GRAND THEATER REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN STALIN’S RUSSIA, 1931–1941
LARRY E. HOLMES
Grand Theater
Grand Theater Regional Governance in Stalin’s Russia, 1931–1941 Larry E. Holmes
LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holmes, Larry E. (Larry Eugene), 1942Grand theater : regional governance in Stalin’s Russia, 1931-1941 / Larry E. Holmes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-3591-4 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-3593-8 (electronic) 1. Bureaucracy--Soviet Union--History. 2. Regionalism--Soviet Union--History. 3. Soviet Union--Politics and government. I. Title. JN6547.H65 2009 379.47--dc22 2009007671 Printed in the United States of America
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For Marsha
Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Note on Transliteration and Abbreviations
xi
Districts in the Kirov Region, 1935
xiii
Map of Kirov Region, 1935
xv
Preface
xvii
Introduction
1
1
A Script of Perfection, Failure, Blame
25
2
Ascent into Darkness: Escalating Negativity, 1931–1941
39
3
A Symbiosis of Errors: The Personal, Professional, and Political, 1931–1938
63
4
The Art of Complaint, 1931–1938
91
5
Power to the People and to the State: Great Performances by V. P. Bulygina and E. T. Chernykh
107
“My Friend, I’ve Hit Rock Bottom”: Politics and Friendship
129
A Tragedy: The Terror
151
Degeneration of the Symbiosis of Errors, 1938–1941
177
6 7 8
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9 10
Contents
“Stop This Petty Tyranny”: Letters and The Administration of Schools in Falenki, 1940–1941
191
Proprietary Professionalism: Mine by Right, 1938–1941
205
Conclusion
229
Bibliography
241
Index
249
About the Author
257
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to the librarians at the Herzen State Public Library in Kirov and to the archivists at the State Archive of the Kirov Region for their assistance and advice. I recall with special pleasure the reading room of the State Archive for the Social and Political History of the Kirov Region with its row of windows looking out at the Viatka River, a splendid sight to behold especially in the spring when the ice melts and the ice flow begins. I am especially appreciative of the warm hospitality shown by its archivists. They helped make the study of their city and region a distinct pleasure. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Research for this book has been supported by the University of South Alabama; the University of Illinois Russia, East European, and Eurasian Summer Research Laboratory; the Kennan Institute; the American Council of Teachers of Russian; the Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad program; and the International Research and Exchanges Board (with funds from the United States Department of State through the Title VIII Program and the National Endowment of the Humanities). A number of people have kindly read and perceptively commented on one or more of the chapters: Elena Nikolaevna Chudinovskikh, Vladimir Sergeevich Zharavin, Nadezhda Pavlovna Gurianova, Tatiana Aleksandrovna Titova, Ben Eklof, Tom Ewing, Emily Johnson, Aaron Retish, Andy Byford, Polly Jones, Golfo Alexopoulos, and Ted Uldricks. I am indebted to my colleagues at the University of South Alabama for many hours of stimulating discussion of historical methodology, to Keith Holmes for technical assistance, and to Julie Kirsch at Lexington Books for her patience and advice.
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Acknowledgments
Nikolai Vasil’evich Kotriakhov, Konstantin Ivanovich Novikov, Ol’ga Anatol’evna Malina, Svetlana Borisovna Shutova, and Father Sergii Gamaiunov have enriched my life during my lengthy stays in Kirov. Several chapters have appeared in print in abbreviated form: chapter two, “Ascent into Darkness,” in History of Education (UK) 35, no. 4 (July 2006), and chapter three, “A Symbiosis of Errors,” in Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia, edited by Lewis Siegelbaum (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). I am grateful to Taylor & Francis Group and Palgrave Macmillan for permission to use this material here. The website for History of Education may be found at www.informaworld.com. Marsha Hobbs has stood by me during my prolonged absences while working on this book. Her love and patience are greatly appreciated. All errors of fact and judgment are, of course, exclusively mine. Larry E. Holmes Professor Emeritus of History University of South Alabama
Note on Transliteration and Abbreviations
I have used the Library of Congress transliteration system with several exceptions. Some places and proper names are rendered as they usually appear in English. In the reference notes, I use the following abbreviations when citing Russian archival materials: f. for collection (fond), op. for inventory (opis’), l/s for personnel inventory (lichnyi sostav), d. for file or folder (delo), l. and ll. for folio and folios (list and listy), and ob. for verso (oborot).
xi
Districts in the Kirov Region, 1935
Districts (raions) are listed in alphabetical order and with the location and distance in kilometers (km.) from the city of Kirov. This list does not include the twenty-seven districts located in the Udmurtiia Autonomous Republic, which, although a part of the Kirov region in 1935, became an independent administrative entity in December 1936. It does include four districts located in the extreme southeast corner of the region beyond the Udmurtiia Republic and more than 310 km. from Kirov. These four (Votkinsk, Kiiasovo, Karakulino, and Sarapul) were transferred to the Udmurtiia Republic in December 1936. Arbazh, 204 km. southwest Afanas’evo (see Ziuzdino below) Belaia Kholunitsa, 82 km. east Beloe, 205 km. southeast (now in Falenki) Biserovo, 275 km. east (now in Afanas’evo) Bogorodskoe, 127 km. southeast Chernovskoe, 204 km. west (now in Shabalino) Darovskoi, 184 km. west Falenki, 151 km. east Iaransk, 213 km. southwest Iur’ia, 68 km. north Kai, 290 km. northeast (now in Verkhnekamsk) Karakulino, in the region’s southeast corner beyond the Udmurt Republic Kichma, 210 km. south (now in Sovetsk) Kiiasovo, in the region’s southeast corner beyond the Udmurt Republic Khalturin 77 km. west (now Orlov)
xiii
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Districts in the Kirov Region, 1935
Kiknur, 301 km. southwest Kil’mez’, 259 km. south Kotel’nich, 124 km. southwest Kumeny, 62 km. south Kyrchany, 120 km. south (now in Nolinsk) Lebiazh’e, 178 km. south Makar’e, 100 km. west (now in Kotel’nich) Malmyzh, 294 km. south Murashi, 118 km. north Nagorsk, 130 km. south Nema, 144 km. southeast Nolinsk, 137 km. south Omutninsk, 190 km. east Orichi, 50 km. southwest Pizhanka, 172 km. south Polom, 100 km. northeast (now in Belaia Kholunitsa) Prosnitsa, 70 km. southeast (now in Kirovo-Chepetsk) Salobeliak, 200 km. southwest (now in Iaransk) Sanchursk, 284 km. southwest Sarapul, in the region’s southeast corner beyond the Udmurt Republic Shabalino, 204 km. west Sharanga, 320 km. southwest (in 1960 transferred to Gorky, now Nizhnii Novgorod, province) Shestakovo, 70 km. northeast (now in Slobodskoi) Shurma, 205 km. south (now in Urzhum) Slobodskoi, 35 km. northeast Sovetsk, 140 km. south Suna, 92 km. south Svecha, 176 km. west Tataurovo, 90 km. south (now in Nolinsk) Tuzha, 219 km. Uni, 189 km. southeast Urzhum, 195 km. south Verkhoshizhem’e, 85 km. south Verkhovino, 70 km. north (now in Iur’ia) Viatskie Poliany, 350 km. south Votkinsk, in the region’s southeast corner beyond the Udmurt Republic Vozhgaly, 60 km. southeast (now in Kumeny) Ziuzdino, 251 km. east (renamed Afanas’evo in the late 1930s) Zuevka, 120 km. east
Map of Kirov Region, 1935
xv
Preface: The Wealth of Regional History
Provincial history should not be seen, as it so often is, as virgin territory for an apprenticeship represented by the Ph.D. thesis or the doctorat, or as a kind of faraway summer lightning, whose flashes cast a distant illumination on central events in Paris. —Donald Sutherland, “The Revolution in the Provinces: Class or Counterrevolution?”
Commenting on a study of the Saratov region in Russia from 1590 to 1917, Allan Wildman observed that a regional focus “lends an element of concreteness to important relationships that cannot be ascertained on a national scale.” It can lead, he added, to the discovery of “many unsuspected new truths and achieve more precise understandings of old ones.”1 In his “a manifesto for local history,” the French historian, Robert Leuillot insisted that such history seeks what otherwise defies the historian’s grasp—“an intimate knowledge of the actual practices, the invisible aspects of daily life.”2 “It is not what,” wrote the Russian regional historian, S. M. Kashtanov, “but how something is studied” that makes any subject, including a regional study, transcend antiquarian interest.3 Precisely in that spirit, Donald Raleigh recently used Saratov in the relatively confined chronological period of 1917 to 1922 to convincingly demonstrate on a much larger geographical and chronological scale the unlikelihood of a Bolshevik alternative to Stalinism.4 This present study of Stalinist governance would have been impossible to conceive let alone implement without the advantages provided by a regional focus. That focus allows unforeseen insights into the functioning of Stalinist bureaucracy, brings a new understanding of center-periphery relations, and reveals in new ways the role of individuals in what has heretofore been xvii
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largely regarded, when beyond the Kremlin’s inner circle, as a highly impersonal system. It also affords an opportunity as no other approach can to examine the reciprocal relationship between ideology and the formation of policy, on the one hand, and actual administrative practices, on the other. In Stalin’s Russia that relationship had more often than not negative and dysfunctional consequences for both the governed and governing.5 Grand Theater examines bureaucracy not as the readily identifiable structure, which it certainly was, but rather as a process of day-to-day operation. As I discuss in the introduction that follows, scholarly literature on Soviet bureaucracy, while contributing to an appreciation of infighting at the center and to resistance and accommodation in the periphery to Moscow’s initiatives, has provided little insight into how agencies and their people actually governed. They can do no other chiefly because of a preoccupation, even in purportedly regional studies, with the center and its directives and the limited use of and access to either party and/or state archives. Historians have thereby occasionally made the bureaucracy the object but never the subject of their investigation. By contrast, Grand Theater examines how agencies of both the Communist Party and the state apparatus not only implemented directives from above but also responded to perceived successes and failures, chose to produce, share, and conceal information with each other locally and with Moscow, and reacted when common citizens injected themselves into governance by making demands and complaints. I concentrate on the 1930s as a seminal period when Stalin’s regime established a hypercentralized system that dominated the Soviet Union until its collapse and the Russian Federation since then.6 I selected the administration of schools as the primary window through which to examine governance because of the importance of education to Soviet authorities, including Joseph Stalin himself, and the accessibility of archival documents in this field, one not classified as particularly sensitive. And I picked the Kirov region, its capital, Kirov, some 530 miles northeast of Moscow, because of the abundance and accessibility of materials in its archives. Ever since the opening of archives in Russia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a lively debate among scholars of Russian and Soviet history has ensued about the usefulness and usage of their contents, a point further discussed in this book’s introduction. But whatever the problems that this source might present, it was apparent from the outset that my project depended on access to the immense amount of documents produced for and by the bureaucracy. The devil was in the details. I would have to grind it out in the archives in much the same way that the bureaucracy had been grinding it out year after year. I needed in hand the enormous body of materials produced by and for organs at various state and party administrative layers from the remotest cor-
Preface
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ners of the Kirov region to Moscow itself. My project required, in particular, examination of records left behind by party cells embedded in municipal and rural district departments of education and in individual schools; handwritten orders issued by heads of departments of education and by school directors; quarterly, semi-annual, and annual reports by schools and departments of education; records of pedagogical councils where a school’s administrative personnel met with its faculty; the panoply of letters of complaint and denunciation written by administrators, teachers, parents, and even pupils and submitted to local, regional, and central authorities; and the response to those letters from administrators and organs up and down the chain of command. I knew from previous research that the archive for the Moscow province contained few of these materials as did, I knew from first-hand experience, the state archive in Rostov-on-Don. Many archives throughout Russia have frightfully little from the 1930s, the result of a reluctance to preserve materials from this delicate period and a deliberate attempt to destroy them in areas such as Rostov-on-Don when threatened, then seized, by advancing German armies during World War II. In 1985 while researching in Moscow’s Library of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (Ushinka), as it was then known, I became acquainted with a fellow scholar working on the history of Russia’s schools, Nikolai Vasil’evich Kotriakhov. He happened to be from Kirov (or Viatka, as it was called before 1934). Before long he told me of the treasure trove of documents from the 1930s in the region’s party and state archives. At the time, it was impossible to find out for myself because Kirov, by then a large industrial city specializing in the manufacture of military hardware, was a closed city beyond the reach of almost all foreigners. With Kotriakhov’s help, I visited the area for a brief period in 1990 but without an opportunity to consult the archives’ inventories. Three years later, thanks to the momentous changes underway in the Russian Federation, I went again this time to examine the inventories. I discovered in abundance more than I had thought possible. Seven years later, I returned for eleven months of research and found even more than the inventories promised, everything that I needed including scraps of paper torn from pupils’ notebooks complaining about a teacher or a course and slipped to a visiting state inspector. Every file of the more than five thousand requested was delivered, some of the items declassified as I ordered them. Archivists themselves volunteered information on items of potential interest. Eleven months proved insufficient and I have returned many times since. All too often the archival record when woefully incomplete (or understudied) is used to assemble anecdotal information proving first one point, then another (sometimes the opposite), leaving the reader bewildered by it all and yearning for distinct personalities, a story line, and thematic coherence.
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Kirov’s archives compel the writing of a far different, at once a more detailed and accessible, kind of history. It is one that, I trust, brings new information and insights on the function of bureaucracy and, more broadly, on the nature of government, society, and the individual in the Soviet Union. Grand Theater does so by stressing the importance of ideology, a subject of historiographical scorn until recently; questioning the relevance of such bipolar concepts of innocence-guilt and belief-disbelief that have been such a major part of recent scholarship on personal identity and the self in Stalin’s Russia; demonstrating over and again the domination of stylized reporting by rote whatever the actual facts of the matter under review; analyzing dominant misogynistic discourse and its bold dismissal by women at which it was directed; charting the denial then, after 1938, the limited acceptance of private and public spheres of life when defining and punishing personal as well as professional and political misconduct; and emphasizing the significance of “little people” in governance thereby demonstrating that state and society in Stalin’s Russia were not completely separate and distinct entities.7 In each of these instances, the archives yielded enough information about particular individuals to allow a personification of general trends in a manner that gives personality and human drama to the historical narrative.8 Finally, this book’s methodology, a function of its regional focus and reliance on archival evidence, invites critical comment. It is sometimes said that the opening of the archives in the former Soviet Union has contributed little to our understanding of Russian and Soviet history. That is definitely not the case here. I read the Soviet administrative system as “theater” and the documents produced for and by it as “script.” The very source of most of this book’s information is the story. Throughout the chapters that follow I argue that the archival record both represented and produced a discursive theatrical reality that was the very essence of Stalinist governance.
NOTES 1. Allan K. Wildman, “Retrospect,” in Politics and Society in Provincial Russia: Saratov, 1590–1917, ed. Rex A. Wade and Scott J. Seregny (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989), 326–327. 2. Paul Leuilliot, “A Manifesto: The Defense and Illustration of Local History,” in Rural Society in France: Selections from the Annales, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977), 15. 3. S. M. Kashtanov, “Istochnikovedenie, istoriia i kraevedenie,” in Istochnikovedenie i kraevedenie v kul’ture Rossii (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2000), 11. Emphasis in the original.
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4. Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). See also excellent use of the Ivanovo Industrial Region in Jeffrey J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 5. For the importance of regional archives to understanding the “reality of chaotic, arbitrary administration,” see Peter Holquist, “A Tocquevillean ‘Archival Revolution’: Archival Change in the Longue Durée,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 51, no. 1 (2003): 82–83. 6. As Emily Johnson has recently demonstrated, the creation in the 1930s of a hypercentralized system involved efforts to inhibit the scholarly study of a region leaving thereby only the center and its prerogatives as items of importance. See Emily D. Johnson, How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 161–176. The Viatka (Kirov) Historical Society was closed in 1930. 7. For a similar argument regarding the late Soviet period, see a rejection of “binary categories to describe Soviet reality as oppression and resistance, repression and freedom, the state and people . . . public self and private self, truth and lie, reality and dissimulation” in Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5. 8. William Chase has written convincingly of the importance of microhistory to an understanding of the role of individuals and of the person in history, of “accumulated slights, insults, betrayals, and jealousies.” See William J. Chase, “Microhistory and Mass Repression: Politics, Personalities, and Revenge in the Fall of Béla Kun,” Russian Review 67, no. 3 (July 2008): 1.
Introduction
Stalinism was not merely a political system but also a mentality, a way of life and a grand totalitarian spectacle that needed to be continuously reenacted. —Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia
In May 2001 at Kirov’s former party archive I read a paper on some of the themes that dominate this book. At its close, several people in the audience observed that, although my presentation was not without interest, I had said nothing about schools and preciously little about the educational bureaucracy. Iurii Mikhailovich Golovnin, former teacher and head of Kirov’s Municipal then Regional Department of Education from 1959 to 1986, articulated this view especially forcefully. Several days later he came to the archive with information that he thought would provoke a more proper examination. He gave me a diagram displaying in hierarchical fashion state and party organs responsible for education and a set of questions directing my attention to such major responsibilities of administrative organs as the development of textbooks, curricula, and teacher training. For good measure, he handed me a list of the party’s and state’s key decrees during the 1930s on schools and schooling. Iurii Mikhailovich was quite right. I had hardly mentioned schools, dealt with the curricula and textbooks only in passing, relegated Moscow’s decrees to a mere mention, and provided a picture of educational administration far more complex than that in his diagram with its precisely drawn vertical and horizontal lines of power. I am grateful to him and others in my audience who
1
2
Introduction
helped me understand that my work then and now was neither about schools nor even about the bureaucracy as usually understood. To be sure, the administration for schools performed vital tasks that Golovnin had in mind. It distributed funds, oversaw the repair and construction of schools, prepared and sent out textbooks and syllabi, and supervised instruction in the classroom. Most schools opened, if not on September 1, then soon thereafter, pupils enrolled, classes held, and cognitive skills learned. Administrative offices gathered a huge amount of material and generated even more. That story, however, has been told reasonably well many times over, albeit in exaggerated form, by Soviet historians and it was one that I recently told in my history of Moscow’s Model School No. 25 from 1931 to 1937.1 My current interest in educational administration is far more in the process of governing schools than in the structure and the edicts of its bureaucracy. By process, I mean how the bureaucracy gathered and handled information and how in administering school educators comprehended and presented their professional world. I have found that this process was much like grand theater in which institutional and individual actors knew the script and departed from it at their peril. As mentioned in the preface, this performance became a reality of its own existing apart from what often transpired in the schools that the bureaucracy supposedly served. Unlike James C. Scott in his pioneering work, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, a study that ranged over many cultures and centuries, I find this discourse readily transparent rather than hidden.2 Administration of schools from Moscow to the distant corners of Kirov became a theater producing public spectacles on stage, its documents serving as the script for the performances. By schools I mean primary and secondary schools covering in total grades one through ten. Nurseries, kindergartens, vocational schools, schools for adult literacy, and post-secondary institutions of any sort including teachers colleges are beyond the scope of this study. Nor does it pay any particular attention to model or national (non-Russian) schools.3 I will, however, from time to time discuss one model school, School No. 9 in the city of Kirov, because of the wealth of material available from and about it. In 1931 the party’s Central Committee and Soviet of Peoples Commissars required the creation of a model school in each district throughout the Russian Republic to demonstrate how best to implement the standard curriculum required of all schools. Most districts in Kirov and elsewhere refused to bother let alone support such institutions. School No. 9 was an exception.4 I focus on the city and region of Kirov, which has a complicated administrative history, the result of numerous changes of its territory and name. Before late 1934 both the region and city were called Viatka. The region first became
Introduction
3
a distinct administrative unit in 1789 encompassing the city and surrounding area. In February 1929, Moscow merged the area with the neighboring Nizhnii Novgorod province with its capital in the city of the same name to form a huge unit of 270,000 square km. with a population in excess of eight million. That August another decree subdivided this super-region into smaller units, called okrugs. The territory of the former Viatka province now consisted of three okrugs, one of which centered around the city of Viatka and extended to include seventeen districts (raions).5 In 1930 yet another decree abolished okrugs leaving forty-two separate districts in the former Viatka province now administered directly by the regional government in Nizhnii Novgorod, a city and region renamed Gorky after the Russian writer, Maksim Gorky, in October 1932. The Viatka district included the city of Viatka and surrounding territory, all governed by Viatka’s municipal state and party organs. Within days of the assassination on December 1, 1934, of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, the party’s Leningrad boss, who had been born in Urzhum, 195 km. south of Viatka, Moscow created a separate Kirov region with Kirov, formerly Viatka, as its capital. The new territorial entity consisted of what had been Viatka province and, in addition, the Udmurt Autonomous Region, one of many administrative units in the Soviet Union for non-Russian nationalities. At the end of the year, it was rechristened an Autonomous Republic.6 At the same time, the city of Kirov became an independent administrative unit, its governing organs, including the Municipal Department of Education and municipal party committee, now responsible for only the city itself. In June 1936, the city was subdivided into the Stalin, Molotov, and Zhdanov districts. Later that year the Udmurt Autonomous Republic broke away to form an independent territorial unit.7 The 1926 census put the population of Viatka province at 2,208,900 with 93.6 percent classified as rural. The largest city was Viatka with 62,100 inhabitants. In 1939, the province’s population had increased slightly to 2,283,600 with a little more than 15 percent deemed urban. Since 1926, the population of its capital had more than doubled to 143,600 people.8 Despite this impressive growth, Kirov remained a compact city that could be traversed on foot north to south and east to west in less than two hours. Irrespective of their school or office, therefore, many of its teachers and administrators knew and saw each other when shopping or out for a stroll, an acquaintance that helps account for some of the personal animosities and loyalties discussed in the chapters to follow. Because of its northern location and perennially overcast winter skies, from November through March the city’s average temperature hovered around 13 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10.6 Celsius) with direct sunlight limited to only a few hours a day, the sun, when visible, hanging just above the southern horizon. During these months, educators struggled, often unsuccessfully, to keep classrooms warm and well lit.
