectivization and dekulakization appeared in the press, livestock began to be slaughtered and squandered everywhere on a mass scale not only by kulak and well-to-do strata of the peasantry, but also by a substantial part of the middle peasantry. By spreading rumors that absolutely all livestock would be taken away from individual peasants [and given to the] collective farms, the kulak achieved considerable success in carrying out economic sabotage in the countryside.

During this period the kulaks and other counterrevolutionary elements began to bunch up more intensively, and kulak groups and organizations were quickly forming and developing, often covering several villages, stanitsas, and auls.

The March-April period was marked by a shift by the kulaks and counterrevolutionaries in a number of oblasts to an open armed struggle against the soviets. In the Central Black Earth Oblast, in Ukraine, in the Northern Caucasus Krai, in Transcaucasia, in the Lower Volga Krai, in the Belorussian SSR, in Moscow Oblast, in Siberia, the Far Eastern Krai, Buriato-Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, kulaks and antisoviet elements in a number of instances made attempts, not without success, to coordinate individual local disturbances with the insurrectionary movement of entire raions, to link bandit and insurrectionary disturbances with melees [volynki] in connection with discontent over excesses, and to make them distinctly counterrevolutionary in nature.

A very strained situation developed on Soviet borders in the Ukrainian SSR, the Belorussian SSR, Transcaucasia, in Buriat-Mongolia, Oirotia, the Far Eastern Krai, and Kazakhstan.

In a whole series of raions [located in] the border okrugs of Ukraine, village soviets were dissolved or they dispersed, and Soviet power, in effect, did not exist for several days. In four okrugs alone—Shepetovka, Volynka, Berdichev, and Korosten—282 village soviets were not operating. In Mozyr Okrug, Belorussian SSR, participants in disturbances put up tenacious resistance even to [OGPU] operational detachments. In the republics of Transcaucasia and Buriat-Mongolia, the insurrectionary-bandit movement became protracted.

In a number of instances the local soviet apparatus and rural activists displayed an extreme lack of fortitude and fled from areas in which insurrectionary bands are active. There were cases in Ukraine when armed detachments of communists and local soviet officials fled under pressure from a mob (a detachment of 50 armed communists disgracefully fled the village of Berezovka in Shepetovka Raion). There were numerous instances during disturbances where militiamen, local officials, and activists were disarmed. The participants in the disturbances set up kulak “picket lines,” patrols, and guard posts, and in a number of cases people staging disturbances took local officials hostage.

In individual cases the mob elected new village soviets and restored the institution of elders. There were incidents in which mobs set fire or ransacked the facilities of village soviets and activists' apartments. In a number of cases (Central Black Earth Oblast, Moscow Oblast, Belorussian SSR, Ukraine) participants in disturbances carried black, red—with anti-soviet slogans—white, and blue flags, with SVU

This is a reference to the Union for a Free Ukraine (Soiuz osvobozhdeniia Ukrainy or Spilka vizvoleniia Ukraini), formed in early August 1914 in Lvov and dissolved in summer 1918. See TSD , vol. 2, p. 842, n164 for further information.

slogans, Ukrainian SSR flags, and monarchist, and SR [Socialist Revolutionary]

SR refers to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, a party representing the peasantry in 1917 and earlier.

slogans. The kulaks, adapting to the attitudes of the masses, trotted out the slogan of “pure Soviet power.”

Among the active participants and leaders of the insurrectionary-bandit movement in the border zone were members of Polish religious groups, former officers under Petliura's command, a Polish agent, and so forth (Ukrainian SSR).

The activities and tactics of counterrevolutionary organizations during the above period contained the following typical features:

The CC decree, the appearance of Comrade Stalin's well-known articles, and the decisive correction of mistakes of individual organizations in collectivization pulled the ground out from under the kulak and forced him to change tactics. The middle peasantry, which reacted positively to the party's aforementioned measures, refused to follow the kulak's overtly counterrevolutionary slogans, and melees declined from month to month. The kulak still attempted after March to cling to his positions, making use of the local organizations' sluggishness in straightening out their line and correcting mistakes, but with less and less success.

Taking advantage of the confusion in many places of the lower apparatus over the appearance of Stalin's articles, the kulaks attempted to use the policy of correcting excesses as a pretext to subvert collective farms by spreading rumors that the party and Soviet power had abandoned collectivization and were liquidating collective farms.

In May and June there was an intensification of the movement for the return of kulak property seized during dekulakization, and for the restoration of voting rights to antisoviet kulak elements.

Kulaks, without permission but with the connivance, and sometimes assistance, of village soviets, often occupy the houses seized from them, expelling poor peasants or cultural organizations from them (Central Black Earth Oblast, Ukrainian SSR).

