Top Secret KGB Report

Petr Ivashutin, Top Secret KGB Report. June 1, 1962

From: Deputy Chairman of the KGB, Council of Ministers of the USSR, Petr Ivashutin
To: Members of the Presidum and Secretaries of the CPSU
Date: June 1, 1962

Special folder
Top Secret

I report on the reaction of the population to the decision of the CC CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers on the slight increase in prices for meat, meat products and butter.

The country has generally understood the decision correctly. The thrust of statements endorsing the decision of the Soviet Government is that market prices will be cut and that the increased supply of meat and dairy products in stores will ensure supplies for the population.

In the second half of June 1 this sentiment in many cities (Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, Minsk, Gorky, and others) became prevalent.

The rural population especially endorsed the decision of the Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers.

Soviet citizens also appreciate the forthright and candid explanation of the need to raise prices to the people. "

However, there have also been undesirable reactions. <...> Some cities witnessed the appearance of individual cases of anti-Soviet leaflets and posters.

In particular, in Moscow on Gorky Street one perpetrator glued a leaflet to a housewith the words "Today price increases, and what awaits us tomorrow."

On Sirenevii Boulevard there leaflets calling for the workers "to fight fortheir rights and lower prices."

The platform of Victory Station of the Kiev railway was inflicted with an inscription with slanderous fabrications about the Soviet government and a deman to reduce prices on products.

On a telegraph pole in the city of Donetsk leaflet was pasted with the words: "We are deceived and lied to. We will fight for justice."

Similar content was discovered on a poster at the miningequipment factory in Dnepropetrovsk.

The appearance of anti-Soviet leaflets, there is also in the cities Pavlovo-Posada and Zagorsk, Moscow Region and one of the leaflets in the Lenin district of Leningrad.

Karpov, a worker at Company PO Box 20 in the city of Vyborg, born 1935 year, non-Party, at 8 AM pinned a button on his chest saying "Down with the new prices." He tried to walk around the city with this button. But he was soon arrested by troops.

There have also been anti-Soviet statements.

Workers of electric train plant in Novocherkassk (about 200) stopped work at 10 AM and demanded raises. Despite ttempts to educate them, at 11AM during lunch hour, they went to the plant administration to express the same demands. On the way to the workers joined up with a crowd, and around 1000 workers concentrated around the administration building, essentially closing down the factory.At 12 o'clock hooligans from the crowd dismantled a fence and blocked a passenger train en route from Saratov to Rostov. They took driver, who refused to give blow the alarm signal, out of the train, and began to do it themselves. Soon about 2000 people gathered around the train. Banners appeared on the train saying: "Meat, butter, higher wages." The crowd had not dispersed by 4PM and pickets blocked the movement of trains. Around 4PM the train managed to reach the station Lokomotivstroi, three kilometers from the plant.

As a result of educational work by party activists and Communists, the crowd began to disperse in small groups around 4PM, but then the second shift factory also stopped work. Some of the workers joined the strike. Educational work continues. <...>

Source:Novocherkasskaia tragediia, 2007. Translated by James von Geldern