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Introduction
A BRIEF HISTORY OF VIATKA Viatka has a fascinating history that has attracted considerable attention from Russian historians and lately from western scholars. East Slavs began moving into the Viatka basin at the end of the ninth century. They continued to come in greater numbers from areas to the west and north dominated by the ancient cities of Novgorod, Vladimir, and Suzdal. In the process, these migrants pushed to the east and south indigenous Udmurt and Mari peoples.9 At the end of the twelfth century, Slavs founded the town of Khlynov, which in 1780 became known as Viatka. From the thirteenth until the late fifteenth century, “the freebooters of Viatka,” as one observer put it,10 were embroiled in the shifting alliances and wars among the Golden Horde and Russian princes of Suzdal, Galich, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Moscow, all the while, thanks in part to their location, maintaining relative autonomy from everyone involved. However, after the conquest in 1478 of the similarly minded city of Novgorod, Tsar Ivan III in 1489 turned his troops eastward and laid successful siege to Khlynov. Thereafter, Russians colonized the Viatka area at an accelerated pace. By 1917, Russians made up 78 percent of the region’s population, Udmurts about 13 percent, Mari nearly 5 percent, and Tatars 4 percent.11 Throughout the tsarist period, the Viatka region remained remarkably free of serfdom. Following the secularization of most church lands in 1764, over 90 percent of the region’s rural population worked land owned either by the state or the crown. According to a census in the early 1780s privately owned peasants made up only 2 percent of the region’s population.12 Because of the relative absence of the landed nobility, peasantry dominated zemstvos, organs of rural local self-government, first created in the region in 1867, one of four provinces in the Russian Empire with so-called “peasant zemstvos.” Peasants took their governing role seriously and used their zemstvos to support the creation and maintenance of many schools.13 In the nineteenth century, tsarist authorities exiled to Viatka rebels and troublesome intellectuals. Their numbers included Poles who had participated in the rebellion in 1830 and 1831 against Russian imperial rule and several dozen Polish intellectuals who criticized Russian domination during the 1840s and 1850s. Exiles to the area also included Aleksandr Herzen, journalist and literary critic, from 1835 to 1837; Aleksandr Lavrent’evich Vitberg, an architect, who oversaw the erection of several important structures in Viatka while in exile from 1835 to 1840; and Mikhail Evgrafovich SaltykovShchedrin, the satirist, from 1848 to 1855. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, St. Petersburg banished to the province’s villages individuals who later became prominent representatives of Soviet
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5
power including Feliks Dzerzhinskii, the first head of the Soviet state’s secret police, the Cheka, and Vatslav Vatslavovich Vorovskii, literary critic and Soviet ambassador to Scandinavian countries and then Italy, assassinated in 1923.14 The future chair of the Council of Peoples Commissars and Foreign Minister under Joseph Stalin, Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, was born in the region’s town of Kukarka (later Sovetsk) in 1890. One year later, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev, who would become Stalin’s personal secretary, was born in a small town thirty-five km. removed from the city of Viatka.15 Following the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, the new Soviet government gained control of Viatka and the province only in the spring of 1918. When White forces threatened the region in January 1919, the party’s Central Committee dispatched Stalin and Dzerzhinskii to Viatka to rally the faithful. That spring Admiral Kolchak’s White Army entered the region’s eastern portion but could not take its capital and was soon pushed out of the area.16 From 1919 to 1922, crop failure, famine, and disease left Viatka devastated. Industrial and agricultural production as well as the province’s population fell to about half of what they had been in 1913. By 1927, production had almost attained prewar levels, but subsequent nationalization of industry and trade and forced collectivization after 1928 devastated this as well as other areas in the Soviet Union.17 A “gray and dirty city,” as its inhabitants described it in the 1930s, Viatka offered wooden sidewalks, where they existed at all, and unpaved streets beyond the city’s recently asphalted main thoroughfares. Most of its buildings were made of wood, many of them decaying. Despite the construction in the 1930s of larger structures of brick and stone, including government buildings, schools, and apartment complexes for the city’s elite, most new houses and a theater continued to be made of wood. Indoor toilets, when available, were equipped with enclosed wooden sluices emptying their contents into a pit outside.18 As in other Soviet towns and cities during the early and mid 1930s, Kirov’s citizens endured shortages of everything from envelopes and buttons to tea kettles.19 Municipal leaders, however, then as earlier experienced no lack of revolutionary élan. In a spasm that combined Bolshevik functionalism with ideological hubris, the city’s government in 1918 renamed all its main eastto-west streets “Soviet Street,” distinguishing one from the other by a number, one through sixteen. In 1923, these as most other streets were assigned names commemorating revolutionary events and heroes (including Marx, Lenin, and, for a time, Trotsky). After Viatka became the capital of Kirov province in 1934, regional and municipal authorities made their city suitable for such an honor by destroying more than thirty of its remaining cathedrals
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Introduction
and churches. That number included the Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, a commanding edifice built in the mid-nineteenth century and visible throughout much of the city. Its demise in 1937 left a gaping hole in the city’s fabric (if not its soul) until the erection there thirty years later of a concert hall of significant but far less magnificent stature.20
MINING THE ARCHIVES My attraction to Viatka had initially nothing to do with any fascination for its history. As indicated in the preface, I chose the Viatka-Kirov region because of the abundance and accessibility there of archival materials necessary for a study of Soviet governance. It was almost as if Kirov’s archives chose me.21 Despite this wealth of material, there were disappointments. The available documentation privileged institutions in the city of Kirov. There, party and state organs and its schools made a greater effort to keep detailed records and to deposit them in archives for safekeeping. Yet rural Kirov left more than a trace. District party committees and party cells associated with educational institutions maintained substantial records and almost always submitted them to the regional party committee in Kirov which placed them in Kirov’s archives where they remain today. Other disappointments were the product of Stalinist administration rather than of recordkeeping. Top officials ruled by command rarely, if ever, meeting formally with their subordinates to discuss policy and its implementation. Resolutions and orders sent down from Moscow or Kirov usually prompted no more than a handwritten note scribbled across their top margin to “file it,” “write an order,” “communicate this to schools,” “implement it,” “look into it,” or “for your information.”22 Administrators came to periodic conferences on education to dictate policy rather than to engage in a conversation about it. Even after a decree from the Russian Republic’s Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) in 1939 that school directors convene on a regular basis a pedagogical council, a formal session with their teachers, they rarely did so. When these councils did meet, they left few written records and those that have survived reveal that directors usually ruled by fiat. The same held true of a school’s pedagogical conferences, a meeting of school administrators, selected teachers, janitorial and technical personnel, and invited members of the local community. Yet I have found some remarkable exceptions in the late 1930s when teachers at pedagogical councils and conferences pressed forward with their own agenda. In addition, discussion of education at meetings of district, municipal, and regional party committees and of party cells associated with
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7
Kirov’s Municipal and Regional Departments of Education sometimes became lively affairs. Of course party organs were primarily concerned with the agenda, educational and otherwise, set by Moscow. One could write a history of the center “from below” by a “reading” of the center in the discussions and resolutions of subordinate party committees and cells. Schools and schooling therefore were usually of lesser importance than the current campaign in vogue from an attack on religion, celebration of a revolutionary holiday, adoption of a new Soviet constitution, purge of the party’s ranks, elections to soviets, or reading the Short Course, the official history of the Communist party first published in serial form in 1938 in Pravda, the press organ of the party’s Central Committee. Nevertheless, when these organs made schools and schooling a subject of their attention, they had much of interest to say. Party statutes required that each communist join a cell.23 Any enterprise or institution, schools included, with three or more communists could form this most basic of party organs. Throughout the 1930s, Kirov’s Municipal and Regional Departments of Education had a sufficient number of communists on their staff to maintain their own cells.24 However, few schools could do so and even in the late 1930s only about half of the region’s departments of education could form one. Teachers and administrators who were party members therefore joined a cell attached to a local soviet, collective farm, or industrial enterprise. Where cells existed at schools and departments of education, their meetings could feature considerable give-and-take especially when holding an open session attended by teachers and others who were not members of the Communist Party. The school director or head of the department of education still exercised authority as a representative of his or her office, but here, when among fellow communists at a meeting chiefly for communists, that position often meant fewer opportunities to rule by command and an obligation to entertain criticism. During the mid-1930s, Moscow and Kirov encouraged precisely such criticism, albeit often orchestrated as part of the terror. When using the records of party organs, the historian is clearly at the mercy of the recording secretary. Some scribes kept a blow-by-blow description amounting to something approximating a verbatim account. Records from regional and municipal organs are quite substantial in this sense. However, records left by a district’s or school’s party organ are often woefully incomplete. They rarely contain a summary let alone a full account of opening reports by the head of the district department of education or by a school director or deputy director. Secretaries kept abbreviated records because they and everyone else knew the views of the participants and, perhaps, because they tired of writing. The detail, clarity, and penmanship of notes that have survived, still in their original handwritten form, often deteriorated as a meeting dragged on. When the recording secretary for a single body changed from
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Introduction
week to week or in the middle of a single session, the apparent character of the discussion could change as well, a product more of the personality and work habits of the scribe than of the people and institution involved. Even records at the local level that contain considerable detail leave much to be desired. The recording secretary understood who was who, who disliked whom, and who respected whom despite loud discourse to the contrary and did not bother to record personal relationships. Sometimes I cannot be certain, therefore, just who the teacher, for example, Demidova, was. Was she the wife or the sister of the head of the district department of education, Demidov, a relationship that might explain her behavior, or just a distant relative, if that. These documents, therefore, pose serious methodological questions about their best use. But so do the quite detailed records from municipal and regional party organs. Oleg Khlevniuk has written forcefully of the pitfalls of archival information especially when historians use it as the font of supposed objective truths, pay scant attention to the ways officials and archivists have kept and arranged materials, and read documents out of their historical context.25 While relying heavily on the archival record, I have, it is hoped, proceeded appropriately by treating the documents as script and the script as the reality on which this particular work focuses. In addition to the records discussed above, letters from teachers, reports by educational administrators, and much of the internal correspondence generated in volume by the educational bureaucracy were also highly scripted.26 But not everything was perfectly orchestrated. The performance involved improvisation and blown lines as well as periodic official revisions. One day after reading in the morning in Kirov’s state archive official pronouncements and then that afternoon examining in the former party archive lively discussions among people who obviously did not like each other, I commented on the difference to an archivist, Vladimir Sergeevich Zharavin. Comparing the documentation in the state with that in his party archive, he said: “That’s paper, this is people.” Kirov’s archives are rich enough to reveal the expression of friendship, connections, courage, greed, envy, and jealousy. These human traits occasionally transcended the script and became, as it were, a spontaneous part of the grand theater, a point of special significance in this book’s sixth chapter.
HISTORICAL LITERATURE At the beginning of the twentieth century the German sociologist, Max Weber, characterized modern bureaucracy in the west as a hierarchical arrange-
Introduction
9
ment of specialized agencies implementing policies in a rational, impersonal, and thereby efficient manner. Power and prestige belonged to the office and not to the individual who happened to occupy it; decisions were made and carried out according to overarching procedures and laws.27 Weber’s analysis has proven especially seductive over the years because of the West’s fascination for those very values of rationality, law, efficiency, and order which Weber emphasized and its professed embrace of capitalism and parliamentary democracy, forces that Weber believed necessary to prevent bureaucratic absolutism. “French writers have offered a somewhat mythical history of administration,” the student of French administrative history, Clive H. Church, has observed, “because they assume that things can be explained either in terms of laws and government enactment or of organizational structures.”28 Nevertheless, following Weber’s own characterization of his bureaucracy as “an ideal type,” historians have revised even as they have reinforced his conclusions. They have found that sometimes an adherence to rules and procedures has taken precedence over fulfillment of tasks.29 Howard G. Brown’s study of army administration in France between 1791 and 1799 emphasized the importance of partisanship, patronage, and infighting.30 While focusing on the structure of the German civil service and Nazi Party, scholars have called attention to competing agendas within the state administration and the rivalry as well as collaboration between state and party bureaucracies.31 In the heyday of the popularity of the totalitarian model for an understanding of the USSR, historians found a structured party and state bureaucracy capable of implementing near-total control over society. While their conclusions owed much to Weber’s insights, these historians recognized that his model required considerable modification. They insisted that arbitrariness, caprice, and patronage, factors recognized as potentially important if only in passing by Weber, played a dominant role in the Soviet case.32 Nevertheless, bureaucracy’s ability to implement and enforce policy remained a staple of scholarly literature on the USSR. Historians of education, for example, underscored the Soviet bureaucracy’s success under Stalin in creating an educational system in the image of an authoritarian “political Realkultur,” devising schools as a “socio-cultural reproduction” of the party’s self-image as an ordered and disciplined elite, and imbuing the curriculum with an “authoritarian ethos” in keeping with a model of forced modernization.33 Recent scholarship, however, has emphasized not only Stalinist bureaucracy’s power but also its intractability and its inefficiency. Highly centralized systems, observers have come to realize, have been inevitably consumed by infighting and resistance from below.34 Soviet administration was no exception, leading as Moshe Lewin has described it, to an “impossible Stalinism,” “institutional paranoia,” and “systematic paranoia.” The more Moscow
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Introduction
experienced difficulties in governing, the more it centralized its power, but the greater the concentration of power the more ineffective and impossible its ability to govern. The proposed cure was the disease.35 “The supposed magic ability of the party to afford a tailor cut bureaucratic machinery made to order,” Lewin has concluded, “is just legend.”36 J. Arch Getty found a bureaucracy so insubordinate, disorganized, and cumbersome that it provoked the terror unleashed against it.37 Peter Solomon has commented at length on the resistance below by judges and prosecutors to initiatives from above.38 In considerable detail, Oleg Khlevniuk has documented competition among commissariats in the capital over funding and turf.39 James Hughes and Lynne Viola, when discussing collectivization, and Stephen Kotkin, when evaluating the emergence of the steel complex and city of Magnitogorsk, have noted how local and regional authorities modified even as they implemented the center’s grand campaigns.40 Other historians have underscored the Kremlin’s inability to get its way in particular regions. Roberta Manning has pointed to the limits of the center’s power in a rural district in Smolensk province and James Harris has demonstrated the relative autonomy of regional leaders even as they convinced Moscow to inflate plans for investment in industry and construction in their own region.41 More recently in a study of the party in the Voronezh region from 1934 to 1941, Youngok Kang-Bohr found the center’s power limited not only by administrative incompetence below but also by local authorities’ ignorance of just what Moscow wanted and the irrelevant and inappropriate nature in the region of many of the Kremlin’s grand political campaigns such as those against so-called “Trotskyists” and “Zinovievites.”42 My understanding of the administration of schools as process departs from the dominant approach in all of the historical literature discussed above, one that concentrates attention primarily on the structure of bureaucracy and its ability or inability to refashion society in the image of Moscow’s policies.43 Kang-Bohr’s study of the Voronezh region, for example, deals almost exclusively with the extent to which regional and local party officials obeyed directives from above for the purge of and then the terror against party members. By contrast, this book focuses neither on the structure of bureaucracy nor on the center’s policies, but rather on daily governance. In so doing, it emphasizes, as noted previously, how local, municipal, and regional state and party organs and the school administrators and teachers, which they supervised, interacted and developed a discursive theatrical reality that was divorced from what schools actually experienced and needed. To be sure, other historians have acknowledged performance as an important part of the Russian and Soviet scene. In his study of the League of Militant Godless, Daniel Peris found an organization that made form—the compilation of reports and a celebratory portrayal of its goals—its primary
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11
function.44 In an examination of Russian monarchy from Peter I to Nicholas II, Scenarios of Power, Richard Wortman demonstrated convincingly that “symbolic display served as an essential mechanism of rule in Imperial Russia.”45 It has recently become rather common for scholars to emphasize “the play” in Soviet agitation trials, in the actual courtroom, and in the discussion of scientific issues.46 Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger have written of an official Soviet public culture in the 1930s pivoting about stories of a glorious Russian past replete with “compelling characters, intriguing plots, and sentiments to please and unite their audiences.”47 But I find theater not as something intermittently staged but rather as the very essence, the system, of administration. To be sure, I do not go so far as Clifford Geertz in his study of nineteenth-century Bali that found that the “theatre state” existed for the organization of spectacles and ceremonies. “Power served pomp,” Geertz concluded, “not pomp power.”48 In contrast, governance as theater in Kirov stemmed from attempts not at making state power, as Geertz found it in Bali, but in expressing and dealing with it. Top officials, inspectors, school directors, deputy directors, and teachers turned to theatrical displays as a way to defend and advance their interests in a party-state in which existing hierarchical and highly centralized power otherwise rendered them powerless and defenseless. That performance took on a life of its own and became, in my view, the essence of governance extending, I will venture to suggest, well beyond the educational sphere and the Kirov region and of importance to a revision of the master narrative of Soviet history.
ORGANIZATION As previously mentioned, this book is not about the structure of educational bureaucracy or about policy, both of which might best be presented in chronological fashion. Although I pay due attention to chronology and emphasize several important differences in governance before and after 1938, the chapters that follow are arranged by themes, according to “stories,” as my students might put it, each somewhat autonomous from, yet related to, all others. Within and among chapters, my focus shifts back and forth from general developments that are discussed in broad perspective to particular case studies of specific individuals and institutions. Attention to the particular, it is hoped, gives this history an institutional and human personality and highlights human qualities in all their variety that command so much of what transpired in the past. The first and second chapters treat themes of relevance to the entire period from 1931 to 1941. Chapter 1 provides the ideological context in
12
Introduction
which educational administrators worked, one that demanded perfection and, ironically, valorized failure. That preoccupation with failure is the subject of the following chapter, “Ascent into Darkness,” where I discuss “escalating negativity,” a phenomenon by which the higher the chain of command in the administration of education, the more negative the assessment of schools and schooling. The next three chapters focus on topics of relevance primarily to the period from 1931 to 1938. Chapter 3, “A Symbiosis of Errors,” analyzes a discourse that insisted that any discovery of alleged misdeeds in one or the other of the personal, professional, or political spheres meant of necessity the presence and, if need be, the invention of analogous activity in all others. The following two chapters, 4 and 5, take the plot of negativity, errors, and failure into another dimension where teachers played a role in the process of administration. They did so not through their teachers union but by following a script for the writing and presentation of letters of complaint and denunciation. A discussion of the “art of complaint” in chapter 4 is followed by a chapter that features two teachers who performed in their letters a litany of suffering and victimization with consummate skill. My focus here, especially in chapter 5, is not only on the letters but also on the responses they received at multiple layers of Soviet governance, the latter point a subject that has not received sufficient attention in existing historical literature.49 Chapter 6 examines a remarkable friendship during the early and mid-1930s between two bureaucrats. While their relationship was forged in the context of Soviet politics and administrative theater, it nevertheless led them at their peril to revise the script handed to them. Theatrical displays of failure, criticism, denunciation, and purge dominate all of the chapters in this book and each year under discussion. While in that sense the terror pervaded the entire decade, it reached unprecedented proportions in 1937 and early 1938 and is the subject of chapter 7. Institutions and individuals were singled out to illustrate everything that was purportedly evil and counterrevolutionary in the bureaucracy and in the schools that it governed. It was a horrible time for educators as well as for other Soviet citizens, yet remarkably, as this chapter makes clear, all of Kirov’s top educational administrators who were arrested and imprisoned managed to return and pursue successful careers. The final three chapters treat developments of primary importance to the period from 1938 to 1941. Chapter 8 discusses a degeneration of the symbiosis of errors and the decisive role played in that process by women. The now-prevalent notion that behavior in the personal, professional, and political spheres existed free of any symbiotic relationship allowed a dramatically different response to letters from teachers denouncing abusive administrators.
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13
That altered response is discussed in detail in chapter 9, one that centers on the administration of schools in a single district and highlights episodes befitting the theater of the absurd. The final chapter discusses a revised script, one that I call proprietary professionalism, that allowed educators considerable leeway in deciding what constituted the appropriate relationship between party organs and departments of education and in determining the proper application of teachers’ rights. Although teachers could no longer expect investigations of their accusations of abusive treatment by administrators, they could and did expect an enforcement of the spirit and letter of the law as it pertained to their profession. Several themes transcend individual chapters. Time and again this book returns to the role of an ideology of transformation in shaping administrative attitudes and practices. It repeatedly addresses the issue of whether administrators-actors believed in their own performance and in the system as theater and in so doing questions the relevance of such bipolar concepts as innocence-guilt and belief-disbelief so prevalent in recent scholarship.50 Timothy Dunmore, Moshe Lewin, and Oleg Khlevniuk have pointed out how in the late Stalinist period (after 1945) Moscow undertook steps to create a rational and efficient state bureaucracy functioning somewhat autonomously from constant interference by party organs.51 I have found this development occurring earlier from 1938 to 1941. It is a theme pursued consistently in chapters 8 through 10.
SOME BASICS This book’s thematic arrangement makes advisable the presentation here of basic information on schools and their administration in the Russian Republic during the 1930s. The school system consisted of three distinct types of common schools: the elementary school with the first four grades only; the junior secondary school (nepolnaia sredniaia shkola) with the first four and three additional grades (five through seven); and the senior secondary school (sredniaia shkola) with the first seven and an additional three grades, eight through ten, added in consecutive years each fall from 1931 to 1934. Soviets for rural districts and for the municipality of Kirov and the region each maintained a department of education. These departments were responsible for many institutions besides primary and secondary schools. They exercised authority over orphanages, teachers colleges (preparing elementary teachers), nurseries, kindergartens, schools for adults, and schools for juveniles. Where they existed, party cells associated with these departments included a wide range of people from teachers and librarians to professional
14
Introduction
party propagandists.52 At closed meetings only party members could attend, but at open sessions noncommunists attended and often actively participated. Party statutes required that cells meet twice a month. Few of them, above all those associated with educational institutions, complied. A school’s cell functioned according to the academic calendar, convening several times at the beginning of the year in September and several times near its close but not during May and June when teachers administered promotion examinations to their pupils. Like the Central Committee in Moscow, Kirov’s regional party committee formed a special section, the Schools Department (Otdel shkol), responsible for the region’s schools. This department appointed inspectors, called instruktor in the Russian singular, to distinguish them from state inspectors. Although technically responsible for overseeing the activity of party cells associated with educational institutions, these instructors acted as inspectors and submitted numerous reports based on their examination of individual schools as well as of departments of education. Like its superior organ, Narkompros in Moscow, in 1936 Kirov’s Regional Department of Education divided its Administration for Elementary and Secondary Schools into two separate units, one for elementary and the other for secondary schools, and then in mid-1940 consolidated them once again into a single agency. Schools divided the academic year into four quarters. All schools were supposed to began classes on September 1, the first quarter lasting until early November. The second quarter began a few days later, about November 10, and continued until late December, as late as December 29. After a New Year’s break, the third quarter began about January 10 and lasted until late March. A spring break of a week followed before the final quarter commenced, its length dependent on the particular grade. Grades one through four began their summer break as early as June 1 while grades five through seven continued until June 10 and grades eight through ten for an additional two weeks until late June. After the fall, winter, and spring quarters, teachers issued a number grade from two to five, the former failure, the latter excellent, to pupils in each subject for the quarter and in the spring for the entire academic year.53 Schools calculated their overall success rate based on the percentage of all pupils who achieved at least an average grade, a three, in all of their subjects. Those marks and examinations especially in the senior grades (five through ten) at the end of the spring quarter determined the promotion of a pupil from one class to the next. By Russian custom, elementary schoolteachers advanced with their class each year. Thus first grade teachers accompanied their pupils to the second grade and continued to do so until together they completed the last, the fourth, elementary grade. Then teachers began the next fall with a new first grade
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15
contingent. In addition to their main teacher, pupils in elementary grades, especially in the city of Kirov, had special instructors for handicrafts (until the abolition of the labor portion of the curriculum in early 1937), singing, physical education, and sometimes art. Beginning with the fifth grade, subjects were taught by specialists with their own classroom. Pupils moved from one room or laboratory to another after each lesson. Each secondary grade, including parallel groups, had a homeroom teacher who usually advanced with the class each year from the fifth through the tenth grade. Moscow’s determined preoccupation with the teaching of factual information produced a sharp distinction between so-called fundamental and minor subjects, the latter consisting of labor training (until its abolition in 1937), singing, physical education, military training, art, and drawing and their teachers almost always more poorly trained and paid than their more privileged brethren. Beyond the fundamental and minor subjects, schools aspired, with varying degrees of success, to offer extracurricular activities. Special circles and groups specialized in such politicized fare as the campaign against religion, in after-hours study of academic subjects, and in photography, parachuting, and theater. First and second grade pupils joined the Octobrists, an organization affiliated with the Communist Party and which offered a combination of fun-and-games, lessons in contemporary politics, and instruction in proper comportment, often all integrated into excursions and activities during vacation periods. The same combination but with more emphasis on politics characterized a school’s Pioneer organization for children enrolled in grades three through seven and the Young Communist League (Komsomol) for senior pupils in grades eight through ten. Many adolescents, however, avoided joining Komsomol and even when doing so opted out of many of its activities. District departments of education appointed, fired, and transferred teachers and directors of elementary and junior secondary schools, while regional departments of education exercised similar power over directors of senior secondary schools and teachers in grades eight through ten. In the first instance the regional department could overturn the decision and in the latter, the Commissariat of Education in Moscow. However in each case party organs trumped the authority of state agencies. Subject to the regional party committee’s veto, district party committees had the right to appoint the heads and school inspectors of the local department of education and school directors and deputy directors.54 Teachers could appeal decisions of their school’s administration to a Conflict Commission (Rastsenochno-konfliktnaia komissiia) organized by the school or, more often, by the local department of education. That commission usually consisted of representatives from the school’s administration, the local department of education, the district’s party committee, and the union local.