The rejection by local authorities of measures to return kulaks who have fled from exile and settlements located in out-of-the-way fields [beyond the collective farms] was utilized by kulaks for agitation and to spread rumors of “the capitulation of Soviet power to the kulaks,” and they attributed it to the supposedly forthcoming war with Poland and Romania. The remnants of the shattered aktiv of counterrevolutionary cadres went deep underground, reorganized themselves, and while curtailing their work “on the surface,” attempted to reassemble their aktiv.

Groups and counterrevolutionary organizations conspired deep underground and, unlike in the spring, cautiously recruited supporters in preparation for a decisive, new outburst, which was timed for the launch of grain procurements, and then for spring 1931. The aktiv of these groups and organizations, while doing all they could to disguise themselves and in most cases personally refraining from taking any actions, carried out their subversive work against all Soviet measures in the countryside through their cadres of kulak followers among poor peasants, middle-peasant relatives who had been subjected to the necessary pressure and were anti-soviet-minded, and dekulakized and exiled kulaks.

The kulaks' attempts to resume counterrevolutionary work during the period of grain procurements (increasing mass disturbances and terror) were not the main line of the struggle of the active cadres of the counterrevolution. The main leadership role here is played by the well-to-do peasantry.

The main cadres of the counterrevolution, as was shown by investigations of a number of liquidated organizations in the Northern Caucasus Krai, the Central Black Earth Oblast, the Middle Volga Krai, Siberia, and other areas, took account of their spring defeat, avoided local disturbances, and did preparatory work, under the guideline “don't repeat the mistakes of the spring,” [calling] for a simultaneous outburst at the time of the expected [foreign] intervention or the exacerbation of the country's domestic situation.

It is worth taking note of the strong class cohesion and strict discipline in a number of liquidated groups and organizations.

A meeting of a kulak-SR group in the former Balashov Okrug of the Lower Volga Krai issued a resolution on “the physical destruction of traitors.” A kulak-insurrectionary group that was liquidated in Maksatikha Raion, Moscow Oblast, systematically harassed kulaks who refused to participate in the group's work. A false denunciation was made against a disfranchised person who refused to work in the group. The person who refused was given to understand that if he was disfranchised, then he had to work together with all the kulaks against Soviet power.

The leaders of a liquidated counterrevolutionary organization in the former Orenburg Okrug of the Middle Volga Krai attempted to link up with the city and with the Red Army. “We realized,” said one of the arrested ringleaders of the organization, “that by ourselves we were not an organized force, and only the urban population could organize us. We were relying mainly on the Red Army, we tried to set up ties with troops since we wouldn't be able to do anything without troop units.” Similar attempts to link up with the Red Army were reported in the Ukraine, in Siberia, in the Northern Caucasus Krai, and other oblasts.

The Muslim clergy in the national oblasts of the Northern Caucasus Krai has been very active in organizing antisoviet groups.

In the Middle Volga Krai, counterrevolutionary groups and organizations were uncovered inside collective farms that had been contaminated by class-alien and counterrevolutionary elements. Under the cover of the collective farm these groups were organizing and consolidating their cadres both inside and outside collective farms.

In recent months all sorts of provocative rumors circulated widely, rumors to the effect that “forced collectivization” would be repeated, that “individual middle peasants would be dekulakized” [rasseredniachivanie], that “absolutely all Cossacks would be exiled” from Cossack areas, etc. The rumors were designed to exacerbate the discontent of the broad masses of the population—rumors of approaching war, [foreign] intervention, and a general uprising—in order to disorganize collective farmers, the soviet aktiv, and poor peasants.

One can judge how serious and dangerous this type of agitation is (especially given the absence of sufficiently timely and accurate information and mass explanatory work in the countryside) by the fact that in the Lower Volga Krai, for example, the influx of people into collective farms in a number of raions stopped and intimidated poor and middle peasants started to quit collective farms; in the Northern Caucasus Krai, not only well-to-do strata, but also a significant portion of middle and poor Cossack peasants began to flee on a mass scale from their settlements (more than 10,000 families fled in four months); everywhere, the destruction and squandering of livestock, including work animals, took on a mass scale, largely under the influence of provocative kulak agitation; in the national oblasts of the Northern Caucasus Krai, rumors of an uprising to come in the spring circulated widely and were acknowledged by a large portion of the mountain population; similar rumors (rumors of a basmach [Central Asian counterrevolutionary] movement) circulated widely in the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan.

OGPU Secret Political Department deputy director Zaporozhets

Division 2 Operations plenipotentiary Ivanov