Il'ich Kolkhoz, Letter to the Krest'ianskaia Gazeta. May 2, 1938

A kolkhoz board's appeal to Krest'ianskaia Gazeta blames crop failures on wreckers entrenched at the local MTS and their raion protectors — a typical deflection. The letter reflects chronic friction between kolkhozes and machine-tractor stations, whose employees enjoyed privileged status: guaranteed wages, separate accounting, and funds billed directly back to the kolkhoz.

Original Source: RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 36, ll. 15-16. Corrected, certified copy.

Krest'ianskaia Gazeta

Help the kolkhozes of the Khlebnitskii Village Soviet and the Rozhnovskii Village Soviet to unmask our mortal enemies and wreckers who have settled in at the Gorskaia MTS of the Il'inskii RIK in Ivanovo Oblast, and at the same time their protectors all of the raion organizations of the Il'inskii RIK in Ivanovo Oblast.

What happened was that the spring plowing and planting in our area began on 15 April, and there are no tractors on the fields to this day 2 May. And no word about when we will get them. In 1937 the worst sort of wrecking flourished at our Gorskaia MTS and the Il'inskii Raion Executive Committee. Based on an alarm sent to the newspaper Pravda the wreckers were unmasked and incurred the punishment they deserved from 10 to 5 years in prison and were ousted from their jobs. The population was able to breathe freely, the wreckers were gone, but the spring of '38 brought them back. They have felled trees, heaps of suckers have come out of the roots, there are more wreckers and they are worse than in '37. The stock of tractors was left in the fields in the local villages, and they just stood there all winter, and some of the machines got all rusted. The same wreckers filched and pilfered them and only in the second half of February and in March did the MTS start think about repairs and taking the motors apart. They removed them from the tractor to send them off for repairs.

And when the kolkhoz boards started saying at meetings see the kolkhozes have repaired their equipment but the MTS ruined the spring planting, the raion organizations the MTS of the raion executive committee and the village soviets made a vow that everything will be ready on time, and it ended up the other way around, and when the kolkhozes asked the Gorskaia MTS why there were no tractors, the latter replied that the tractors were under repair, and when they come out we will bring them to you, but you should plow with horses, and plant by hand and take the old mama scythe out of the museum and work with that.

On the basis of the foregoing we request that you urgently untangle this mess with the wreckers at the Gorskaia MTS and Il'inskii Raion, which are covering up and hushing up all the acts of wrecking and laying waste to the kolkhoz stock of horses. They are wearing out the horses which are already weak as it is with overwork, dragging out the sowing indefinitely. They have ruined all the plans for spring work. Is this abomination going to continue much longer, the kolkhoz boards and kolkhoz farmers are outraged and demand an investigation.

Chairman of the Il'ich Kolkhoz Khalistov

Bookkeeper (signature)

Source: Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), Document 110.