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Introduction
Men dominated administrative offices from the school to departments of education. Although in January 1939 women comprised 68 percent of all teachers in the Kirov region’s junior and secondary schools, 87 percent of their directors were men. That year the situation was somewhat more balanced, as might be expected, in elementary schools, although still sharply skewed in favor of men. While 76 percent of all teachers in elementary schools were female, only 52 percent of their directors were women. About one-third of deputy directors in junior and secondary schools were women.55 In March 1935 only two of forty-nine heads of district departments of education surveyed were female.56 Men also dominated the discourse of governance. As we will see, charges of womanizing were turned against women making them as much, if not more, responsible for it than their male predators. However, women played a highly visible role in educational administration and, as we will see especially in chapters 3 and 8, understood better than their male counterparts the master script and sought its modification.
NOTES 1. Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). 2. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 3. In the 1939–1940 academic year, the Kirov region contained ninety-four nonRussian schools with over 17,000 pupils. Almost 80 percent of these schools offered only the elementary grades. About one-fourth of the students were Tatars, half Mari, and one-fifth Udmurt. By this time the Udmurt Autonomous Republic was no longer part of the Kirov region. About half, 44 percent, of these schools used the standard curriculum issued for their Russian brethren. Only a third offered instruction primarily in a non-Russian language. See a report in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 137, ll. 63–63 ob. 4. For more on the history of model schools generally, see my Stalin’s School, especially 39–45, 109–125. 5. The city of Viatka itself made up two of these districts. 6. The Udmurt Republic was a result of what Terry Martin has called an affirmative action empire whereby the Soviet state promoted among many non-Russian nationalities a distinctive national identity and self-consciousness but within a politically and economically unitary state. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). The Udmurt Republic will be discussed in more detail in chapter 5. The Commissariat of Education (Narkompros), an agency of considerable importance to this study, was jurisdictionally responsible only for the Russian Republic.
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Other constituent republics in the USSR and even the Udmurt Autonomous Republic had their own commissariat of education. 7. For a concise summary of Viatka-Kirov’s administrative history, see Putevoditel’: Tsentr Dokumentatsii Noveishei Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti (Moscow: “Zven’ia,” 1999), 391–397. 8. 200 let Viatskoi gubernii, 60 let Kirovskoi oblasti: Statisticheskii ocherk (Kirov: GIPP “Viatka,” 1996), 34–35. Figures for the province are based on the territory of the Kirov region in the 1990s. The suppressed census of January 1937 put the city’s population at 129,621: V. B. Zhiromskaia, I. N. Kiselev, and Iu. A Poliakov, Polveka pod grifom sekretno: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 goda (Moscow: “Nauka,” 1996), 57. 9. Udmurts and Mari have also been known as Votiaks and Cheremisi, now pejorative labels. For a history of the Mari in Viatka and throughout the larger Volga-Urals region, see Seppo Lallukka, From Fugitive Peasants to Diaspora: The Eastern Mari in Tsarist and Federal Russia (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2003). 10. Robin Milner-Gulland, The Russians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 228. 11. Aaron Retish, “Peasant Identities in Russia’s Turmoil: Status, Gender, and Ethnicity in Viatka Province, 1914–1921.” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2003), 17. 12. A. V. Emmausskii, Istoricheskii ocherk Viatskogo Kraia XVII–XVIII vekov (Kirov: Kirovskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1956), 27. In 1905, there were only 115 estates owned by the nobility and half of them with 270 acres (100 desiatins) or less: Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14. 13. See Carsten Pope, “Popular Education in Vjatka Gubernija, 1867–1905,” Jahrbücher für Geshichte Osteuropas 27, no. 4 (1979): 498–517. 14. Dzerzhinskii was in the province from 1898 to 1899 and Vorovskii from 1899 to 1901. Perhaps as many as 257 political exiles were living in various parts of the province at the end of the nineteenth century: Iu. A. Balyberdin, “Politicheskie partii v nachale veka,” in Entsiklopediia zemli Viatskoi, vol. 4, Istoriia (Kirov: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe predpriiatie “Viatka,” 1995), 314. 15. When Molotov was three years of age, his family moved to the region’s Nolinsk, a town known as Molotovsk from 1940 to 1957. On Molotov and Viatka, see the book by his grandson, Viacheslav Nikonov, Molotov: Molodost’ (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2005), 13–26. 16. Viatka’s own historians have recently debunked the myth of a triumphal march of Soviet power. See articles by L. A. Obukhov, “O ‘triumfal’nom shestvii’ Sovetskoi vlasti (po materialam Viatskoi gubernii),” and two by Iu. N. Timkin, “K voprosu ob ustanovlenii sovetskoi vlasti v g. Viatke” and “‘Lapinskaia avantiura’ v g. Viatke v fevrale-marte 1918 g.” in Viatskaia zemlia v proshlom i nastoiashchem (Kirov: Kirovskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii institut, 1995), 116–124, and Timkin’s “1917 god: ot revoliutsii po telegrafu k revoliutsii na shtikakh,” in Entsiklopediia zemli Viatskoi, vol. 4, Istoriia, 317–351. See in the same volume, Istoriia, the article by G. G. Zagvozdkin, “Grazhdanskaia voina,” 351–358.
18
Introduction
17. Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 249–259. Also G. G. Zagvozdkin, “Pod znakom serpa i molota,” in Entsiklopediia zemli Viatskoi, vol. 4, 359–379. Retish argues persuasively that peasants articulated their interests fully aware of the evolving situation nationally and embraced their role as citizens with civic rights and responsibilities. 18. See the negative evaluations by Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov, a linguist and literature expert, arrested in Moscow in 1934 and exiled to Kirov for two years, in Komsomol’skoe plemia, July 21, 1990, 6–7, and by the historian A. V. Emmausskii, who came to Viatka in 1930, in M. M. Emmausskaia, Emmausskii Anatolii Vasil’evich (Kirov: Volgo-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1991), 37. 19. Komsomol’skoe plemia, July 21, 1990, 6–7. 20. For a fascinating discussion of the destruction of the cathedral and of the politics involved whereby Kirov’s authorities endeavored to conduct themselves more aggressively than Moscow’s, see Anatolii Tinskii, Viatskaia Mozaika (Kirov: VolgoViatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1994), 142–146. After the paroxysm of destruction in the 1930s, merely seven Russian Orthodox cathedrals and churches remained standing of which only one functioned as a church. One of the city’s main cathedrals, Serafimovskii Sobor, became a Museum of Religion, another, Uspenskii Sobor, an archive. 21. I am not the only scholar to benefit from these materials and from the help of archivists responsible for them. See Retish’s Russia’s Peasants and Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1904 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). 22. For example, in Russian: “v delo,” “dlia ispolneniia,” “dlia svedeniia,” “priniat’ k svedeniiu.” 23. After the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934 cells were officially called primary party organizations. I will usually label them cells irrespective of the year in question. 24. After 1937 the department’s personnel joined cells affiliated with one of the three districts created in the city of Kirov in 1936. 25. Oleg Khlevniuk (Hlevnjuk), “L’historien et le document: Remarques sur l’utilisation des archives,” Cahiers du Monde russe 40, no. 1–2 (January–June 1999): 101–112. Terry Martin has written of the presence of what he calls soft-line and hard-line institutions in the party-state apparatus, the former seeking to make Moscow’s policies as attractive as possible, the latter, often party and secret police organs, promoting core Bolshevik principles. A balanced view of Bolshevik policy and practice, Martin has observed, requires a focus on both. Kirov’s archives allow precisely that. Terry Martin, “Interpreting the New Archival Signals: Nationalities Policy and the Nature of the Soviet Bureaucracy,” Cahiers du Monde russe 40, no. 1–2 (January–June 1999): 113–124. 26. My use of the archival record is somewhat at odds with Stephen Kotkin’s call for the consideration of documents “as the necessary objects rather than merely the means of inquiry” but in keeping with his observation that documents are “expressions of bureaucratic interests.” See Stephen Kotkin, “The State—Is It Us? Memoirs, Archives, and Kremlinologists,” Russian Review 61, no. 1 (January 2002): 40, 47.
Introduction
19
It is also in keeping with Jan Plamper’s emphasis on documents as “constructed artifacts”: Jan Plamper, “Archival Revolution or Illusion? Historicizing the Russian Archives and Our Work in Them,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 51, no. 1 (2003): 69. 27. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons, trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: The Free Press, 1947), 324–341; Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 196–264. It is not my intention here to discuss the subsequent praise and criticism of Weber’s analysis but rather to note Weber’s influence on the study of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I cannot help but note Clifford Geertz’s critical remark that Weber promised “specialists without spirit in a bureaucratic cage”: Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 143. 28. Clive H. Church, Revolution and Red Tape: The French Ministerial Bureaucracy, 1770–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 5. 29. See studies by Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, enlarged ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1968), especially chapter 8, “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” 249–260, and Henry Jacoby, The Bureaucratization of the World, trans. Eveline L. Kanes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). 30. Howard G. Brown, War, Revolution, and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791–1799 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 31. Martin Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, trans. John W. Hiden (New York: Longman, 1981); Jane Caplan, Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Theodore S. Hamerow, On the Road to the Wolf’s Lair: German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997). 32. On the usefulness and limitations of Weber’s model to a study of Soviet bureaucracy, see T. H. Rigby, “A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in the Soviet Union,” in Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR: Essays Dedicated to Leonard Schapiro, ed. T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown, and Peter Reddaway (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 9–31. Historians of the late imperial period of Russian history have emphasized the same factors and above all efforts to retain autocracy and the power of the autocrat. See Heide W. Whelan, Alexander III and the State Council: Bureaucracy and Counter-Reform in Late Imperial Russia (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982); W. Bruce Lincoln, Nikolai Miliutin an Enlightened Russian Bureaucrat of the Nineteenth Century (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977); William C. Fuller, Jr., Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Daniel T. Orlovsky, The Limits of Reform: The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Imperial Russia, 1802–1881 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Richard G. Robbins, Jr., The Tsar’s Viceroys: Russian Provincial Governors in the Last Years of the Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); and Francis William Wcislo, Reforming Rural Russia: State, Local Society, and National Politics, 1855–1914
20
Introduction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). For an extensive and insightful review of earlier literature on the pre-revolutionary Russian bureaucracy, see Daniel T. Orlovsky, “Recent Studies on the Russian Bureaucracy,” Russian Review 35, no. 4 (October 1976): 448–469. Recently, Boris Mironov has provided a more optimistic assessment of a Russia that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century moved from a “state limited by law” to a “state governed by law” in which its bureaucracy functioned according to “norms of administrative law and with formal and rational rules.” In so saying, Mironov acknowledged his conceptual debt to Weber. See chapter 1, “Patterns of State-Building,” trans. Gregory Freeze and Deborah Howard, in Boris Mironov with Ben Eklof, A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917, vol. 2 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 44, 45. 33. In the order of comments in the text: Oskar Anweiler, “Der Revoliutionnäre Umbruch im Schulwesen und in der Pädagogik Russlands,” in Bildung, Politik und Gesellschaft (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1978), 262; Marianne Kruger-Potratz, “Continuities and Discontinuities in Soviet Educational Theory on the Verge of Stalinism,” in Soviet Education under Scrutiny, ed. John Dunstan (Glasgow: Jordanhill College Publications, 1987), 3, 8; Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, “Educational Strategies and Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Soviet Development,” in Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 103–104. 34. Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Mark Beissinger, Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). See also James C. Scott’s critical evaluation of “high modernist ideology” and his corresponding emphasis on the importance of informal processes and local improvisation in his Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 35. Moshe Lewin, “Russia/USSR in Historical Notion: An Essay in Interpretation,” Russian Review 50, no. 2 (July 1991): 261, 263, and Moshe Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 71–72. In this same volume, similar arguments were made for Nazi Germany by Hans Mommsen, “Cumulative Radicalisation and Progressive Self-Destruction in Structural Determinants of the Nazi Dictatorship,” 75–87. 36. Moshe Lewin, “Rebuilding the Soviet Nomenklatura, 1945–1948,” Cahiers du Monde russe 44, no. 2–3 (April–September 2003): 249; Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (New York: Verso, 2005), 82. 37. J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 199, 206. 38. Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 39. Oleg Khlevniuk (Hlevnjuk), “Sistema centr-regiony v 1930–1950-e gody. Predposylki politizacii ‘nomenklatury’,” Cahier du Monde russe 44, no. 2–3 (April– September 2003): 253–268; Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Tsentr “Rossiia Molodaia,” 1993); and
Introduction
21
Oleg Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow: Rosspen, 1996). 40. James Hughes, Stalinism in a Russian Province: A Study of Collectivization and Dekulakization in Siberia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). On the heavy-handed response of central authorities, see Nick Baron, Soviet Karelia: Politics, Planning and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1920–1939 (London: Routledge, 2007). 41. Roberta Manning, “Government in the Soviet Countryside in the Stalinist Thirties: The Case of Belyi Raion in 1937,” Carl Beck Papers, no. 301 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), and “Peasants and Party: Rural Administration in the Soviet Countryside on the Eve of World War II,” in Essays on Revolutionary Culture and Stalinism, ed. John W. Strong (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1990), 224–244; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges; James R. Harris, The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). These items stand in striking contrast to a study of postwar Kalinin region that presents provincial administration as Moscow’s willing instrument and with a study on the 1920s that relies on archives of the Penza province but which avoids a discussion of the region: Kees Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945–1953 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), and James W. Heinzen, Inventing the Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917–1929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). 42. Youngok Kang-Bohr, Stalinismus im der ländlichen Provinz: Das Gebiet Voronež, 1934–1941 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006). A recent regional study also emphasizes the limitations of Moscow’s power: Hans-Michael Miedlig, Am Rande der Gesellschaft im Früstalinismus: Die Verfolgung der Personen ohne Wahlrecht in den Städten des Moskauer Gebiets 1928–1934 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004). 43. This emphasis on the center is also true of most of the contributions in Centre-Local Relations in the Stalinist State, 1928–1941, ed. E. A. Rees (New York: Palgrave, 2003). Focus on policy-making and structure also dominate Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995); Paul R. Gregory, The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Yoram Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neopatrimonial State, 1946–1953,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 699–736. 44. Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Of all the works cited, Peris’s approach comes closest to mine in emphasizing the theatrical aspects of governance. 45. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1, From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), and vol. 2, From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), quote from vol. 2, 3.
22
Introduction
46. Kate Transchel, Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), especially the section, “‘Acting Drunk: Plays and Mock Trials,” 114–120; Elizabeth A. Wood, Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Julie A. Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Alexei Kojevnikov, “Rituals of Stalinist Culture at Work: Science and the Games of Intraparty Democracy circa 1948,” Russian Review 57, no. 1 (January 1998): 25–52; and a discussion of “performative culture” in Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 68–69. 47. Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda, eds. Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 327. In their conclusion the authors argue not only that this culture “was consonant with the tastes of its intended audiences” (335) but also that the presentation itself “ultimately created that audience” (336). At the same time, the Soviet government promoted a constructed ethnic identity for many non-Russian nationalities. See Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire and Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). 48. Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13. 49. In 1997 Sheila Fitzpatrick noted that “it is rare that the whole range of documentation on a particular case has been preserved”: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Readers’ Letters to Krest’ianskaia Gazeta, 1938,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 157. More recently, Fitzpatrick observed that “in the study of petitions, attention might shift from the citizens who wrote them to the politicians who received and sometimes acted on them”: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Politics as Practice: Thoughts on a New Soviet Political History,” Kritika 5, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 38–39. 50. See my discussion of the scholarship of, among others, Jochen Hellbeck, Igal Halfin, Stephen Kotkin, and Oleg Kharkhordin in chapter 3 and in the conclusion. 51. Timothy Dunmore, The Stalinist Command Economy: The Soviet State Apparatus and Economic Policy, 1945–1953 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). Lewin and Khlevniuk set forth this thesis in articles that appeared in Cahiers du Monde russe 44, no. 2–3 (April-September 2003): 219–268. See also Gorlizki, “Ordinary Stalinism”: 699–736, and Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 52. This range of representation admittedly complicates use of records of a department and especially of its cell. It is not always clear just who is speaking, a professional propagandist, administrator, or teacher, even when the agenda item is of direct import to teachers. 53. In theory, teachers could issue a grade of “one” as well, but it was rarely if ever used. A “two,” a “dvoika” as it was called, was sufficient to fail a pupil.
Introduction
23
54. For the district party committee’s power in this instance, see the so-called nomenklatura of party committees in Omutninsk and Falenki districts in 1939 in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 3236, op. 1, d. 17, l. 52 and f. 2171, op. 1, d. 9, l. 43 ob. 55. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 119, l. 151. Women made up 29 percent of deputy directors in senior secondary schools and slightly more, 32 percent, in junior secondary schools. 56. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 582, ll. 26–29.
1 A Script of Perfection, Failure, Blame
And what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, so that it all comes to the same, they’re the same questions turned inside out. —Fedor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION
The Bolshevik party sought nothing less than a total transformation of the human being and of society. Schools held a special place of prominence in this assault on old Russia and world. The first Commissar of Education, Anatolii Vasil’evich Lunacharsky, pledged to take “fresh small hearts and bright little minds” to produce that “true miracle, a real human being.”1 As I have discussed in detail elsewhere, shortly after its inception in 1917 Narkompros launched an ambitious program to create a decentralized, free, and experimentalist educational system with a school largely devoid of homework, examinations, grading marks, and formality between teacher and pupils.2 Because of its sweep and intensity, this campaign begged simultaneously a recognition of all that was wrong with schooling in the past and an acknowledgment of failure in the present. As Moscow soon came to learn, the nation’s teachers preferred to focus their instruction on the three R’s in the elementary grades and on the usual subject-matter fare in the secondary school relying in the process on homework, marks, and the familiar cycle of dictation, memorization, and drill. 25
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Chapter 1
Narkompros compromised for a time, adopting from 1926 to 1928 curricula more in keeping with its teachers’ practices. Its adjustments were consistent with other policies during the 1920s that required compromise and tolerance of forces and individuals, some of them within the Communist Party itself, inimical to the immediate imposition of grand projects. With the launching in 1928 of forced industrialization, rapid collectivization, and the “cultural revolution,” forces wishing to smash the derelict present (and past) now dominated. In this spirit, Narkompros designed a curriculum to wed instruction with an assault on private farming, religion, drunkenness, and absenteeism from work. Beginning in 1931, the party’s Central Committee, often in conjunction with the USSR’s Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom), abruptly changed educational policy with decrees requiring the restoration of a traditional school system dependent upon a predetermined body of knowledge, obligatory subjects, textbooks, grading marks for each pupil in each subject, and annual promotion examinations. This dramatic shift in policy, however, signified no less a faith than before in the power of schools to transform the present into the perfect world of the future. Perfection now meant unprecedented uniformity. By 1935 the highest party and state organs had reduced the many different types of schools to the standard elementary, junior secondary, and senior secondary schools.3 They also adopted a list of permissible textbooks and required that all schools begin the academic year on September 1, commence each day precisely at 8:30 AM, and end each lesson after forty-five minutes. Moscow limited the break between classes to a prescribed amount of time that depended on the grade, restricted the number of classes per day by grade, dictated the types of marks (grades) to be used, set the size of notebooks and quality of paper they contained, prescribed the type of pencils, pens, ink, and chalk suitable for classroom use, and set minimal educational standards for elementary and secondary schoolteachers. In order to establish a still more uniform system, the Central Committee and USSR’s Council of Peoples Commissars stipulated in 1938 that all non-Russian schools in the USSR offer the study of Russian from the second or third grade.4 Narkompros filled in the details still missing for a perfect discursive world of rules and regulations. It regulated the amount of homework that could be assigned to each grade and required a class journal to track daily attendance, classroom performance, homework, and conduct. It also ordered the keeping of a daybook (dnevnik) in which pupils recorded their daily assignments and extracurricular and civic activities. There teachers wrote their evaluation (a grade and sometimes additional commentary) of a pupil’s oral or written responses in class. At the end of the week, pupils showed the daybook to their parents and one or both signed it. In addition, pupils in grades five through ten presented the
A Script of Perfection, Failure, Blame
27
daybook to their homeroom teacher each week for his or her signature. Narkompros also demanded year-end promotion examinations; informed pupils of the correct posture when seated at their desks; and instructed teachers in the details of preparing and conducting a lesson. Over and again Narkompros insisted on what the historian and former Minster of Education under Boris El’tsin, Eduard Dmitrievich Dneprov, has called the “surrealistic indicators” of progress: 100 percent coverage of all children eligible for school, 100 percent attendance, and 100 percent promotion of students from one grade to the next.5 The authors of these encyclicals presumed to believe that the very icon of perfection itself would presumably transform instantaneously the present into the future. In August 1935 the Central Committee and USSR’s Sovnarkom informed Narkompros that “despite the presence of every possibility” the commissariat had failed to publish textbooks in the number and quality required. The Kremlin understood well the obstacles Narkompros faced: a shortage of paper; a timetable imposed by the Kremlin itself that led to typographical errors and poor illustrations; and the political sensitivity of many items that required their constant rewriting. Yet the party-state assumed that its demand for new textbooks, the very proclamation of the goal itself, was sufficient to produce the intended result.6 The iconic image of the perfect world guaranteeing its immediate creation had already become an essential element of educational discourse in Viatka. On February 25, 1933, the secretariat of Viatka’s municipal party committee declared that “despite the directives of the party’s Central Committee” teachers taught poorly. Pupils made many grammatical mistakes in their writing and outside of the classroom smoked and fought with knives.7 Two months later, the secretariat cited itself as the font of perfection. “Despite its recent resolutions,” these same problems persisted at this and other schools.8 In August 1934 Viatka’s Municipal Soviet resorted to the same logic. “Despite the considerable attention and concern of the Central Committee, the government, and the special decisions of the regional party committee,” the local department of education had failed to insure adequate preparation by schools for the upcoming academic year.9 In March 1937 an inspector for Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education found the usual host of problems with instruction and conduct at School No. 19, all despite “resolutions of the party’s Central Committee and directives from the government that have created optimal conditions.”10 In March 1938, Kirov’s Regional Department of Education equated the poor performance of teachers and pupils with a failure by heads of district departments of education to fulfill decrees of the Central Committee and Soviet government.11 Two years later, the Executive Committee of the regional soviet lamented the failure to achieve universal compulsory education “despite the presence of every possibility.”12
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THE INEVITABILITY OF FAILURE As pointed out in the introduction, resistance and improvisation from below have historically plagued highly centralized systems, and in the Soviet case this led to what Moshe Lewin has called “impossible Stalinism” and “institutional paranoia.” My examination of educational administration in Kirov has led to an even gloomier conclusion: failure was not only the result but also an integral part of a system programmed discursively for disaster. The ambitious goal of absolute uniformity required a frenzied discovery and rooting out of imperfections and the exposure, even invention, of monumental errors by those allegedly responsible for failure.13 And there were plenty of failures waiting to be found, themselves the product of a search for a uniform and perfect world and the assumed “presence of every possibility for success.” The Central Committee’s excruciatingly detailed regulations governing such minor matters as the quality of notebook paper and type of pencils meant their systematic violation if pupils were to write anything at all. Moscow encouraged in effect the breaking of its laws by countermanding its own orders or requiring an impossible implementation of opposites. State and Party organs insisted that schools apply the burdensome curriculum dictated to them and yet the same organs persistently complained that Narkompros and schools overwhelmed their pupils with those very courses and extracurricular activities required. That curriculum included frequent demands from the highest Party and state organs that teachers and pupils set aside academic matters to help bring in the fall’s harvest, destroy rodents during the spring sowing campaign, read newspapers to collective farm workers during lunch break, sell state bonds, get out the vote on election day, and arrange celebrations of revolutionary holidays. While the Kremlin demanded instruction in a prescribed body of information and discrete cognitive skills, it relentlessly condemned the very means teachers and pupils understandably chose to achieve that end: copious note taking, homework beyond the allowable hours per week, memorization, and drill. As denunciations of memorization intensified, the introduction in 1933 of promotion examinations with precise questions and the expectation of exact answers made its practice more likely. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet government expected that elementary teachers have about ten to eleven years of general education that included some pedagogical training while teachers of subjects in the secondary grades were to have about fourteen years to include a degree from a pedagogical institute or a university. In 1936, the Commissariat of Education launched a certification campaign to compel teachers to acquire the requisite training or face dismissal. A rapid expansion in the number of pupils and a correspond-
A Script of Perfection, Failure, Blame
29
ing desperate need for more teachers made a mockery of these regulations before and after 1936. From 1931 to 1936 the number of pupils enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the Russian Republic increased by 35 percent (from 13 million to over 17.5 million) and the number of teachers by 50 percent (from 357,000 to 536,600). Substantial growth continued over the next two years as the number of pupils and teachers increased by 16 and 20 percent respectively.14 Such a numerical expansion of the Republic’s teaching corps was made possible only by allowing the overwhelming majority of instructors not meeting the state’s standards to continue teaching.15 Moreover, departments of education everywhere recruited people with less than eight years of schooling for training in special ten-month courses prior to assignment to posts teaching elementary grades and signed up tenth graders for special tutoring for the same purpose.16 Thus in the Russian Republic at the beginning of the 1939–1940 academic year, of 603,000 teachers who had been examined by certification commissions, 41 percent lacked the necessary qualifications but were nevertheless granted permission to remain in the classroom, a percentage duplicated in the Kirov region.17 Pupils as well failed to match expectations. During the 1930s, 6 to 8 percent dropped out during each school year, another 8 to 9 percent failed year-end promotion examinations and were required to repeat the grade, and still another 8 to 9 percent failed the examination but were allowed to retake it in the fall. About half of this latter number never appeared and an unknown percentage of those who did failed the examination again. Throughout the 1930s, pupils repeating a grade comprised 11 to 12 percent of total enrollment.18 Figures from the Kirov region were about the same. In the late 1930s, 7 to 9 percent of the region’s pupils flunked annually and that same percentage was required to take repeat promotion examinations in the fall. During the course of the academic year, about 8 percent of the total enrollment dropped out, many of them never to return. In September 1940, 11 percent of all students in the region’s schools was completing a grade.19 However, as discussed immediately below, official investigations found a state of affairs in schools far worse than pupils’ own failures.
HOUSES OF HORROR The goal was perfection, but the present was anything but that. Inspectors emphasized over and again the desperate state of schools and schooling. Judging from these reports, schools were houses of horror. This obsession with the negative peaked in the spring and summer when officials assessed the work of schools for the academic year just completed and evaluated preparations
30
Chapter 1
for the fall. Schools discursively emerged as nests of academic incompetence, political opposition, and moral decadence. The actual situation, of course, was bad enough without such embellishment. A highly centralized system for the production and distribution of academic items and of nails, glass, and bricks for repair or construction of school buildings bogged down in cumbersome paperwork and mutual recrimination among the many agencies responsible from Moscow to the village soviet. In 1932, a pupil slipped a state inspector a note complaining that the school’s cafeteria served “some kind of broth” (kakoi-to bul’on) that cost twenty-five kopecks without bread.20 When in 1936 Narkompros suggested that schools draw up contracts with local collective farms to guarantee the provisioning of firewood, Kirov’s Regional Department of Education informed Moscow that local soviets and prosecutors strictly forbade the practice as a violation of law. Narkompros responded that schools might induce a collective farm’s general assembly to become the school’s sponsor thereby making any assistance legal and at once both voluntary and obligatory.21 Peasants, of course, did not prove so gullible. Few schools possessed sufficient pens, pencils, textbooks, notebooks, daybooks, blackboards, and erasers (if only a rag). Almost every school was without sufficient firewood to make it through Kirov’s cold autumn and spring and bitter winter. One school burned straw to keep teachers and pupils momentarily warm.22 An investigation in 1937 of charges that a school director in Arbazh district strolled aimlessly about town discovered that he made daily rounds of the town’s offices begging for firewood for his school and teachers’ apartments.23 Moreover, schools lacked electricity or sufficient kerosene or lamps to provide light during the dark days of Kirov’s winter. Some schools could not provide potable water. Laboratories for the sciences and equipment for physical education did not meet even lowered expectations. Despite the much-ballyhooed campaign, few schools provided children with hot meals, clothes, and shoes. Departments of education found themselves in a predicament almost as severe. In 1936 the head of the district department of education in Verkhovino, seventy km. north of Kirov, had to fill in as the department’s bookkeeper, statistician, and warehouse stocker because he was short three of his six employees. One of his two inspectors lived in a corridor of an apartment building.24 Perhaps he was fortunate to have the requisite two mandated for each district for in the fall of 1937 district departments of education had only sixtyfive of the more than one hundred required.25 In the mid-1930s, Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education’s staff went home each day with a headache after inhaling gas fumes from a cafeteria’s kitchen located below.26 In March 1940, the deputy director of the regional department, Mikhail Grigor’evich
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31
Chekalkin, wrote to Narkompros that Kirov lacked funds to continue examining and certifying the region’s teachers.27 Yet a fascination for and obsession with the negative required an exaggeration of these and an invention of other problems. It also required an equation of inevitable shortages, youthful mischief, adult slips of the tongue, and the vicissitudes of everyday life with the commission of academic, political, and moral crimes. Pupils who managed to advance from one grade to the next, so this mournful refrain went, neither spoke nor wrote well. Many of their number in the senior grades were purportedly semi-literate. A “typical” school building had a leaky roof, cracked or broken windows, stucco peeling off the outside walls, plaster falling off the inside, and faulty and smelly indoor toilets (when they existed at all) with wet floors and grimy sinks. Classrooms lacked a sufficient number of desks, chairs, and shelves. In early 1937, the executive arm, the Bureau, of the Molotov district’s party committee chastised the department of education because 4 percent of the district’s youths failed to pass all their subjects that spring, something short of perfection and thus “contradicting the decisions of the party and government.”28 Dirt took on cosmic significance. Pupils and teachers alike became the pejorative peasantry of old, reportedly the dark (temnye) masses, dirty and ignorant, needful of massive intervention from their cultured betters. Time and again, school inspectors found precisely what they expected to find: dirty faces, dirty clothes, dirty floors, dirty notebooks, the latter replete with ink smudges and sloppy penmanship; unkempt hair; and disorder everywhere with books, caps, and coats strewn about. Dirt in the corners of teachers’ apartments signified untidy ill-prepared instruction. Dirt at home and school also signified dirty politics from anti-Soviet ditties (chastushki) and jokes to doubts about Stalin’s leadership.29 No matter where he went, Petr Grigor’evich Takhteev, son of peasants and an inspector for the Schools Department from 1935 to early 1938 with only a limited secondary education, found objectionable sights, sounds, and smells. Some of his reports began with a description of the disturbing appearance of a school as he approached it from afar.30 The presence of physical dirt also meant dirty behavior. Kids will be kids, but their customary behavior became discursively far worse. Allegedly en masse pupils cut up during class, made a mad dash for the corridors after it, and remained noisy well after the next lesson’s beginning. They smoked, drank, played cards, stole items from the cloakroom and from nearby shops, and brawled. Worst of all, they mutilated portraits of Marx, Engels, and Soviet leaders, including that of Stalin, by tearing them or burning their eyes out with the ends of lit cigarettes. If the pictures hung out of reach on a school’s walls, youths peppered them with rocks launched from slingshots. Students of all ages carved the sign of the swastika on walls, desks, erasers, and lapel
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buttons. Boys scribbled pornographic graffiti on walls and on notes they slipped to their female classmates. Girls were reportedly more prone to write romantic lyrics for their favorite boys. Venereal disease and pregnancy were common among a school’s youngsters. Reports from 1931 to 1938 celebrated each and every pupil’s suicide in the region. Teachers and administrators were hardly immune to this official and obsessive search for misery. They reportedly organized drinking binges, conducted themselves in a rowdy and abusive fashion, and engaged in sexual misconduct. Male adults in particular exhibited predatory behavior toward older students. Instructors purportedly squabbled mercilessly among themselves and with their immediate superiors, forming cliques that adversely affected pupils already prone to irresponsible behavior. After 1938 official reports continued with this fixation on unseemly sights, sounds, and smells. Kirov’s Secondary School No. 3, for example, had made an unfortunate choice of varnish, which left the school’s floors with a dirty appearance.31 Now reports paid even more attention to pupils’ improper conduct between and after classes, how instructors poorly managed time in the classroom, and inadequate study by teachers of political literature including the Short Course. Reports’ authors had the numbers and time to do so in minute detail. Teams of up to a dozen representatives from Komsomol, the Regional Department of Education, local party and departments of education, and the teachers union descended for several days, sometimes a week, on a single school to examine every move of child, teacher, and administrator. They turned up the negative that they looked for, their findings then ceremoniously presented in a report of thirty, even forty, pages.32 In December 1939, the Municipal Department of Education dispatched two of its inspectors, Zoia Vasil’evna Chentsova and Fekla Ivanovna Suvorova, to Kirov’s flagship School No. 9 to examine the work of its veteran instructors for world history, the history of the USSR, and the Soviet constitution, Isidor Grigor’evich Luchinin and Elena Kuz’minichna Sozontova. Since Luchinin’s graduation from Kirov’s Pedagogical Institute in 1929, he had been teaching social studies and history, a tenure interrupted by three years of active military service. Sozontova had graduated from Moscow’s Higher Women’s Courses in 1913 and had been teaching for twenty-three years.33 Over the course of several days, both Chentsova and Suvorova attended twelve of Luchinin’s lessons and eleven of Sozontova’s and in addition examined their lesson plans, class journals where teachers kept attendance and academic records of their pupils, and pupils’ notebooks replete with teachers’ corrections and commentary. Their report began mildly enough.34 Both Luchinin and Sozontova presented their lessons well and properly evaluated pupils. The examiners acknowledged that Narkompros failed to provide these
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and teachers elsewhere with sufficient textbooks and assigned far too much material. Following these preliminary niceties, the report turned so nasty that it was remarkable that Chentsova and Suvorova refrained from demanding the immediate dismissal of Luchinin and Sozontova and of the director, Sergei Nikolaevich Kornev, as well. Luchinin and Sozontova had failed to achieve proper thoroughness, precision, and order. They poorly prepared their lessons, ignored pupils’ notebooks full of sloppy penmanship and illiterate expressions, and fell short of inspiring pupils’ interest in socialist competition. Neither instructor adhered to a syllabus requiring coverage each day of a prescribed amount of material. Both teachers wasted precious minutes at the beginning and end of each lesson with irrelevant commentary. They had not assigned obligatory belletristic literature and documents and improperly used visual materials on hand. Neither Luchinin nor Sozontova maintained proper discipline in their classrooms. Sozontova failed to notice when pupils exchanged seats, passed notes to each other, looked at extraneous material, and counted their money. Luchinin’s voice could hardly be heard above the din of pupils’ chatter, a situation only exacerbated when he attempted to restore order by shouting and threatening to expel offenders from the classroom. Nor had these teachers put their subject in contemporary context and therefore “they did not require of their pupils precise and properly politicized answers.”35 They had avoided discussing the current political situation in their lessons on ancient Egypt, China, and Greece (grade five). Sozontova in particular failed to emphasize the class character of religion and to highlight the class struggle in ancient Egypt. In teaching the Soviet constitution. Sozontova used a map with old borders of the Ukraine and Belorussia, a map that, in effect, failed to show changes recently brought about by the invasion of Poland following the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the consequent redrawing of the borders of Belorussia and Ukraine. Both Luchinin and Sozontova had relied too extensively on assignments in the Short Course, a book of party history, when teaching a different subject altogether—the history of the peoples now living in the USSR. No doubt some of this criticism hit the mark, but much of it was patently exaggerated and unfair, the result of an obsession with negativity rather than with an objective assessment of conditions and a search for workable solutions. Faced with rambunctious schoolchildren, most teachers allowed some spontaneity and even minimal disorder in the classroom especially at the beginning and end of the lesson. Burdened with many classes and additional chores, many instructors besides Luchinin and Sozontova could not find the time to examine thoroughly each pupil’s notebook. Even in the best of circumstances, teachers found it difficult to encourage children to use creatively (if at all) belletristic literature and documents in the study of history. Sozontova probably used an outdated map, no matter how politically improper, because
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it was the only one available. She and Luchinin relied heavily on the Short Course when teaching the history of the USSR because it, first published in 1938 and officially approved by Stalin, was readily available in multiple copies (and already in multiple languages) unlike the prescribed textbooks. Few teachers could inspire pupils to actively engage in socialist competition with fellow pupils in and especially outside the classroom. Such devastating assessments by Chentsova, Suvorova, and other inspectors hardly did justice to the many teachers who dedicated themselves to their job and the pupils who studied and achieved a great deal despite admittedly difficult conditions. Nor could they reveal the many teachers, pupils, and administrators who came to embrace official values and the accompanying value system. These reports, however, were not designed to describe what transpired in the classroom but rather to reproduce over and again the negative script of governance.
BALANCE OF BLAME Finally, since so many problems were exaggerated, even invented, it made perfectly good sense (and safe politics) to assign blame by a script that established a balance of blame. Party cells associated with schools and departments of education managed this skill quite nicely by distributing guilt among the many local actors—the heads and inspectors of departments of education, governing secretaries of district party committees, school directors, communist and nonparty teachers, pupils, and parents. Balancing blame offered a measure of protection to all in so far as no one person or administrative organ emerged as exceptionally blameworthy. As we will see in a number of chapters that follow, occasionally local actors altered the script by tilting the balance of blame away from themselves. When this happened, other players launched a frenzied attack on their errant colleagues. Or sometimes in a more complex way, a tilt provoked a mad scramble of people and agencies forging, destroying, and reforging alliances one against the other to protect themselves, their subordinates, and their friends. Moreover, as the next chapter makes clear, blame and negativity dominated the way in which the educational system from top to bottom prepared and read most of its own reports.
NOTES 1. Speech delivered on May 22, 1923, in Tomsk in Anatolii Lunacharskii on Education: Selected Articles and Speeches (Moscow: Progress, 1981), 160, 167–169.
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2. For an extended discussion of educational policy and practice from 1917 to 1931, see Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). 3. Until 1934 some rural areas had a declining number of Schools of Peasant Youth that offered only grades five through seven. Until the fall of 1934 some of the junior and senior secondary schools carried the label of Factory Seven-Year School or Factory Nine- (then Ten) Year School, an indication that the school had one or more nearby factories as its patron and that its older pupils conducted practicums in production training at the factory. Factories rarely supported their schools financially or with production training and, as I have discussed elsewhere, the labor portion of the curriculum was phased out by early 1937. See Larry E. Holmes, “Magic into Hocus-Pocus: The Decline of Labor Education in Soviet Russia’s Schools, 1931– 1937,” Russian Review 51, no. 4 (October 1992): 545–565. 4. Resolutions on the curriculum, textbooks, teaching of history and geography, and school structure in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: Obshcheobrazovatel’naia shkola. Sbornik dokumentov, 1917–1973 g.g. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), 156–172, 519–522; also Biulleten’ Narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniia, no. 65 (November 25, 1932), 2. On language: Peter Blitstein, “Stalin’s Nations: Soviet Nationality Policy Between Planning and Primordialism,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 112–113. Schools with only the elementary grades (one through four) were to offer Russian from the second grade, all other schools from the third. In 1940 most non-Russian nationalities were required to adopt the Cyrillic script. 5. “Illusionary aims gave birth to illusionary means and indicators of their achievement: 100 percent coverage, 100 percent success rate and so on. The ‘production’ of education, therefore, was replaced in the school by the production of surrealistic indicators.” E. D. Dneprov, Chetvertaia Shkol’naia reforma v Rossii (Moscow: Interpraks, 1994), 54. 6. See the resolution of August 7, 1935, in Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s”ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, 9th ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1985), 6:254. 7. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 100, op. 4, d. 6, l. 161. 8. Resolutions adopted on April 27, 1933, in GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 4, d. 8, ll. 292–293. The party committee focused on teachers at the city’s School No. 5. 9. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 176, ll. 3–4. 10. Report by Nikolai Ivanovich Shel’piakov, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 401, l. 28. 11. See the department’s directive to all district departments of education on March 2, 1938, in GAKO, f. R-1178, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 9–9 ob. 12. Decision on schools of February 21, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 6, d. 194, l. 1. 13. For a full discussion of a striving to create the perfect world and for corresponding negativity and the inevitability of failure, see Larry E. Holmes, “ School and Schooling under Stalin, 1931–1953,” in Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia:
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Legacies and Prospects, ed. Ben Eklof, Larry E. Holmes, and Vera Kaplan (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 79–85. For recognition of the importance of millenarian ideology and the corresponding notions of an endless struggle for survival and need to remove “weeds” from society, see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 14. Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo SSSR: Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow-Leningrad: Soiuzorguchet, 1940), 40. From 1931 through 1938 the number of schools remained about the same, increasing from about 109,000 to 112,400. 15. E. Thomas Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 160–167. 16. See such efforts in 1937 in the Kirov region in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 592, 611. From 1934 to 1940 the number of pupils and teachers in the region expanded by about a fourth (from 300,000 to 372,000 pupils and 10,500 to 13,100 teachers). See GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 4, l. 121; d. 216, l. 1; d. 217, ll. 1–1 ob.; and d. 218, ll. 1–1 ob. 17. Sovetskaia Pedagogika, no. 10 (1939), 26. Figures from the Kirov region: Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo v Kirovskoi oblasti, 1917–1987. Dokumenty i materialy (Kirov: Volgo-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1987), 124. In August 1937, at least 41 percent of elementary grade teachers in the Kirov region had not met the minimum requirements: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 205, l. 187. In early 1941, almost onethird (31 percent) of this category had not met the minimum requirements: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 17, l. 297. 18. On failure: Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo USSR, 1940, 78. On repetition: V. Zhebrovskii, “Neotlozhnye zadachi sovetskoi shkoly, Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 5–6 (1936), 99; Sovetskaia Pedagogika, no. 1 (July 1937), 59, and no. 3 (September 1937), 117. 19. On examinations from 1939 to 1941, see GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 107, ll. 209–209 ob.; op. 1, d. 137, the entire file; d. 230, ll. 6–6 ob. On grade repetition in September 1940: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 216, l. 1 ob., and op. 1, d. 217, ll. 1–1 ob. 20. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 1, d. 91, l. 146. 21. Correspondence between Narkompros and Kirov’s Regional Department of Education in GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 35, 46. 22. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 255, l. 9. 23. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 152. 24. GASPI KO, f. 2084, op. 1, d. 124, ll. 18–18 ob. 25. Report for the first quarter of the 1937–1938 academic year by the Regional Department of Education in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 74, l. 19. 26. Note submitted in late 1935 by the head of the municipal department to the presidium of the city’s soviet requesting a new location: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 209, l. 19. 27. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 135, l. 53. 28. GASPI KO, f. 1445, op. 1, d. 38, ll. 26–27. 29. See resolutions by district organs in the Kirov rural district (not to be confused with the municipality of Kirov) and in Pizhanka and Vozhgaly districts in 1935 and
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1936 in GAKO, f. R-1828, op. 2, d. 5, l. 9 ob., and GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 53, ll. 30–31, and d. 91, l. 31. In her Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), Anne E. Gorsuch noted the tendency of many Bolsheviks in the 1920s to associate dirt and other forms of social disorder with disorders of the mind including political deviance (66–67, 92, 118). Kate Transchel has recently shown that Bolsheviks made alcohol a signifier of multitudinous personal and social sins, associating drinking with “crime, prostitution, venereal disease [and] tuberculosis, smoking, hooliganism, street fights, poor labor discipline, and illiteracy”: Kate Transchel, Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 114. 30. For Takhteev’s reports: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 205, ll. 76–78, 235–237; d. 206, ll. 1–2; d. 219, ll. 90–92, d. 223, ll. 214, 162–162 ob. Also GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 256, ll. 50–52, and d. 383, ll. 56, 62, 65–65 ob. For biographical information, see Takhteev’s questionnaire completed for the party census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, f. 17, op. 9, d. 603, ll. 50–50 ob., and his autobiography, submitted October 5, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 1299, op. 17, d. 4785, ll. 4–7. For similar approaches and conclusions, see reports on schools in the Uni district, 189 km. southeast of Kirov: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, ll. 130–130 ob., and GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 205, ll. 44, 235–237; d. 206, l. 176; d. 210, ll. 190–193, 197–198; d. 223, ll. 34, 77–80. Takhteev’s report on this district is in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 77–80. 31. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 137, l. 1. 32. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 81, ll. 96–128 (from Iaransk); GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 175, ll. 3–9 (from Darovskoi); GASPI KO, f. 677, op. 2, d. 24, ll. 2–6 ob. (from Kiknur); GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 309, ll. 8–13 (from Falenki); GASPI KO, f. 739, op. 10, d. 57, ll. 6–8 (from Malmyzh); GASPI KO, f. 177, op. 1, d. 177, ll. 5–8 ob. (from Makar’e). See such reports on schools in the Zhdanov district in the city of Kirov in GAKO, f. R-1970, op. 2, d. 3, ll. 1–15 ob., 62–64 ob., 76–95 ob. On schools in the Stalin district, see GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 62, ll. 68–86 ob., ll. 94–114 ob.; d. 131, ll. 29–40; d. 137 (the entire folder); d. 165, ll. 46–50. 33. For Luchinin’s assignments and biographical information: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 150, l. 3, and d. 149, l. 31, and GAKO, f. R-1970, op. 1, d. 257, ll. 1–1 ob. On Sozontova: Kornev’s Book of Commands, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 22, l. 35, and GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 186, ll. 13, 18, 51 ob., 55 ob., and d. 214, ll. 25, ob., 87 ob.–88. 34. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 148, ll. 37–43. 35. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 148, l. 38. In Russian: Uchitelia ne trebuiut ot uchsia chetkikh v politicheskom otnoshenii otvetov.
2 Ascent into Darkness: Escalating Negativity, 1931–1941
On October 15, 1931, the Gorky Regional Department of Education’s deputy head, Zavylenko, had tired of hearing the negative. He ordered all district departments of education and their inspectors to end what he called the “investigative” (obsledovatel’nyi) method. That particular style had resulted in reports profusely discussing a school’s problems while neglecting to indicate how teachers and school administrators might improve their work and how local agencies could provide practical assistance.1 Zavylenko’s initiative was exceptional. It defied a discourse of negativity dominant in the administration of Soviet education. Two years later Zavylenko’s own behavior was in keeping with the norm. He reported to regional authorities that in August 1933 he had entered the city of Viatka’s Krasin Secondary School and had meandered through its halls, classrooms, and offices without anyone asking him for identification. On October 26, the regional department reprimanded the school’s director and ordered all district departments of education throughout the entire region to control access to school facilities.2
GOOD, BAD, WORSE In their public reports, institutions everywhere throughout their history have preferred positive accounts that focus on achievements and ignore shortcomings. During the 1930s, Soviet educational bureaucracy behaved no differently. Public releases emphasized over and again the increasing number of schools, teachers, and pupils and the resulting spread of knowledge. Yet
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internal records, especially inspectors’ evaluations, as we have just seen in the previous chapter, rendered a different but no more truthful account of the state of schools and schooling. This sharp contrast in the content of reports reinforces what students of bureaucracy have called a “displacement of goals,” whereby rules and the very act of reporting became the ends rather than the means to advance the larger interests of society.3 Seeking to meet or exceed their quota of paperwork, officials, in the words of the French novelist, Honoré de Balzac, “created a power of inertia and named it ‘Report’.”4 This chapter deals with a particular feature of reporting—the systematic production on cue of what I call escalating negativity, a phenomenon by which the higher the chain of command in the administration of education, the more negative the assessment. The phenomenon, no doubt, has characterized most modern bureaucracies. Agencies below have portrayed themselves favorably while their governing bodies have looked for something amiss if only to justify their supervisory function. At the same time, administrative units, so preoccupied with the dismal side of things when considering reports from below, have rendered a more balanced account of their own activity as a form of self-protection when reporting to superior agencies. These latter organs, in turn, have demanded a uniformly negative assessment from their subordinate organs. Anyone familiar with the internal records of higher educational institutions knows it well. A department highlights its achievements in its minutes, the dean’s office fixes on problems below but in its own reports presents a more balanced account to the central administration, which aggressively seeks the negative and to that end sends out questionnaires demanding it.5 Escalating negativity was especially prominent in the bureaucracy for education in the Kirov region in the 1930s. At the lowest level in the chain of command, school directors wrote positive quarterly and annual evaluations. District and municipal departments of education ignored these reports or selectively picked out what could be construed as derogatory and then compiled reports featuring both the negative and positive. Their bosses at the regional level demanded even harsher evaluations but in their own reports to the Commissariat of Education in Moscow spoke of progress as well as failure. Narkompros, in turn, insisted on still gloomier accounts. Thus the canvas initially presented by school directors in pleasant hues, progressively darkened as district departments of education, then the Regional Department of Education, and, finally, Narkompros copied over it with their own morbid strokes.6 This ascent into darkness had another, still bleaker, dimension. The party expected a preoccupation with the negative when hearing reports from any of the agencies involved, whether the school below or the regional department of education above. Educational officials obliged with assessments for party
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organs far harsher than anything they had submitted to their own superiors in the state’s chain of command. Escalating negativity thereby produced a jungle of scripted contradictory reports. School directors told district department of education one thing and their local party bosses another. Heads of district departments of education mixed successes with failures when addressing the Regional Department of Education but accentuated the negative for their party cells and local party committees. Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education demanded faultfinding from its subordinate departments of education within the city, combined negative with positive images in its own reports to the Regional Department of Education, and danced almost exclusively with the dismal in its accounts for the party. The Regional Department of Education required from district departments a sharp focus on problems allegedly bedeviling schools and schooling, while it presented a more balanced account to Narkompros. At the same time, it embellished on gloom and doom in its own reports to the Schools Department of the party’s regional committee. Moscow’s Narkompros wanted to hear more from Kirov about failures and in a predatory fashion demanded precisely such from its regional department. To be sure, administrative organs needed to know about shortages and problems. However, these reports had little to do with the real situation, good or bad, prevailing in schools and any effort to improve upon it. They had everything to do with a continuous replay of roles and of a search for a perfect world that necessitated, as noted in the previous chapter, a preoccupation with the negative. Party organs in particular insisted that anything less than the dismal meant that a report’s authors and the institution they represented were insufficiently demanding of themselves and of others. The multiplicity of institutional actors presents several options for their discussion. I have chosen a focus on each successive administrative layer beginning with schools at the base. As will become apparent below, such an approach precludes the drawing of a neat monochromatic diagram of a finely tuned bureaucracy. It does more appropriately, in my opinion, foreground the disorder and turmoil that characterized the administration of schools in Kirov in the 1930s. THE SCHOOL: ADMINISTRATIVE SCHIZOPHRENIA A Discourse of Success
All schools were required to submit quarterly and annual reports in multiple copies: one for the school to keep, one for the district department of education, still another in the case of Kirov’s schools for the Municipal Department
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of Education, and yet another for the local party organization. In most cases, this meant painstaking reproduction by hand of reports at least four times a year containing such basic information as the number of students, faculty, and support staff; the size of the facility; the attendance and pass rate of pupils; and an evaluation of instruction in each grade and subject. All of these items, irrespective of the year or school, had a numbing sameness. Usually after taking note of shortages of all manner of material and human resources, school directors made every effort to accentuate the positive. It was their opportunity to tell a good story and they certainly knew how to tell it. Their teachers felt the same way and contributed to the tale of success with positive periodic assessments of their own work. Few of their reports have survived the intervening years; those from directors exist in abundance. Directors’ reports featured the surrealistic indicators of progress: near or perfect 100 percent enrollment of eligible children, attendance, and pass rate; involvement of all pupils in extracurricular circles; full participation in the Pioneers and in such voluntary societies as the Society of Militant Godless and International Organization for the Assistance of Revolutionaries; subscription by every pupil and teacher to state loans and newspapers; and entry of all teachers and pupils into socialist competition.7 School directors inflated their coverage of children eligible for elementary school (youths eight to eleven) by including in their statistical evaluations all children enrolled in the elementary grades irrespective of age.8 They made it even better by ridding themselves of pupils who could not cope by either expelling them or inducing their parents to transfer them to another school. Removing pupils for poor academic performance occurred so often that on September 21, 1939, the Regional Department of Education banned its “wholesale practice.”9 The ploy continued, forcing the department in May 1941 to reissue the ban.10 Of course, one school’s “gain” in ridding itself of poor pupils could, in the case of a transfer, be another’s loss. However, many pupils removed from a school simply disappeared, reappearing, if at all, as students at a vocational school. Kirov’s Elementary School No. 14 reported that during the second quarter of the 1936–1937 academic year it had successfully instructed its pupils in “a hatred of the damned past.”11 When three of its German teachers in succession were arrested by the secret police in 1937 and 1938, Senior Secondary School No. 3 made no mention of the problem and rather insisted that instruction in the language acquainted pupils with the life of the German proletariat and growth of the German Communist Party.12 School directors made it a consistent point to wax enthusiastically about their successful implementation of Moscow’s curricula and syllabi even when those items changed abruptly and were not supported by correspond-
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ing literature and textbooks. Several schools purportedly had introduced the new curricula for the 1931–1932 and 1932–1933 academic years even though they had been issued late and then modified.13 Kirov’s Turgenev School No. 10 asserted that it had experienced no problems with the new curriculum for 1935–1936. The city’s Elementary School No. 15 claimed to have taught well third and fourth grade history in the third quarter that year despite the absence of textbooks.14 At School No. 9, the director, Kornev, knew his school was far from perfect. His kitchen and janitorial crews consistently refused to obey his commands prompting from him a stream of reprimands and dismissals. Upon inspection of the school’s classrooms in January 1936, Kornev found the shards of an inkwell thrown against a wall and desks with ink blotches and words and images written in ink or pencil or carved by a knife. Here as elsewhere some pupils demonstrably walked out of class early and skipped PE lessons.15 When Kornev sent home an academically weak pupil with a special report card, the student tore it up in front of his parents.16 But Kornev recorded these and other unfortunate developments in his handwritten “Book of Commands,” directives meant for his eyes only. When compiling official periodic reports, Kornev presented quite different information and in magnificent abundance.17 His reports were impressive by their very appearance, typed, organized, and large, standing in sharp contrast to the comparatively meager and handwritten output on cheap paper from other schools. They did not depart, however, from the standard positive assessment. Kornev began with a list of the school’s teachers in whose classes all pupils had passed and those students who had achieved nothing less than an “excellent” grade in all their subjects. In his report for the 1934–1935 academic year, Kornev took a passion for statistical quantification to the extreme. To demonstrate his staff’s flexibility and inventiveness, he listed various teaching methods and then provided the percentages of overall instructional time in each category from conversation between teacher and pupil, to brisk question and answer sessions, laboratory work in the classroom, listening to music, and excursions.18 Kornev emphasized over and again his teachers’ willingness to work extensively with pupils experiencing difficulties by holding extra sessions after regular hours and by visiting them at home. Moreover, the school’s teachers and pupils collected more than their fair share of scrap paper and metal. Not to be outdone by his colleagues, Kornev underscored School No. 9’s 100 percent completion of various programs. Occasionally, however, he admitted that his school failed to meet all of Moscow’s expectations in every subject in every grade. Rather than blame himself and his teachers, Kornev mentioned shortages of furniture, laboratory equipment, and textbooks. In so doing, he did not depart radically from the norm apparent in reports of
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his fellow directors. However, Kornev more consistently pointed an accusing finger at Moscow’s Commissariat of Education for requiring too much of teachers and pupils to do in the allotted time. He blamed Narkompros for frequent changes in syllabi and textbooks that left teachers and pupils bewildered from year to year. Kornev was so bold because of his and his staff’s self-confidence and a belief that their mission as a model school obligated criticism of Narkompros’s failures (but not of central policy). Kornev’s criticism notwithstanding, his reports emphasized the positive. If the school had any serious problems beyond difficulties created by Narkompros, they were not apparent in his assessments. During the late 1930s, to be sure, Kornev and his fellow directors gave somewhat more play to the negative side of school life. They were compelled to do so by a series of state and party directives that made teachers and pupils more directly responsible than before for a school’s imperfections. Reports correspondingly acknowledged problems and proceeded to personify them by listing by name pupils who performed poorly in class, smoked, and stole. Individual teachers too were named for poor instruction and failure to show up at school or in class precisely on time. Kornev’s revised script included a section listing by name each pupil of school age in the minidistrict not enrolled, each child who had dropped out during the year, each student who had not been promoted, and individual pupils scheduled for fall examinations.19 Yet the bulk of each report, as before, accentuated the positive. Kornev’s annual report for the 1939–1940 academic year, for example, avoided mentioning altogether the devastating criticism in December of the teaching of his history instructors, Luchinin and Sozontova. He admitted problems in the instruction of history, but more so than in previous years, forcefully pointed an accusing finger away from his own staff and toward Moscow. Narkompros had stuffed history syllabi with too much material, especially for grade seven, and had failed to issue a complete program for grade ten. Nor had it provided sufficient visual materials, maps in particular, and had not supplied schools with an adequate number of textbooks forcing instructors of history and constitution to dictate the facts to pupils who wrote it all down word for word.20 A Discourse of Failure
When these same school officials reported to a party cell at their school or at the local department of education or to the district’s party committee, they delivered a very different message, one that spoke primarily of failure. In those cases where schools had a sufficient number of communists to form a cell, directors highlighted for it pupils’ poor academic performance and conduct, poor instruction by teachers, shortages of everything from academic
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materials to firewood, and weak or nonexistent extracurricular circles.21 When a few directors provided a different, more positive, account, the party cell at their school or at the district department of education let them know it preferred otherwise. In 1937 Filipp Petrovich Shishkin, director of Nema Secondary School, 144 km. south of Kirov, told the Bureau of the district party committee of pupils engaged in drinking binges and sexual promiscuity. However, upon relaxing his embrace of the negative before his school’s party cell, it reminded him of the essential feature of school life: dirt in the school, pupils’ uncultured speech, interruptions of lessons by rowdy pupils, and excessive drinking by Shishkin himself.22 On January 25, 1939, a school director, when reporting to the party cell of Nagorsk district’s department of education, modestly praised his school for organizing extracurricular circles and a wall newspaper. Dissatisfied with such a rosy assessment, the cell’s members responded with criticism of the director and of the school for shortcomings in instruction and character training.23 On June 23, 1940, the cell at a secondary school in Urzhum chastised the school’s director, Kollerov, for a report accentuating progress. He learned his lesson and at subsequent sessions underscored the negative.24 Events at School No. 9 illustrate the party’s penchant for negativity. At its beginning as a model institution in the fall of 1933, the school had a sufficient number of communists to form a party cell. While Kornev, a non-communist, managed to avoid making formal reports to it, the cell rendered its own negative assessment, one sharply at odds with his glowing accounts to the Municipal Department of Education. As part of the party’s purge underway nationally in 1933 and 1934, the school’s cell met on August 26, 1934. There its head, Mariia Fedorovna Lezhnina, a teacher of biology, evaluated the school’s recent activity. She may have been disposed to criticism because of a conflict months before with Kornev. A recent graduate of Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute, Lezhnina had experienced so many problems with the advanced curriculum for senior pupils that in the middle of the year Kornev had relieved her of those classes.25 Yet whatever her personal inclinations, her responsibilities as a party functionary necessitated negativity. In sharp contrast to what Kornev told the municipal department, Lezhnina pointed to delays in payment of salaries, a lack of support by the school’s factory patrons, a shortage of furniture and ink, tardy repair of the school’s building, the absence of proper materials and equipment for the school’s shops and its biology and history rooms, and disinterest of parents in the school’s academic and financial affairs. The school admittedly had worked well with some of the weaker pupils and provided communist instruction especially through its voluntary societies. However, Lezhnina returned to the negative in her pointby-point summary at the end of her presentation.26
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On the same day, the Purge Commission formed by Viatka’s Department of Education to examine the credentials and performance of party members at the department and in the city’s schools met to discuss School No. 9. Kornev acknowledged that teachers’ pay from the second half of June through August had been delayed, that some of the school’s classrooms lacked proper equipment, and that he as well as his teachers had not attended a sufficient number of model lessons. He insisted, however, that nonpayment of salaries and shortages were not the fault of the school’s administrators but rather the result of inadequate support by municipal authorities and by the school’s patrons. Whatever the problems, Kornev insisted here as he had in his annual report to the Municipal Department of Education that the school’s administrators, teachers, and pupils had performed ably and would continue to do so. The Purge Commission turned a deaf ear to Kornev’s account, repeating word-for-word Lezhnina’s harsh summary.27 However, Kornev was soon rid of his troublesome cell. While Lezhnina remained at School No. 9 until the fall of 1936, fellow communists left, leaving less than three full-time faculty members to form a party cell or the two necessary for a party group with the obligation to meet and insist on the negative. For the remainder of the decade, Kornev could rest easier with his positive accounts for Kirov’s municipal department. He would, however, have problems, as we will see in chapter 7 with the party cell affiliated with the local Zhdanov district department of education and with the district’s party committee.
THE DISTRICT: A DRUMBEAT OF NEGATIVITY Officials at district departments of education had fewer opportunities than school directors to highlight progress. Local party committees and the Regional Department of Education demanded a relentless drumbeat of negativity. The party’s Omutninsk committee, for example, habitually criticized the local department of education and its schools for a host of failures from shortages of texts and poor instruction to incomplete enrollment of schoolage children.28 When on June 20, 1940, the Kyrchany party committee found nothing else to dwell upon, it excoriated the local department of education for an absence in its schools of a perfect pass rate.29 Heads of district departments of education dutifully told the local party committee of inadequate instruction, discipline, and coverage.30 When they did otherwise, the party rebuked them. Several cases illustrate the point well. In June 1939, the head of the Shurma department of education (205 km. south of Kirov), Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nikolaev, rendered rather positive reports about the state of education to the Bureau of the district’s party committee. Momentarily overwhelmed by good
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feelings, the Bureau itself accented the positive.31 However, at subsequent sessions, the Bureau repented its ways and faithfully embraced the allegedly deplorable state of affairs.32 Another head of a district department of education, Aleksandr Alekseevich Derzhurin, proved more stubbornly positive than Nikolaev and suffered criticism for it. Born in 1901 into a family of a worker, Derzhurin received only a formal elementary education. Shortly after joining the party in 1926, he became the head of the Culture and Propaganda Department of the party’s committee in Falenki, a district 151 km. east of Kirov. In 1934 he assumed leadership of that district’s department of education.33 There Derzhurin performed as expected with a glorification of the negative when before the district’s party committee.34 But he took an entirely different approach on September 1, 1934, when addressing an open meeting of his own department’s party cell attended by ten individuals affiliated with the party and 120 others, many of them teachers, not formally associated with the party or its youth arm. Speaking more to his teachers than to party members, Derzhurin emphasized his schools’ achievements. In contrast, party members responded with the customary emphasis on the negative.35 Three years later much the same scene occurred in Urzhum where Derzhurin now served as head of its district department of education. On September 3, he gave a positive account to a closed session of his department’s party cell. Choosing to shift blame elsewhere for any problems, real or alleged, Derzhurin criticized Narkompros for poor textbooks and for syllabi that changed from year to year thus confusing both teachers and pupils. His listeners preferred a negative focus closer to home and said so with a rush of criticism of schools in the district. They forced Derzhurin to admit that he had found the positive by a narrow focus on schools’ performance on the opening day of the academic year. The cell then adopted resolutions critical of the department and of schools’ performance.36 Tension between Derzhurin and his department’s party cell continued the next year. Derzhurin continued to insist that he, his department, and his schools performed ably in spite of shortages of funds, equipment, teachers’ apartments, and materials for repair of physical facilities the fault, implicitly, of local governing bodies. In response, the cell went over the familiar grocery list of errors by the department and schools.37 At the session of March 3, 1938, the relationship between Derzhurin and his cell deteriorated further when members criticized him for ignoring their advice and neglecting to attend their meetings. Derzhurin responded that he had been too busy with his duties at the department.38 Derzhurin weathered the assault but subsequently showed due respect for the negative side of schooling until his transfer in 1940 to head the department of education in the distant Kai district, 290 km. northeast of Kirov (now Verkhnekamsk district), prob-
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ably a demotion, where he played it safe in his reports to the district’s party committee by consistently speaking of the sordid side of school life.39 The head of the Viatskie Poliany district department of education, 350 km. south of Kirov, Dmitrii Vsevolodovich Korchemkin, was compelled as well to fall in line. Korchemkin was acutely aware of the many problems confronting his schools, but he blamed higher authorities. Several schools received only 8 percent of the funds district authorities had promised.40 Given such circumstances, Korchemkin dismissed criticism by local party authorities of his department, schools, and teachers as petty and unjust faultfinding. He said so at a meeting of the leaders of the district’s Young Communist League, February 14, 1940, and at a session of the Bureau of the party’s district committee on May 21 where members focused on widespread use of tobacco among students and on several pupils who had used knives and a Browning in a robbery in which they had killed a woman. Before Komsomol, Korchemkin defended his teachers. “It is necessary to say,” he insisted, “that not all of our teachers are poor, we have good teachers.”41 Before the party’s district Bureau he chastised speakers for singling out isolated instances of pupils’ poor behavior and for underestimating the difficulty of inculcating proper conduct in children.42 At a meeting of the entire membership of the district’s party committee later that year, September 23, Korchemkin deflected similar criticism from himself and his schools by blaming inadequate financing, parents who refused to help, and the local prosecutor who had overturned his dismissal of a school director for excessive drinking.43 On February 22, 1941, the party committee required that Korchemkin change his style by becoming more demanding of his own personnel in addressing the difficulties facing schools.44 Invariably, the party’s district committees compiled uniformly negative reports for the party’s regional committee. Embellishing and inventing as they went, these committees made schools discursively, as discussed previously, places of horrible instruction, moral depravity, hooliganism, and political apostasy. School directors and officials at the local department of education purportedly lacked the will and the ability to cope with such unruly behavior.45 Threats exacerbated the problem. The Sovetsk party committee reported in March 1937 that at one school when pupils were told the security police would arrest their teachers if they, the pupils, damaged portraits of Soviet leaders, children promptly poked out the eyes of the USSR’s elite.46 Although with less shrillness after 1938, party committees throughout the remainder of the decade highlighted the negative often without a nod to the positive.47 The unusually rich documentation available for Kirov’s Stalin district illustrates well the place of a district department of education in a system of escalating negativity. Simultaneously, this department compelled criticism
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from below, rendered a mixed assessment for its governing state agencies, and reproduced the thoroughly negative script required by party organs. From its founding in mid-1936, the Stalin department treated its subordinate schools harshly, dissatisfied with any accentuation of the positive it heard from below. In early 1939, the department’s head, Anastasiia Gavrilovna Savinykh, searched for the negative in reading a positive report on the second quarter from the director of Elementary School No. 12, Avgusta Petrovna Lobovikova. Unable to find what she was looking for, Savinykh wrote on the report’s last page, “Nothing on extracurricular work.”48 In fact, Lobovikova had discussed extracurricular activity but not under any eyecatching heading and where, in fact, she mentioned problems resulting from the absence of a proper facility.49 In the fall of 1940, Savinykh read critically an account from Senior Secondary School No. 3 on its work in the first quarter of the 1939–1940 academic year. She underlined in red pencil the occasional admission of inadequacy—a less than perfect pass rate; failure to use visual aids when appropriate; poor work with the slowest pupils; and missed opportunities to cooperate with parents.50 However, in its periodic communications to the district soviet and Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, the Stalin district department of education took a different tone. It acknowledged the usual myriad problems from poor instruction and inadequate character training to something less than perfect coverage and a pass rate. At the same time, it repeatedly told of its schools’ “high academic and political standards” (nauchnost’ i partiinost’), to use the favorite phraseology of the day, the result of the department’s efforts to inspect schools, retrain teachers, and enroll all children. Any failures resulted largely from factors beyond the department’s control: shortages of academic materials and equipment; textbooks and syllabi overburdened with material; and incorrigible parents who refused to compel their children to attend school.51 Yet the Stalin district’s department of education embraced again the negative when reporting to the department’s party cell and to the district’s party committee, an assessment made all the gloomier by the discussion and resolutions that followed. In this rendering, schools suffered from a multiplicity of shortages; offered unappetizing fare in cafeterias and buffets; taught most subjects and especially Russian language poorly; failed to quash frequent outbursts of irresponsible behavior by pupils; and proved unable to elicit involvement of most parents.52 Party organs quickly called to account the boss of one or the other of the city’s district departments who skirted the negative. On February 1, 1937, after the head of the Molotov district’s department of education, Fekla Ivanovna Suvorova, addressed the Bureau of the district’s party committee, it
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found her evaluation of education insufficiently critical. It hammered away at what Suvorova ignored: pupils in the district’s schools had achieved a promotion rate of only 96 percent. The Bureau wanted perfection, anything less “contradicts the decisions of the party and government.”53 Subsequent sessions of the Bureau in 1938 held Suvorova and her department responsible for poor instruction and a lack of discipline in schools and on January 14, 1939, called for her dismissal, which followed a month later.54
VIATKA AND GORKY: SUBSERVIENT NEGATIVITY The antagonistic relationship between schools and district departments of education, the former emphasizing the positive, the latter the negative, was reproduced at a higher level between the municipal department located in Viatka and the Regional Department of Education until December 1934 situated in Nizhnii Novgorod about 425 km. to the southwest. As discussed in this book’s introduction, in 1929 Moscow abolished the Viatka area as an administrative unit placing it in a huge province governed from Nizhnii Novgorod (Gorky after October 1932). Consumption by its larger neighbor did not sit well with many citizens in the former provincial capital. Their number included officials in Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education, too quick, in Nizhnii Novgorod’s opinion, to defy the new authority. In June 1933, the municipal department’s deputy head, Vershinin, and his chief inspector for schools, Viktor Petrovich Brytkov, came to Gorky to deliver a relatively positive assessment of their department’s work and of its schools to the Regional Department of Education.55 Schools had their shortcomings, but any problems were primarily the fault of the Gorky regional department, which had failed to provide adequate funds and academic materials and devise proper questions for recent promotion examinations. The regional department had backed the teachers union’s protests of the municipal department’s dismissal of instructors, including those who had resorted to corporal punishment, and of a reduction of hours assigned to teachers when funds required it. Viatka’s report displeased Gorky’s officials in two ways. First, the subordinate municipal department dared to blame its superior for any failures. Second, Viatka had not shown proper concern for the dismal side of school life and corresponding self-criticism. The regional department’s deputy head, Vladimir Dmitrievich Mazurov, creatively combined the two by declaring that Viatka’s rosy assessment was part of its rejection of Gorky’s leadership and an attempt on its part “to become an independent region within the region” (a krai within the krai).56 Another official charged the municipal organ with
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insubordination because it had given away notebooks sent to it by Nizhnii Novgorod and in short supply to factory apprenticeship schools, institutions under the jurisdiction not of departments of education but of economic commissariats. In his initial comments, L. A. Tsekher, the head of the Regional Department of Education, smoothed over the conflict. He agreed that Viatka had acted too independently, but he would not go so far as to charge it with insubordination.57 A stubborn Vershinin continued to insist that despite difficult conditions the municipal department and its schools performed remarkably well. Even the transfer of precious notebooks to apprenticeship schools was justified, he thought, because of the dire need. Now Tsekher had heard enough. The municipal department had concealed its and its schools’ failures. Its sharing of notebooks with other institutions smacked of “rotten liberalism.” Viatka had only sent its deputy, not the department’s head, to Gorky, as much as an insult if he, Tsekher, had dispatched his subordinate to a meeting with the Commissar of Education in Moscow. Tsekher wanted henceforth obedience and its corollary, self-criticism, from Viatka. He ended on an ominous note: “I warn you that if you do not maintain contact with us [in Gorky], we will have reason to come to Viatka to make you understand that the Municipal Department of Education is part of the [Gorky] region.”58 Several months later, the regional department again made it abundantly clear that it put a premium on the negative. During the 1933–1934 academic year, school directors submitted a series of reports on physical education to Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education. As in their quarterly reports, directors typically emphasized the positive with considerable attention in this case to the purportedly enthusiastic participation by pupils while ignoring the obvious problems of lack of space, equipment, and trained teachers.59 The municipal department in December prepared its own assessment for the regional department based on twelve of its secondary schools. As expected, it rendered a more negative evaluation by calling attention to inadequate funding and a resulting lack of equipment. Yet it also took note of the positive, emphasizing the participation of pupils in a wide variety of activities.60 Gorky’s Regional Department of Education had an entirely different perception and demanded a far more grim evaluation. It wanted a focus not on a few secondary schools where the situation might be better, but on the district’s elementary schools where, it assumed, conditions would be far worse.61 Duly instructed, the municipal department’s head, Anatolii Stepanovich Reshetov, ordered his inspector for physical education and locally renowned skier, Semen Apollonovich Shirokshin, to prepare another report. On February 4, Shirokshin bypassed the municipal department and submitted his findings directly to the regional department with a carbon copy to Reshetov.
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Not one of the district’s sixty-three elementary schools had a special teacher for the subject, almost all of them lacked adequate facilities and equipment, and many pupils and teachers avoided extracurricular physical activity. Shirokshin then advanced his own agenda against his immediate superiors. The municipal department had hindered his efforts to improve instruction by failing to provide him with a staff and by saddling him with additional responsibilities for inspecting military training.62 With the formation of the Viatka province in December 1934, Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education became largely autonomous from the Regional Department of Education, now also located in the city. When the municipal organ did submit its reports to the regional department, it spoke of the familiar mix of success and failure, attributing the latter largely to Narkompros’s poor textbooks and syllabi.63 The regional department took the reports in stride. It did not, however, take such a benign attitude toward departments of education beyond the capital.
THE REGION: FORMS AND THE RED PENCIL OF NEGATIVITY Once in place, Kirov’s Regional Department of Education developed a thirst for negative information. It turned to the party’s organs, a trustworthy font, as we have seen, of gloom. In June 1938 the department distributed a form to the party’s district committees designed to elicit details on the presumed failure of schools to prepare for the upcoming academic year. It contained blank spaces for the percentage of construction and repair not yet completed and for the amount of firewood and academic materials not yet on hand.64 With such information and an expansive interpretation of it, the regional department blamed district departments for failures to end corporal punishment, poor instruction, undisciplined pupils’ behavior, and shoddy repair and construction of schools buildings.65 Receipt of negative information on the state of education in a particular school or district caught the eye and drove the pen of officials at the regional department. In November 1938, the department received a thirty-two page double-spaced report on the state of education in a secondary school in Iaransk district. Someone at the department underlined in red pencil the negative. Regarding instruction in history, for example, the reader found noteworthy comments that pupils were poorly acquainted with the classics of Marxism-Leninism, did not know the Bolshevik position toward the liberal bourgeoisie in 1905, and could not tell of the significance of Bloody Sunday (January 9, 1905). In presenting the Russo-Japanese War, a teacher had failed to mention the heroism of Russian soldiers and sailors.66 After receiving just
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such information on a single district or school, the regional department frequently issued a broadside in multiple copies to all departments condemning everywhere poor instruction, inadequate coverage, and improper conduct by teachers and pupils.67 Not everyone below was pleased with Kirov’s obsession with failure. Frustration with regional authorities erupted at the Regional Conference of Excellent Teachers, February 20–21, 1939. The meeting began tamely enough with unusually positive assessments by the head of the Regional Department of Education, Nikolai Alekseevich Rodionov, and by Sofiia Ivanovna Ezhova, the chief inspector of the regional party committee’s Schools Department. But then the head of Malmyzh district’s department of education, Plotnikov, took the podium to criticize the regional department’s demands for negative information and its corresponding threatening manner. The department issued a stream of orders to “warn, demand, reproach, and reprimand,” all of which unnerved the district’s employees and tied them up with needless paperwork.68 Rodionov responded that his department and Moscow needed considerable information and that the repetition of orders and threats occurred when lower organs did not complete the tasks assigned to them.69 The regional department found such damning material essential when preparing on cue negative reports for the regional party committee. Commanded in February 1935 to provide a gloomy assessment, the department informed the regional committee that teachers, pupils, and administrators were guilty of a “direct distortion” (priamoe izvrashchenie) of official policy set by the party and government. Here and in other such reports the regional department repeated over and again that schools lacked everything from pens and pencils to materials for repair and provided shoddy instruction. Their pupils smoked, drank, sang counterrevolutionary songs, engaged in sexual activity (sometimes with male teachers), and defaced portraits of leaders.70 At the regional party committee’s Schools Department officials read these reports with an eye and pen out for just such negative information. Someone there took a memorandum of July 25, 1935, from David Borisovich Marchukov, head of the Regional Department of Education, on the state of schools prior to the beginning of the academic year to underline in red pencil statements that schools were in a state of disrepair and lacked pencils, notebooks, textbooks, and teachers. The reader also underlined the acknowledgment that many districts lacked model schools and did not tell Kirov when a load of textbooks did arrive.71 Four years later, someone at the regional committee’s Department for Propaganda and Agitation similarly underlined any mention of problems with the delivery of textbooks, notebooks, equipment, and firewood.72
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MOSCOW DEMANDS GLOOM AND DOOM While the Regional Department of Education compelled negative information from its district departments and provided such on demand for the region’s party committee, it avoided such gloom when reporting to its own superior, Narkompros. In its quarterly reports in 1936 and 1937, for example, years when self-criticism was at a premium, the department, while mentioning shortages, poor academic performance, and improper behavior by teachers and pupils, nevertheless called attention to achievements. Most teachers taught well and read regularly the classics of Marxism-Leninism; pupils studied diligently, behaved in and out of class, and kept neat notebooks; and schools provided ample opportunities for pupils’ extracurricular activities.73 Kirov’s annual report on the 1936–1937 academic year blamed Narkompros for most of the schools’ academic shortcomings. Moscow’s commissariat had made too many changes in the curriculum from year to year and issued syllabi that required the learning of too much material in the time allotted. Narkompros had repeated its mistake with its new curricula for the upcoming 1937–1938 year dumping too much material into the syllabus for fifth grade arithmetic, the result, the regional department claimed, of “ill-conceived bureaucratic thinking” (neprodumannaia kabinetnaia mysl’). It demanded an end to such “baseless schemes” (prozhekterstvo).74 The regional department’s reports from 1938 to 1941 continued to provide a relatively balanced assessment. While acknowledging that schools failed to enroll each and every child eligible and that both pupils and teachers lacked proper discipline, the latter coming to work late and without proper preparation, the department nevertheless emphasized progress in enrollment and in pupils’ and teachers’ performance.75 As before, it found Narkompros blameworthy for most academic shortcomings, the result of Moscow’s failure to provide syllabi, textbooks, and instructional manuals in sufficient quantity and quality.76 The regional department’s efforts ran afoul of Moscow’s expectations. Much like the regional department’s own attitude toward its district departments, Narkompros wanted little else but the negative from Kirov and corresponding self-criticism. In February 1935 it required that Kirov compile a report on the poor conduct of pupils. It left no doubt that it wanted a focus on the negative—smoking, drinking, hooliganism, and counterrevolutionary activity.77 Later that year, on December 7, Narkompros wanted information on schools in Murashi district, 118 km. north of Kirov. Narkompros already knew what it wanted to hear: a shortage of textbooks, notebooks, and teachers and arrears in payment of teachers’ salaries. It wanted the gory details anyway.78 In 1936 and early 1937, the commissariat seized upon information from Kirov to help document that throughout the Russian Republic many
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school-age children were not, in fact, enrolled and that school directors opposed implementation of the labor portion of the curriculum.79 On March 4, 1940, Narkompros responded critically to the Regional Department’s report on schools for the first half of the 1939–1940 academic year. Narkompros wanted more depressing details on shortages of teachers, directors, and deputy directors; a poor pass rate in schools; shoddy inspection; inadequate coverage of school-age children; and teachers’ reluctance to study the Short Course.80 Several months later, Narkompros responded in the same way to the department’s evaluation for the 1939–1940 academic year. Belov, the deputy head of its Elementary and Secondary Schools Administration, ignored much of the report to call attention to a poor pass rate, a high number of dropouts, and the considerable number of teachers who had not yet been accredited. Belov knew well that conditions and realities precluded anything better, but nevertheless demanded a focus on and a full explanation for these failures.81 Later that year, he again highlighted poor academic performance and shortages of academic materials in the Kirov region, on this occasion blaming not Moscow but the regional and its district departments for a “bureaucratic and formal attitude” toward Narkompros’s directives and orders.82 When faced with such a menacing Narkompros, Kirov’s Regional Department of Education followed orders and accentuated the negative. In February 1935, it quickly provided evidence to match Narkompros’s preconceived conclusions: Kirov’s children smoked, drank, brawled, stole, engaged in sexual intercourse, defaced portraits on school walls of Lenin, Zhdanov, and Stalin, and sang counterrevolutionary songs. Moreover, they committed the worst sin of all, suicide.83 It was easy enough for the department to provide such information for it forwarded little other than the uniformly negative report it had recently compiled for the regional party committee. Later that year, in December, Kirov moved rapidly again by telling Narkompros what Moscow wanted to hear, although in this instance it blamed not itself but district departments of education.84
CONCLUSION The very process of reporting, its discourse of escalating negativity, articulated even as it reinforced a hierarchical structure and became what Michel Foucault has called one of the “technologies of power.” The very demand for negative information, irrespective of real conditions, was an act of coercion. Anything else from Viatka’s Department of Education in 1933, as we have seen, was regarded by Gorky’s regional authorities as an act of insubordination. Local party officials took the same attitude toward the occasional head
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of a district department of education such as Derzhurin who might underscore the positive. While administrative bodies expected, as a matter of course, their subordinate agencies to say something positive as a means of selfprotection and promotion, they criticized the effort and in a ritual exercise of power demanded more negativity. Whatever the person or agency issuing the report, whether the director of a school emphasizing the positive or the local party boss accentuating the negative, reports on the state of schools and schooling demonstrated little interest in assessing the very real problems confronting pupils, parents, teachers, and administrators and in finding a way to help. Rather, they generated scripted reports of limited value then or now in measuring the successes and failures of schools. Administrators in Kirov were certainly aware that when reporting they engaged in grand theater. They knew that within a short span of time they said one thing then another depending on their target audience. The effort by some heads of district departments of education to be more positive than the system would allow indicated uneasiness with the script. We should avoid, however, leaping to the conclusion that every administrator chafed under this system. As a number of scholars, each in his or her own way, notably Stephen Kotkin, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Jochen Hellbeck, have demonstrated, Soviet citizens in the 1930s willingly said one thing and did another. A belief in and identification with the system, even a sense of one’s self, transcended lived experience that might for others, outsiders, lead to contrary behavior.85 Thus for some if not many of Kirov’s educational administrators, the script, the play itself, became a reality of its own, whose roles they performed because they were both told and desired to do so. Be that as it may, bureaucracy in the Kirov region could have better administered schools if it had been immune to the blight of escalating negativity. A preoccupation with negativity precluded a continuation of a trend Don Rowney has found in the late tsarist and early Soviet period toward a bureaucracy that addressed professionally the problems and needs of state and society.86 We should, however, resist the temptation to condemn in a smug or condescending way this pervasively dysfunctional element in Stalinist administration. To be sure, the quest for a perfect society and a Communist Party obsessed with self-criticism were special factors that made escalating negativity in Kirov a virulent phenomenon and one of the forces that in the mid-1930s, as we will see in the following chapter and in chapter 7, drove on the terror. Yet I suspect that to varying degrees escalating negativity permeates every modern bureaucracy.
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NOTES 1. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 183, l. 27. 2. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 110, l. 178. On the same trip, Zavylenko had similarly strolled about the bookstacks of Herzen Library and the offices of a pedagogical technicum. 3. On “displacement,” see Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, enlarged edition (New York: The Free Press, 1968), 253, and David Nachmias and David H. Rosenbloom, Bureaucratic Government USA (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 22. For a study of Imperial Russian bureaucracy that emphasizes a preoccupation with reports, see W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982). 4. Honoré de Balzac, Bureaucracy or a Civil Service Reformer, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1889), 16. 5. In the meantime, the department, college, and university issue glossy brochures and pamphlets highlighting their achievements. 6. The relationship between Narkompros and the central party and state apparatus is an aspect of escalating negativity that is beyond the limits of this article. For an indication of the Central Committee’s emphasis on the negative and Narkompros’s effort to present itself and the schools in a more favorable light in 1931 see Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 10–11. For the same situation in 1936 and 1937, see Larry E. Holmes, “Magic into Hocus-Pocus: The Decline of Labor Education in Soviet Russia’s Schools, 1931–1937,” Russian Review 51, no. 4 (October 1992): 560–564. For a recognition of the Soviet bureaucracy’s desire for negative information, see: V. P. Makarenko, Biurokratiia i Stalinizm (Rostov-on-Don: Izdatel’stvo Rostovskogo Universiteta, 1989), and S. A. Shinkarchuk, Obshchestvennoe mnenie v Sovetskoi Rossii v 30-e gody. Po materialam severo-zapada (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995). 7. See examples from Seven-Year School No. 1 for the first quarter of the 1932– 1933 academic year and from Elementary School No. 8 for the 1935–1936 academic year in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 79, l. 50, and R-1864, op. 2, d. 257, l. 2. 8. See the complaint to this effect on February 15, 1937, by the head of the Regional Department of Education, David Borisovich Marchukov: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, l. 72. 9. GAKO, f. R-1969, f. 1, d. 272, l. 138. 10. On this occasion, the department ordered Secondary School No. 11 to readmit an expelled pupil: GAKO, f. R-1293, op. 3, d. 20, ll. 148–149. On September 13, 1940, the Stalin district department of education forbade such transfers: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 3, d. 3, l. 53. 11. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 47, l. 5. In Russian: Nenavist’ k tomu prokliatomu proshlomu.
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12. See the school’s reports in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 42, ll. 1–10, 14–34, 43, and d. 165, ll. 30–44. 13. For 1931–1932 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 53, l. 6, and for 1932–1933 in GAKO. f. R-1864, op. 2. d. 79, ll. 27–27 ob. 14. For School No. 10, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 325, ll. 22–23, and for School No. 15, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 344, l. 1. 15. Repeated cases of pupils’ misconduct recorded in Kornev’s Book of Commands in 1938 and 1939 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 4, l. 37; d. 22, ll. 36, 38; and d. 33, ll. 2 ob.–3, 26 ob. 16. Kornev’s Book of Commands for November 22, 1940, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 33, l. 49. 17. For Kornev’s annual (rather than quarterly) reports from 1933–1934 through 1940–1941, see in chronological order: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 127; op. 11, dd. 8, 12; op. 2, d. 326; and op. 11, dd. 24, 27, 35, 41. 18. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 191, ll. 1–13. 19. Kornev’s reports from 1938 to 1941 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 24, ll. 3 ob.– 4, and d. 27, ll. 1a–8, 48, and d. 41, ll. 1–3, 67–68. 20. Kornev’s evaluation of history instruction in his annual report in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 35, ll. 20–21. 21. The minutes of cells’ sessions rarely included a summary of a director’s report. I infer its content from remarks that followed including the director’s response to questions and criticism. See information on directors’ reports in Kiknur, Makar’e, Kil’mez’, Urzhum, Khalturin, Nema, and Kumeny districts in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 700, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 22–22 ob., and d. 4, ll. 1 ob.–2, and d. 6, ll. 43 ob.–49, 51 ob., 53; f. 2393, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 27–29 ob., and d. 6, ll. 3 ob., 8; f. 4464, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 1 ob.–4; f. 4603, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–28 ob., and d. 2, ll. 63, 69, 73, and d. 4, ll. 28–32; f. 1889, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 30 ob.–31; f. 1673, op. 1, d. 6, l. 42; f. 4000, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 17, 19–21. 22. Shishkin’s reports on February 11, 1937, and November 11, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 902, op. 4, d. 5, ll. 18–18 ob., 204. Cell’s sessions of December 11, 1937, and April 24, 1938, in GASPI KO, f. 1673, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 19 ob.–20; d. 4, ll. 9–9 ob. At the latter session, Shishkin claimed he had not had a drink for two months. 23. GASPI KO, f. 1023, op. 6, d. 35, ll. 46 ob.–48 ob. 24. Information on Kollerov’s reports of November 16, 1939, and of May 17, June 23, and April 7, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 4603, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–28 ob., and d. 2, ll. 63, 69, 73, and d. 4, ll. 28–32. 25. See comments at a session of the Purge Commission for the Municipal Department of Education’s party organization, August 26, 1934, in GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, l. 87. Lezhnina was one of those Bolshevik success stories. She was born into a family of peasants, completed her secondary education in the 1920s in a special school for adults, and entered Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute in 1930 thanks to the state’s efforts to force-feed individuals with a disadvantaged background into higher educational institutions. Her more experienced colleagues at the school, including Kornev, thought poorly of her. For biographical information, see Lezhnina’s questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv
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Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii [henceforth RGASPI], f. 17, op. 9, d. 586, ll. 123–123 ob., and a discussion of her brief career at the school in question in Larry E. Holmes, Kirov’s School No. 9: Power, Privilege, and Excellence in the Provinces, 1933–1945 (Kirov: Loban’, 2008), 46–55. 26. Lezhnina’s report: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 78–83. 27. Kornev’s comments at the cell’s session, GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 76–76 ob. The Purge Commission’s findings: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 92–94. 28. See sessions of the Bureau of August 9, 1936, and March 3, May 7, and August 17, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 1450, op. 1, d. 110, l. 151; d. 154, ll. 65, 117; and d. 155, ll. 70–70 ob. For sessions of the department’s party cell of September 9, 1937, and March 17, 1938, see GASPI KO, f. 3236, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 55–55 ob., and d. 12, l. 7. 29. GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 13, d. 3, ll. 155–156. 30. See reports in 1940 and 1941 by the head of Pizhanka’s department of education, Grigorii Romanovich Kolyshnitsyn, in GASPI KO, f. 706, op. 1, d. 264, ll. 39–40; d. 267, ll. 8–9, 83–84, 148, and op. 2, d. 5, ll. 13–14, 39, 61. 31. See sessions of June 5 and 18, 1939, in GASPI KO, f. 1152, op. 1, d. 125, ll. 186 ob.–187, and d. 126, l. 59. 32. Sessions in early 1940 in GASPI KO, f. 1152, op.1, d. 161, ll. 1–4, and d. 162, ll. 50, 168 ob.–169. 33. Biographical information in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, ll. 3–4 ob. 34. See Derzhurin’s reports in March 1934 and in March and August 1935 in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 68, l. 167, and d. 113, ll. 40 ob.–41; and f. 2171, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 8, 13. 35. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, l. 1 ob. 36. GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 75–75 ob., 78–78 ob. 37. See meetings of the department’s party cell on May 3, August 8, November 16, 1938, and January 20, 1939, in GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 43–44, 70 ob.–76, 87 and f. 4639, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 7–8 ob. 38. GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 43–44. 39. GASPI KO, f. 1922, op. 1, d. 1, d. 398, ll. 66–66 ob., 104 ob.–105 ob. 40. See a copy of Korchemkin’s letter of June 9, 1938, to the Regional Department of Education in the materials of the Schools Department: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 255, l. 9. 41. GASPI KO, f. 1210, op. 4, d. 3, l. 26. 42. GASPI KO, f. 563, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 99–101. 43. GASPI KO, f. 563, op. 2, d. 68, l. 28 ob. 44. See the report submitted to the committee, February 22, 1941: GASPI KO, f. 563, op. 2, d. 79, l. 60 ob. 45. See, for example, reports to the Schools Department in 1936 by party committees in Kil’mez’, Falenki, Zuevka, and Kumeny districts: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, l. 31; d. 382, l. 28; d. 383, l. 39; d. 383, l. 170. See also resolutions in 1936 routinely submitted to the regional party committee from the Bureau of the party committees in Verkhovino, Biserovo, and Sarapul districts in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, l. 165, and d. 382, ll. 36, 121.
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46. GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 223, l. 3. 47. See reports from 1939 to 1941 from party committees in Omutninsk in GASPI KO, f. 3236, op. 1, d. 17, ll. 1–1 ob., and f. 1450, op. 1, d. 221, l. 2; and in Kumeny district in GASPI KO, f. 2202, op. 1, d. 113, ll. 46–47, and op. 2, d. 19, ll. 9–12. 48. GAKO, f. R-1969, op.1, d. 169, l. 17. 49. GAKO, f. R-1969, op.1, d. 169, l. 16 ob. 50. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 279, ll. 89–99. Savinykh did mark the school’s complaint that its building was not large enough for the number of pupils enrolled: l. 91. 51. These quarterly and annual reports submitted from early 1937 to early 1941 may be found in chronological order in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, dd. 324, 419; f. R1969, op. 1, dd. 155, 156, 187; and f. R-1969, op. 2, d. 15a. For reports to the soviet from 1937 to 1941: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 13, ll. 145–145 ob; d. 67, ll. 1–1 ob.; d. 177, ll. 5, 61–61 ob., 86, 145; d. 178, l. 137; and d. 187, ll. 27–28. See also GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 2, d. 10, ll. 2, 8, 14, and op. 3, d. 168, ll. 10–10 ob. 52. Reports by the district’s head from 1937 to 1941 in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 51, ll. 1–9 ob., 11, and d. 178, l. 131. For reports to the department’s party cell in 1937, GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 62–62 ob., 68. 53. The Bureau mildly reprimanded Suvorova: GASPI KO, f. 1445, op. 1, d. 38, ll. 26–27. For biographical information on Suvorova, a former teacher, see her questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 9, d. 602, ll. 49–49 ob. 54. For sessions in 1938: GASPI KO, f. 1445, op. 1, d. 80, ll. 143, 197, 313–314. For the session of January 14, 1939: GASPI KO, f. 1445, op. 1, d. 122, l. 27. 55. The full report in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 78, ll. 37–44. 56. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 78, ll. 42–42 ob. 57. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 78, l. 42 ob. After the formation of the Kirov province in late 1934, Tsekher remained in Gorky as head of its Regional Department of Education. In 1936 he was transferred to Moscow to lead Narkompros’s Administration for Secondary Schools. 58. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 78, l. 43 ob. 59. See an entire folder of such reports in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 195, ll. 33–104. 60. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 195, ll. 24–27. 61. Response of the regional department’s inspector for physical education: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 195, l. 23. 62. For Reshetov’s order, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 195, l. 23, and Shirokshin’s report, l. 19. 63. See reports in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 80, ll. 234–235; d. 78, ll. 2–3; d. 110, ll. 28–40; d. 115, ll. 41, 60–66; d. 128, ll. 1–57; and d. 185, ll. 77–84. For blame assigned to Narkompros, see especially the department’s report on the 1938–1939 academic year in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 324, ll. 420–421. 64. See the copy sent to the Verkhovino’s party committee: GASPI KO, f. 2084, op. 2, d. 23, l. 37. 65. For many such orders in 1937: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2. 66. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 81, ll. 96–128, especially l. 105.
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67. See directives by Dmitrii Vasil’evich Vaneev, head of the regional department, in February, March, and April 1941 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 226, ll. 8, 19, and f. R-1970, op. 2, d. 11, ll. 33–34. 68. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 174, ll. 94–95. 69. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 174, l. 134. 70. See Marchukov’s reports to the regional party committee from February to September 1935 in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 581, ll. 6–11, 66–68, and f. 1255, op. 1, d. 588, ll. 36–40 ob., 58–61. At the same time, in letters and notes to the party’s regional boss, Abram Iakovlevich Stoliar, Marchukov deflected blame from his department to local party committees, supply and delivery organs, local soviets, and the region’s financial department for the shortages that afflicted schools and hindered effective instruction. 71. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 588, ll. 36–37, 39–40, 43–43 ob. 72. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 6, d. 194, l. 19. 73. See a series of such reports in 1936 and 1937 in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 21–22 ob., 42–48, 149–156, 222–224, 348–353; and d. 8, ll. 44–44 ob.; d. 12, ll. 1–22, 126–134; d. 74, ll. 7–30; and d. 77, ll. 3–9. Also: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 160–166. 74. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 12, l. 12. 75. See reports in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 36–83, and dd. 137 and 197 (the entire folders). 76. Report on the 1937–1938 academic year in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 36 ob.–37, 50, 53, and for the 1939–1940 academic year in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 137, ll. 16 ob., 24–25, 28, 49. 77. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, l. 15. 78. On the order of December 7, 1935, from Pichugin, deputy head of Narkompros’s Elementary and Secondary Schools Administration: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 8, l. 588. 79. On a refusal of 7 to 8 percent of children eight through twelve years of age and 15 percent of those twelve to fourteen to enroll in school in the Kirov region and elsewhere, see Nauchnyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Obrazovaniia [henceforth NA RAO], f. 17, op. 1, d. 23, l. 16, and Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, f. 2306, op. 75, d. 2473, l. 32. On opposition to instruction in labor: NA RAO, f. 11, op. 1, d. 40, l. 25 ob. 80. Instructions from Narkompros’s Secondary Schools Administration and its Elementary Schools Administration in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 135, ll. 131–135. 81. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 135, ll. 425–425 ob. According to Belov, 33,146 pupils had dropped out of school, most for invalid reasons. Of 13,000 teachers, 7,064 had not been accredited and 4,518 did not have a degree from a teachers training institution. 82. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 195, ll. 135–137. 83. For the department’s response: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 24, 30–31. 84. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 588–589. 85. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 228–229; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalin-
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ism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and a number of articles by Jochen Hellbeck: “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931–1939,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York: Routledge, 2000), 95; “Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s,” in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, ed. David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 228, 234; and “Working, Struggling, Becoming: Stalin-Era Autobiographical Texts,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 357. I recognize that among these historians opinions vary. In particular, Hellbeck emphasizes more so than Kotkin the subjective nature of an individual’s acceptance of the regime and its ideology. I have discussed the subjective element of belief in the Stalinist system as a combination of “sincere belief and blinders” in my Stalin’s School, 102–104. 86. Don K. Rowney, Transition to Technocracy: The Structural Origins of the Soviet Administrative State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
3 A Symbiosis of Errors: The Personal, Professional, and Political, 1931–1938
SEPARATE OR EQUAL? PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SPHERES
In
discussing the Stalinist 1930s, David Hoffmann recently emphasized a “linkage of moral failings with political unreliability and treason” and a “logic of the purges to find moral as well as political treachery.”1 In so saying, Hoffmann entered the debate among historians over the existence of public and private realms in Russia and beyond and the relationship between the two. This chapter focuses on the linkage, to use Hoffmann’s term, not only of moral and political conduct but also of professional activity. For reasons discussed below, I prefer the term “symbiosis” to describe the supposed interrelationship among these three realms. Efforts by historians to divide society into private and public spheres have provoked considerable controversy. In a recent book on the subject, Public and Private in Thought and Practice, one contributor noted the two categories “bleed into one another,” and yet another observed that everyday life “weaves these different realms together.”2 While acknowledging the usefulness of the concepts, public and private, most authors suggested something in between, often labeled “the social,” bridging and partaking of both.3 Historians working on revolutionary regimes, however, have often dispensed with the distinction altogether by finding that everything, even a citizen’s alleged thoughts, was a matter of public concern. According to Lynn Hunt, French revolutionaries “conflated private moral character with public political behavior.”4 Writing about the early Bolshevik regime in the 1920s, Anne Gorsuch highlighted Bolshevik efforts to politicize everyday behavior (byt). Improper dress, a luxurious lifestyle, uncultured speech, poor hygiene, and alcoholism were acts of political deviance.5 Michael David-Fox has argued that 63
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the regime sought to create a new “byt,” a new lifestyle, “the stuff of which the New Soviet Man would be made.”6 Everyday behavior “became an explosive weapon,” by which “the most petty infraction could be linked to deviation.” In “private” or “public,” life was politics, misconduct whether drunkenness, or sexual license, or petty corruption the result of the “devious infiltration of the enemy.”7 Golfo Alexopoulos has found that the Soviet state deprived many of its citizens of the vote in the 1920s for such “bourgeois” personal sins as rudeness, card playing, womanizing, and swearing.8 Eric Naiman, to whom I will turn on several occasions in this chapter, has spoken of a “discursive terror” in the 1920s that eliminated the difference between private everyday life and public activity. The inappropriately endowed and seductive body of the woman became “the corporeal canvas” on which Bolsheviks projected their fear that sexual and gastronomic excess in one’s private life could lead to ideological and political depravity in the public realm.9 Scholars have found similar efforts in the Stalinist thirties to abolish the distinction between public and private. Jeffrey Brooks noted how in this decade the official press “shrank private space . . . by enlarging and sacralizing public places and structures.” The press refused to recognize private time, all time was to be devoted to the grand cause.10 Oleg Kharkhordin has argued that the regime refused to recognize the legitimacy of a “private (chastnaia) life” that existed apart from Moscow’s agenda and reduced a “personal (lichnaia) life” to public penance in support of the regime.11 Soviet citizens established a private realm only as “a secret sphere of intimate life” where, in contrast to their public behavior, individuals led a life of dissimulation.12 More recently, Igal Halfin has argued that the party-state regarded inner “personal” or “private” life as an area of its concern for a person’s soul was the locus of ideological and political sins.13 According to Jochen Hellbeck, not only the state during the 1930s but also individual Soviet citizens eliminated the borders separating public and private spheres. In his examination of diaries, Hellbeck found an “all-embracing and unconditional commitment to public values” without any notion of a private sphere.14 Their authors sought self-realization through self-loss and dispensed with any private thoughts as a sign of weakness. A “fusion of personal and social identity” resulted.15 “Practically none of the 1930s diaries known to me,” Hellbeck concludes, “were kept to cultivate a private existence in distinction from the public sphere.”16 In my study of an elite institution, Model School No. 25 in Moscow from 1931 to 1937, I found the school to be a second home for its pupils, blending child with school and school with society, its children living almost always in the public realm.17 Even scholars who acknowledge separate private and public spheres in the 1930s emphasize the porous relationship between the two. Svetlana Boym
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referred to real though “flimsy partitions between public and private in communal apartments,” a metaphor for Stalin’s Russia writ large.18 Similarly, Catriona Kelly mentioned partitions erected in workers’ barracks to provide some, albeit considerably limited, private space.19
A TRIPARTITE SYMBIOSIS I find this scholarly output on the public, private, and personal in Soviet Russia of the 1920s and 1930s immensely instructive. However, in this chapter I am led to different conclusions when examining the discourse of “public” and “private” in Kirov regarding three issues: teachers’ misconduct, pupils’ suicides, and the purge of prominent educational officials. Rather than rely on the familiar staple of literary works, polemical tracts, manuals, diaries, autobiographies or interviews usually associated with a discussion of public and private realms, I depend on the records of party organs, especially cells of district, municipal, and regional departments of education. My source is no less “text” than those used by other scholars; my use of them no more “objective.” When using these documents, as we have seen in previous chapters, it is almost always impossible to discern what actually happened amidst the flood of negativity therein. I therefore make no special epistemological claims, but I do arrive at an understanding of private and public that is distinct from the theoretical (and theological) disquisitions that other sources have tended to elicit. When party organs discussed pupils’ suicide and the behavior of prominent educational officials in Kirov, they acknowledged not separate public or private spheres but more prosaically personal, professional, and political realms (a representation, I think, largely in keeping with lived experience). To be sure, these three realms all fall under the rubrics of “the social” or “the public” as commonly set forth in historical literature. Not even the personal, as I will define it below, existed as something private or apart from what the party-state claimed it could rightly supervise. Nevertheless, a recognition of these three realms allows for an understanding of important nuances in official discourse and of that discourse’s application and the response to it. I mean by “the personal” activity away from work and official meetings, what one did at home, or even in public, in one’s own time in a bar, café, park, or along a river embankment, whether alone or with friends and acquaintances. My use of “personal” also encompasses an individual’s character traits as displayed at work or home. By professional, I mean one’s performance on the job, an especially important activity in Stalin’s Russia. Through their work people gained, as Kotkin has demonstrated so well in his study of Magnitogorsk, a sense of identity and fulfillment.20 By political, I
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mean an individual’s apparent attitude toward as well as activity in support of the ruling party-state and its ideology. Discourse about these three realms did not remain static. From 1931 to 1938, the party acknowledged them as coexisting parts of a symbiosis. What happened in one sphere affected and was affected by what transpired in all others. A healthy symbiosis was healthy throughout, a diseased one degenerating throughout. While the former symbiosis prompted little official interest, the latter elicited passionate concern and is the focus of study here. Political apostasy inevitably coexisted, for example, with drunken and licentious behavior and with professional incompetence. This discourse of symbiosis shaped as much as it reflected social and political realities in Kirov. Purges and the terror, the subject matter of chapter 7, resulted in part from the proposition that an individual’s apparent misconduct in one sphere required the discovery and if need be, the invention, of analogous activity in all other spheres. As I will point out in a separate, the eighth, chapter, beginning in 1938 the symbiosis degenerated. By 1941 leading party organs ceased to present the personal, professional, and political in symbiotic terms and rather came to regard them as existing independently of each other. Improper personal misconduct no longer necessarily accompanied professional incompetence or political apostasy.
DISMISSED Throughout the early and mid-1930s, local departments of education and committees of the Communist Party and Young Communist League harshly criticized teachers and on occasion forced their dismissal. Rarely was a teacher found guilty only of poor performance on the job, or merely of political transgressions, or simply of moral misconduct. Rather local authorities found teachers responsible for a symbiosis of simultaneous errors in all three realms. Professionally, errant teachers failed to prepare their lessons, presented material poorly in the classroom, refused to work with parents, resorted to corporal punishment, and could not properly evaluate pupils’ knowledge and maintain discipline. Politically, they concealed their social origins as the child of a priest, merchant, landowner, prerevolutionary police or army officer, mangled the party’s past by underestimating its importance, made anti-Soviet remarks, and neglected to provide proper communist instruction in the classroom. Personally, they treated their pupils and colleagues rudely, drank to excess, and engaged in improper sexual relations. The latter charge could involve contact with anyone other than their husband or wife, or
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with fellow teachers, or, a not uncommon charge brought against male teachers, with one or more of their senior female pupils.21 If a symbiosis of errors was not evident at first, it would soon be found (if not invented). In August 1937, Falenki’s department of education removed a director, Chekmarev, of a junior secondary school for organizing drinking binges in the school. Months later, when justifying his dismissal to the Regional Department of Education, the local department of education found that Chekmarev had proven professionally incapable of providing basic information in the classroom and committed a grievous political sin by comparing Soviet bureaucrats with their tsarist predecessors and Stalin with Hitler.22 In one notorious case, the symbiotic errors of a single teacher engulfed an entire school. The process began on November 16, 1936, when the party purged Konstantin Andreevich Shustov, propagandist for Kirov’s regional party committee, as a Trotskyist. Arrest by the secret police for anti-Soviet activity followed on February 22, 1937.23 At that time, his wife, Faina Vasil’evna Shustova, taught mathematics and served as deputy director at one of Kirov’s most prestigious educational institutions, School No. 3. She had an impeccable record. Born in 1907, the daughter of a worker, Shustova had received a higher education, joined Komsomol, and had been teaching at least since 1925.24 Her superior at the school, the director and history teacher, Leonid Vasil’evich Suvorov, had submitted a glowing recommendation of her as an effective teacher, popular with pupils and parents, and a devoted hard-working deputy.25 Following the arrest of Shustov’s husband, Suvorov met with officials from the district and municipal departments of education to discuss Shustova’s fate. There Suvorov continued to praise Shustova. Everyone concerned agreed to retain her services at School No. 3 as its deputy director. The husband’s political apostasy was irrelevant. Suvorov maintained good relations with Shustova, inviting her and other teachers after hours to accompany him to a local café for food and beverage. Once, on March 8, International Women’s Day, after a party that involved heavy drinking that left Shustova in an inebriated condition, Suvorov helped her home.26 All that would soon change. In March, the Stalin district’s Komsomol committee purged Shustova and followed on March 21 with a polemic, “They Fear Self-Criticism Like Fire,” in the League’s local newspaper, Komsomol’skoe plemia.27 Although Shustova was clearly the article’s primary target, it sent out a broadside wide enough to include the school’s teachers, pupils, and director. The article’s author made it clear: a nasty symbiotic relationship of political blunders, professional incompetence, and personal misconduct existed at School No. 3.
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The article blamed Suvorov and Shustova for a school where pupils performed poorly, systematically misbehaved in and out of the classroom, copied each other’s work, and prompted one another during oral examinations. On the evening of March 8, the very day Shustova had needed Suvorov’s help to get home, a pupil threw a brick out of a window at the school’s adult Pioneer and Komsomol leader. School administrators lacked sufficient authority and willpower to expose the “unknown hooligan” when confronting pupils who covered up for the perpetrator. Suvorov and Shustova were also to blame for inadequate extracurricular activity including moribund history circles in the eighth and tenth grades. Shustova had concealed her husband’s hostile activity, failed as a homeroom teacher because her ninth graders performed poorly, and inappropriately accepted a gift from those very same ninth graders whom she had helped with their studies. The municipal and regional departments of education removed Shustova from her teaching and administrative posts at School No. 3. However, they followed the advice of the head of the city’s Stalin district department of education, Evgeniia Iosifovna Konchevskaia, in refusing to link her political errors with total professional incompetence. Konchevakaia recommended and the departments of education agreed to a demotion of Shustova to teaching mathematics at the city’s Junior Secondary School No. 2.28 They were not prepared to make such allowances for the school as a whole and for its director, Suvorov. On March 29, the party cell of the Stalin district’s soviet, with twenty-four party members including Konchevskaia in attendance, made the case that at School No. 3 a symbiosis of improper personal behavior, dereliction of duty, and the teaching of counterrevolutionary attitudes were of the same coin. Pupils underachieved academically, damaged and broke school property including inkwells, chairs, and desks, and refused to take political topics and a study of the constitution seriously. Teachers taught poorly and demonstrated inadequate interest in studying the contemporary political situation. As director, Suvorov was held directly responsible for such a deplorable state of affairs, a result of his poor leadership as well as his political shortsightedness and personal weaknesses. His drinking after hours with Shustova and others demonstrated an inappropriate taste for alcohol; his socializing with the apostate Shustova displayed his poor political judgment; and his chummy relations after hours with his subordinates represented his professional ineptitude. Suvorov should have isolated Shustova, even after she had been allowed to continue as his deputy director, and should have remained socially aloof from his own teachers.29 Suvorov understood well the symbiosis of multiple charges brought against him. He hoped to limit the damage by deftly acknowledging personal and professional mistakes while denying any corresponding political wrongdoing.
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He had erred in seeing Shustova socially and by accompanying her home on March 8. He should not have gone out with his staff eating and drinking. Pupils at school had posed disciplinary problems breaking inkwells and chairs and carving on desks. Some seventh graders disdained the study of the Soviet constitution. But Suvorov denied coddling Shustova. He had scrupulously avoided any contact with her husband. Once when out with his teachers at a café, Shustov had approached the group. As he sat down, Suvorov got up and demonstrably left the premises.30 Suvorov further hoped to prove his political mettle by harshly criticizing his teachers’ alleged lack of vigilance and inadequate pedagogical skills at subsequent meetings of the party organization of the Stalin district’s department of education. On one occasion, he surprised even Konchevskaia by suggesting a wholesale dumping of his teachers on other schools.31 Suvorov remained a marked man. That summer an evaluation by Takhteev, the tough inspector for the party’s Schools Department discussed in the previous chapter, concluded that Suvorov had ruined the school’s work and had gotten drunk with his subordinates, some of whom, to make it worse, were not party members. Takhteev recommended that the Schools Department summon Suvorov for a review and even if he passed remove him as director and transfer him to another school as a mere teacher of history.32 Several months later, the Regional Department of Education fired Suvorov as “incapable of leadership.”33
SUICIDE: A COMMUNITY AFFAIR Was all that law and ritual [in response to suicide]—in reality, never mind people’s beliefs and fantasies—all just one, big institutionalized swearword? Was it, to say it another way, no more than a passionate, chronically unselfcritical, intoxicated exercise in playacting by actors who were themselves also the audience, and contrived only to boost the survivors’ self-respect? —Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages
Perhaps suicide is the one human and very personal and private act that defies explanation.34 Nevertheless, Europeans, Russians included, have tried to comprehend it. In so doing, they have revealed more about their own ideologies, cultures, and societies and their understanding of “the human,” than about the act itself. Suicide has been regarded as the work of the devil; the fitting end to a sinful and dissolute life; self-murder; desertion from a slave owner, military commander, society, or state; victimization by impersonal social forces
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beyond an individual’s control; a product of weakness and lack of will; the result of a malfunction of the body or of natural biological changes; a noble act.35 By the early twentieth century, two competing interpretations held pride of place. Some analysts thought that suicide resulted from alienation from the rapidly changing world of industrialization and urbanization. The classic work of Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, gave considerable legitimacy to this view. Other observers, abetted by the work of Sigmund Freud, emphasized personal intrapsychic conflict as the primary factor.36 In her study of Russians’ perception of suicide in the nineteenth century, Irina Paperno found that most commentators thought of it as a response to social change. They considered it as part of an “aesthetics of decadence,” one of several consequences of modernization that included murder, political violence, sexual depravity, and other forms of disorder.37 Bolsheviks found much to their liking in this view. As apostles of a scientific ideology, they believed suicide, as all phenomena, could be logically explained. Moreover, they favored a sociological understanding of its origins and consequences because of their emphasis on the collective and society rather than the individual. “Suicide, indeed every personal act and thought of the party member,” Kenneth Pinnow has observed in his study of the 1920s, was the business of the collective. By taking the matter of life and death into their own hands, suicides “validated the [heretical] notion that a distinction could be made between one’s personal and social life.”38 That interest in suicide in the 1920s became an obsession among organs responsible for education in Kirov from 1931 to 1938.39 But it was a particular kind of obsession. Administrators ignored any pattern whether by urban or rural locale or by gender or age.40 Rather they responded to pupils’ suicides as one of the “painful manifestations” (boleznennye iavleniia), to use the vocabulary of choice, that resulted from a symbiosis of errors in school and community. Regardless of the apparent facts of the matter that often pointed to the dominance of personal motives, officials rushed to find interrelated personal, professional, and political misconduct on the part not of the suicide but of fellow pupils, teachers, and local school administrators. A decree of April 7, 1935, that allowed youths twelve years of age to be tried under the general penal code did not in this instance redirect the assignment of blame to the child.41 The suicide, the individual, got lost in the celebration, as it were, of the assorted and intertwined evils at work in a pupil’s school and community and by extension throughout the region. Several prominent cases of suicide illustrate the point well. From January 3 to April 5, 1933, five female pupils at Kirov’s School No. 3 attempted suicide, two of whom succeeded by hanging. Investigations followed by the city’s party committee, the local Workers and Peasants Inspectorate (Rab-
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krin), Viatka’s Department of Education and its party cell, and the city’s Komsomol committee.42 None of these agencies considered particular factors that might have contributed to one or another of the suicides. Nor were they concerned that all of the pupils were female. Rather their investigations concluded that suicides were an integral part of a larger canvas at School No. 3 and elsewhere of poor instruction, theft, brawling, and secret meetings of so-called class hostile elements. Time for the party’s analysts to brood meant more attention to the assorted evils lurking in school and community. On April 27, 1933, the Secretariat of Viatka’s party committee linked suicide with the popularity among pupils at this and other schools of sexual and adventure literature, dancing, and drinking.43 The same assumptions dominated a report released months later by the party’s municipal committee, “Some Facts from the Field of Culture.” Confronted with uncaring teachers and administrators and poor instruction, pupils committed suicide and even those who did not nevertheless wished for a kind of political and moral death by joining the ranks of the degenerate. When asked at School No. 3 to indicate what they wanted to be when they became adults, 40 percent of an unspecified group of pupils, presumably in the senior grades, wrote, “I want to become a merchant.”44 On December 2, 1935, in the town of Kotel’nich, 124 km. southwest of Kirov, a fourteen-year-old fifth grader, Ivan Mart’ianov, shot himself. An investigation by Kotel’nich’s department of education, headed by Vershinin, quickly followed. Submitted to the Regional Department of Education in December 1935, his report regarded the boy’s death as the culmination of a series of difficulties at school. Mart’ianov had been a notoriously poor pupil receiving low marks in several subjects, notably mathematics and biology, and in conduct for rude behavior toward his teachers. That year Mart’ianov was repeating the fifth grade. On the day of his death, he had clashed with his biology instructor, Ivan Petrovich Chistoserdov, and left a suicide note blaming the teacher. Although the report noted Chistoserdov’s undesirable social origin as a son of a priest, it did not proceed to use it or Chistoserdov’s treatment of the boy as an explanation for the suicide. On the contrary, the report emphasized that during Chistoserdov’s thirteen-year tenure as a teacher, he had earned a reputation as a demanding but fair instructor. The boy in question had instigated conflict by his insolent attitude and bore responsibility for his own death.45 Such a relatively simple explanation that accentuated the personal factor and one that blamed the boy clashed with prevailing attitudes regarding suicide. The head of the Regional Department of Education, Marchukov, immediately called for an investigation.46 Within days, by mid-December, the acting regional prosecutor, Mikhail Naumovich Dozorets, informed the party
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regional committee and the Regional Department of Education that he had arrested Chistoserdov. It stood to reason, Dozorets argued, that a priest’s son had terrorized (terrorizoval) Mart’ianov and other pupils over a long period of time. Dozorets added laconically that his office now sought evidence for the crime.47 Chistoserdov refused the role assigned to him as did some of Kotel’nich’s citizens. A local court (Narodnyi sud) consisting of a judge and two lay assessors heard Chistoserdov’s case, freed him, and ordered payment of his salary during the time he had been imprisoned.48 In response, on April 21, 1936, Vershinin, still the head of Kotel’nich’s department of education, submitted a report to the prosecutor’s office and the Regional Department of Education completely at odds with his earlier conclusions, now finding the teacher guilty of symbiotic personal, professional, and political errors. Chistoserdov had frequently lost his temper in front of pupils and fellow teachers and, on occasion, broke items such as a ruler during such outbursts.49 Vershinin requested permission to fire Chistoserdov. The Regional Department of Education approved and asked for another indictment.50 Chistoserdov’s arrest as a class enemy and counterrevolutionary soon followed.51 On June 16, 1936, after a failed love affair, Mariia Vasil’evna Stremousova, a seventh grader at Bogorodskoe Secondary School, 105 km. southeast of Kirov, killed herself by hanging. On June 25, 1936, the Bureau of the district’s Komsomol committee provided a sweeping social explanation by referring to pedagogical, moral, and political wrongdoing at the school. Teachers and pupils came to class ill-prepared and drank to excess and engaged in debauchery outside of it. One teacher had made anti-Soviet declarations; the school’s director was a son of a priest; his deputy, a son of a well-to-do peasant (kulak). The committee called for a criminal investigation of the school’s director and a purge of the school’s teaching staff.52 Subsequent reports predictably highlighted the deplorable state of conditions that had led to the suicide. Teachers had taught poorly and had engaged in drunken raucous parties. They and local administrators, personally lazy and politically ignorant, had permitted an environment in which pupils in the school’s dormitory stole from each other, played cards, and stayed out all night. It did not matter that, in fact, Stremousova had not lived in the dormitory but rather in an apartment.53 On December 7, 1934, the director of the secondary school in Votkinsk, located 305 km. southeast of Kirov, a town heretofore best known as the birthplace of the Russian composer, Petr Tchaikovsky, expelled a seventh grader, Georgii Essen, for writing verses on the school’s wall disparaging of the director. The next day, the boy committed suicide. An investigation undertaken by the Regional Department of Education discovered that fellow pupils had written the remarks and had set up the boy as punishment for tat-
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tling on a pupil who had written lewd comments in her notebook. However, the report proceeded well beyond this personal factor, determining that the suicide was only one of a number of “painful occurrences” at this and other schools in the district. Pupils got drunk and engaged in sexual escapades; teachers taught poorly and held counterrevolutionary views.54 Perhaps with the investigator’s help, the boy’s mother put it succinctly in a letter to the department: “This is not suicide but morally murder. My son fell victim to the political and pedagogical nearsightedness of the school’s teachers.”55 Over the next two years Essen’s suicide became a celebrated example of the symbiosis of personal, professional, and political misconduct. In an editorial of March 14, 1935, Kirovskaia pravda, a publication of Kirov’s regional party committee, interpreted it as one of many consequences of activity by class enemies, youthful hooligans, and poor teachers.56 When asked in early 1935 by Narkompros and the regional party committee to report on problems facing education, Marchukov set forth the boy’s suicide as evidence of the moral and political depravity of pupils and teachers throughout the region. Borrowing extensively from the liturgy of negativity, Marchukov observed that pupils drank, smoked, defaced the portraits of Lenin, Stalin, and Zhdanov, and sang counterrevolutionary songs. Teachers carried on illicit sexual relations with each other. One school director had debauched a female pupil.57 One year later, on March 15, at Komsomol’s Regional Conference (March 11–17, 1936), Marchukov turned again to the suicide by Essen and others to make the same point. He blamed teachers, school directors, Komsomol leaders, and officials of the local departments of education for the hooliganism and moral decay eating away at the region’s schools and their young charges.58 Nine months later and over two years after Essen’s death, his story yet again surfaced at a session of the Regional Department of Education’s party organization. There the deputy head of the department’s School Sector, Ivan Petrovich Barinov, who had traveled at least twice to Votkinsk to investigate the suicide, made it representative of forces destroying schools in the district and throughout the region. Essen had committed suicide in response to the same set of circumstances prevailing at a secondary school faraway in Falenki, where a fifteen-year-old had given birth to her brother’s child, another fifteen-year-old girl had infected multiple boys with gonorrhea.59 On October 6, 1937, Nikolai Ivanovich Trapeznikov, a sixth grade pupil at Klimkovka Junior Secondary School in Belaia Kholunitsa district, 82 km. east of Kirov, shot himself. A subsequent investigation found that on October 3 the boy had been part of a group of pupils who had stolen turnips from a street vendor. The next day, Petr Vladimirovich Kuz’min, the school’s deputy director, and O. P. Sukhov, the director, blamed Trapeznikov and expelled him from school. Two days later the boy killed himself.60
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Within days of the boy’s death, S. P. Trapeznikov, presumably a relative, attempted to divert blame from the young Trapeznikov and toward the school’s administrators. In a letter sent to Kirovskaia pravda, Trapeznikov insisted that the boy was innocent, that he had not been near the scene when the theft occurred, and that he had killed himself because of slanderous accusations and harsh treatment by Kuz’min and Sukhov. The previous year, another pupil at the school had committed suicide and neither an investigation nor punishment of a teacher allegedly responsible followed. It stood to reason that Kuz’min and Sukhov were culpable because of their unacceptable social origins. The former’s grandfather had been an administrator at a local smelting factory and his father owned considerable land and a factory where Sukhov’s father served as an administrator.61 Kirovskaia pravda sent the letter to the regional Schools Department. There, on October 23, Ivan Afanas’evich Liusov, the department’s deputy director, forwarded it to Nikolai Georgievich Zakharov, the department’s chief investigator with a well-deserved reputation for toughness, with instructions to journey to the district to verify the letter’s charges.62 Zakharov did so and filed a lengthy report on November 11, 1937.63 While he did not confirm the elder Trapeznikov’s claim of the boy’s innocence, Zakharov found a web of circumstances at Trapeznikov’s school and schools throughout the district that had contributed to the theft and the suicide. Teachers, administrators, and Komsomol and party organizations all neglected their responsibilities toward children. As a result, pupils learned little in the classroom and behaved badly outside of it. They had stolen items from street vendors well before the case involving the boy and, moreover, lifted cigarettes and other items from stores. On October 25, three weeks after the suicide, a sixth grade pupil at the school had distributed portraits of enemies of the people—Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and others—torn from old journals, offering them as bookmarks. At another school in the district, the Belaia Kholunitsa Secondary School, pupils smoked, cursed teachers during lessons, jumped out of school windows, and formed gangs of thieves. Armed with slingshots, they practiced their aim on portraits of Soviet leaders hanging on the school’s walls. In the physics classroom, sixth graders placed an inscription on a piece of lab equipment that made the abbreviation for the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to stand for “Russkaia Svin’ia Fyrknula Svoim Rylom” (a Russian pig snorted through its snout) and converted the Bolshevik standards, “Serp i Molot” (hammer and sickle), into “Smert’ i Golod” (death and starvation). In the meantime, both Kuz’min and Sukhov were arrested, indicted, and convicted under article 141 of the 1934 Criminal Code for behavior provoking a person to attempt suicide.64
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Zakharov’s report caught the eye and the pen of someone at the Schools Department who underlined in blue ink the report’s negative findings. It also found its way to Komsomol’s regional committee where it was read by the heads of its Pioneers Department and Department of Student Youth, Anur’ev and Galina Pavlovna Kolupaeva, respectively. They used it to draw a still more negative and extended picture. Trapeznikov’s suicide now became another example of the “painful manifestations and direct counterrevolutionary activity” in schools throughout the region.”65
SEXUAL POLITICS Well before the 1930s, Bolsheviks had demonstrated a fondness for the word, “razlozhenie,” a biological term for degeneration or decomposition, which they commonly applied to a person, institution, community, or society.66 It also had sexual connotations for, as Naiman has pointed out, sex had become for Bolsheviks a “symbolic shorthand for all forms of contamination” and the resulting threat of degeneration.67 So it was with a vengeance in Kirov during the mid-1930s when the party removed the region’s top educational administrators. In these instances, a person’s moral degeneration, part of the symbiosis of errors, meant sexual depravity. It made no difference if the alleged sexual activity was consensual or if one or both participants were married. In these cases, the personal, moral corruption, meant sex itself. Sex was politics.68 Over and again, accusers resorted to the adjective, “bytovoe,” derived from the word, “byt,” the everyday, to signify sexual misconduct. Those condemned were guilty alternatively of “everyday contact” (bytovaia sviaz’), or an “everyday relationship” (bytovoe otnoshenie), or “everyday corruption” (bytovoe razlozhenie) to mean in each case illicit sexual intercourse. Less frequently, accusers resorted with the same intent to another phrase, “personal contacts” (lichnye sviazi). While charges were brought against male and female administrators with equal vigor, their meaning, as we shall see, varied depending on the gender of the accused. On July 13, 1937, the secret police arrested Reshetov, head of Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, as an enemy of the people. Heretofore, he had been a Bolshevik success story. Born into a family of poor peasants in 1904, Reshetov performed a number of odd jobs including work as a hired laborer of a kulak, as a carpenter, and as a freight handler. After joining the party in 1926, he entered the Viatka Pedagogical Institute from whose social-economics department he graduated in 1931. Reshetov remained at the
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Institute to teach history until his appointment as head of Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education on February 28, 1934.69 During his tenure at the department, Reshetov encountered harsh but not unusual criticism. He had failed to purge schools and his own staff of classand socially alien people and of politically untrustworthy elements, behaved rudely toward colleagues at work, and had not sufficiently distanced himself from a right-opportunist group that included some of his friends and associates (the latter point an issue discussed in detail in chapter 6).70 Three weeks after his arrest, municipal and regional party committees made Reshetov’s symbiosis of errors complete with charges of an illicit sexual relationship with his former subordinate at the department, Nadezhda Pavlovna Kizei. Like Reshetov, Kizei had impressive credentials. Born in 1913 into a family of poor peasants, Kizei had worked on the railroad, graduated from and then worked for a Veterinary College in Viatka, and in early 1934 became an inspector of preschool education at Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education. She remained there until her appointment as director of the city’s Pushkin Library in April 1935. Six months later, on September 10, 1935, Kizei was transferred to the Regional Department of Education where she was responsible for assigning teachers to schools throughout the region. She had joined the party as a candidate member in 1932.71 In August 1937 an investigation by the municipal party committee concluded that Reshetov and Kizei had maintained constant contact (postoiannaia sviaz’) through numerous parties at her apartment that lasted until 5 or 6 AM. Reshetov had provided Kizei with an expensive winter coat and a dress.72 At the same time, the deputy head of the regional party committee’s Schools Department, Liusov, submitted a report that under the subheading, “Facts,” referred to Reshetov’s contact (sviaz’) with Kizei. Their cooperation also involved the appointment of teachers and local administrators hostile to Soviet power.73 Several months later, on December 3, 1937, the secret police arrested Marchukov, head of Kirov’s Regional Department of Education, as an enemy of the people.74 Like Reshetov, heretofore he had apparently impeccable Bolshevik credentials. Born in 1899, the son of a worker, Marchukov joined the Bolshevik Party in 1919 while serving in the Red Army from 1918 to 1921. During the Civil War he was wounded three times. After tenure as a local educational administrator in several districts, Marchukov entered the Krupskaya Academy of Communist Training in Moscow in 1929, completing its course three years later. From 1931 to 1934, he served in Moscow’s Commissariat of Enlightenment as a schools inspector and then as head of the Sector for Higher Pedagogical Institutes. In mid-December, 1934, Narkompros appointed him to head the Regional Department of Education in the newly
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created Kirov region.75 There Marchukov enjoyed all the perquisites and privileges that came with his position. In 1936 he received a new, and by several accounts, large and luxurious apartment in the newly constructed apartment complex of the Executive Committee of Kirov’s Regional Soviet.76 Marchukov’s arrest followed years of criticism for his personal, professional, and political wrongdoing. According to abundant testimony, Marchukov had behaved rudely toward subordinates at work and toward teachers when in the field, refused to receive in his office officials and teachers who had in some cases traversed considerable distance to see him, avoided the ritual of self-criticism, and ignored the party’s advice.77 In late 1937, Liusov submitted a twenty-three-page double-spaced report on the Regional Department of Education to the regional party committee. As already mentioned, Liusov commented negatively about the relationship between Reshetov and Kizei. His primary target, however, was Marchukov. Marchukov had claimed to know what was good for education better than the department’s party cell and the regional party committee’s Schools Department. When the latter organ had summoned Marchukov to examine a draft resolution it had prepared, Marchukov reportedly responded: “It is not for me to come to you, but for you to come to me. I don’t have the time.” And when the Schools Department criticized the training of teachers, Marchukov responded: “We at [the Regional Department of Education] are more competent than anyone else and have our own point of view.”78 At a meeting of teachers in Kyrchany district, 130 km. south of Kirov, Marchukov accused the head of the local department of education of a proclivity toward masturbation because the official sat with his hands in his pocket. Liusov added that he himself had been stung by Marchukov’s impudence. When Marchukov called a teacher and wife of a Red Army commander a prostitute at a teachers conference in Kirov on August 27, 1937, Liusov, the representative of the regional party committee’s Schools Department, had objected. Marchukov responded: “You know, we know [our] people better than anyone else.”79 Liusov’s report concluded that Ivan Nikitich Balalaev, the secretary of the party’s organization at the Regional Department of Education, had been insufficiently critical of Marchukov’s “criminally liberal and rotten leadership.”80 These charges brought against Marchukov during his tenure did not include any designs on female colleagues. As with Reshetov, womanizing became an issue only after the arrest. It began four days later at a session of the department of education’s party organization. There Marchukov was charged with repeated and aggressive exploitation of female subordinates. The details in each case varied in their volume and explicitness. During his three years as Kirov’s educational boss, Marchukov, a womanizer of the worst sort, had
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solicited sex from at least eleven of his female subordinates and successfully forced some of them to spend one or more nights with him.81 Marchukov had invited P. E. Karpova, head of the department’s Library Sector, for a romantic promenade along the high banks overlooking the Viatka River and, implicitly, other activities to follow. On several occasions he had shown an interest in Kizei by requiring her to work late. With more than drink on his mind, Marchukov poured wine in his apartment for Kizei; for Mariia Ignat’evna Kniazheva, deputy head of the department’s Elementary Schools Sector; and for Mariia Andreevna Chudakova, teacher in the Kirov region in the late 1920s, graduate in 1936 of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute’s Department for Teachers of Mentally and Physically Challenged Children, then director of Kirov’s Junior Secondary School No. 11.82 Marchukov’s relationship with two women, Kniazheva and Chudakova, elicited special attention. Between 1935 and 1937, Marchukov had continuously invited Kniazheva to his home becoming ever more persistent after getting his new apartment. By her own admission, he eventually dropped all pretense about asking her over to work, suggesting that she come by to listen to the radio and drink wine. On three occasions, she had spent the night.83 In 1936, Marchukov assigned Kniazheva to remote areas in the region allegedly to conceal her pregnancy and the subsequent birth of their child.84 Marchukov resorted to other tactics to ensnare Chudakova. Upon appointment to a school in Kirov, she became the object of the advances of both Reshetov and Marchukov. She had intimate conversations with both on the phone expelling officemates from the room when doing so, and slept over at the apartments of both. In this competition for Chudakova, Marchukov held the upper hand not only because of his superior position but also because he had an ostensibly legitimate reason to invite her to his place. Marchukov had a son with a speech defect. He recruited Chudakova to give private lessons to control his son’s stuttering and for other, intimate, activity. On these occasions, Marchukov sent an automobile to Chudakova’s school to transport her to his apartment.85 But why the charges of womanizing after the arrest of Reshetov and Marchukov? The prurient interest in the sexual exploits of Reshetov and Marchukov brought into play the most reprehensible of personal behavior to accompany existing charges of professional wrongdoing and political treason. In Marchukov’s case, the secretary of the party’s organization, Balalaev, as tough, authoritarian, and imperious as Marchukov, led the charge in equating the personal and immoral with the public and criminal. As an enemy of the people, Marchukov dominated women sexually so that he could use them “in support of his own politically hostile activity.” It naturally followed that Marchukov’s “moral corruption” (bytovoe razlozhenie) was connected
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with his political (and professional) crime of assigning teachers hostile to the Soviet regime to elementary and secondary schools.86 On December 30, 1937, when referring to Marchukov’s relationship with Kniazheva, Revekka Samuilovna Stoliar, head of Kirov’s Institute for Teachers In-Service Training and cousin of the party’s regional boss, Abram Iakovlevich Stoliar, declared bluntly: “Moral corruption is the work of enemies.”87 However, these accusers had in their sights more than Reshetov and Marchukov. The alleged victims, women who held important positions in educational administration, were targeted in the campaign against bureaucrats and bureaucratism. The charge of sleeping with an enemy of the people made good sense in an environment that assumed a symbiotic relationship of counterrevolutionary activity, professional incompetence, and moral deviance. As Naiman has suggested in another context, accusations of illicit sexual activity concerned the inappropriate allure of the female body, more so than male intentions and behavior, even when the men, in this case Reshetov and Marchukov, supposedly used their position to exploit their female subordinates. It logically followed that Kizei, Kniazheva, and Chudakova had committed myriad other personal as well as professional and political offenses. The investigation submitted to the party’s municipal committee on August 7, 1937, alleged that Kizei had entertained, in addition to Reshetov, Aleksandr Alekseevich Bobkov, the chair of the regional soviet’s executive committee, and unspecified others.88 Subsequent reports claimed that she had ignored the party’s guidance while at the municipal and regional departments and had littered the region’s schools with class-alien teachers.89 On October 15 at a meeting of the Bureau of the department’s party organization, Revekka Stoliar rhetorically asked Kizei if she understood that her past “contact with Reshetov was a political matter.”90 A combative Kizei denied the charges of political wrongdoing while admitting past intimacy over several months in 1935 with Reshetov which had resulted in a child. She admitted as well to Marchukov’s sexual interest in her. Upon her appointment to his office, Marchukov had remarked: “You are an interesting woman.” He “sat in front of me posing” as if he were somehow irresistibly appealing.91 But Kizei hastened to add that she successfully rebuffed all such advances from a man she despised and had sought work elsewhere. Knowing full well the decision to come, Kizei remained confident that she would soon be reinstated into the party. Years earlier Stalin had blamed local officials for excessive zeal in pursuing collectivization with his article, “Dizzy with Success” in Pravda, an event, she said, that had led to the return of many party members. She regarded any purge now more as a “learning experience than a banishment.”92 As Kizei predicted, the Bureau purged her as a candidate member of the party for sending anti-Soviet and hostile elements to schools and for “contact
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(sviaz’) with Reshetov, an enemy of the people.”93 On December 7, 1937, the Bureau of Zhdanov district’s party committee confirmed her purge for polluting schools with class-alien and hostile elements and for “contact” with several enemies of the people.94 In the meantime, the Regional Department of Education fired her from her position and assigned her to teach geography in the junior secondary grades at Kirov’s School No. 7. There neither her job nor her freedom was secure. In November, the Municipal Department of Education called for an investigation of the political character of ten teachers, Kizei among them, who had had contact with Reshetov and other enemies of the people.95 Kniazheva’s case was similar. At the meetings of the department’s party organization in December 1937, she acknowledged Marchukov’s personal interest in her but insisted that her only error had been a failure to inform the party committee of it.96 Nevertheless when under intense questioning, Kniazheva modified her defense. She admitted that on two occasions in 1936 and once in 1937 she had spent the night at Marchukov’s apartment. On the second and third nights, Marchukov had kissed her without her permission. She denied, however, that anything more followed and that she had had “personal contacts” (lichnye sviazi) with Marchukov.97 A kiss was a kiss and nothing more, sexually, professionally, or politically, than a kiss. Hostility, she added, between the two had followed. She had written a letter for the department’s wall newspaper that complained of bureaucratism. Upon learning the author’s identity, Marchukov summoned her to his office for a loud thrashing. “I speak from the depths of my soul,” Kniazheva declared, “when I say that I was glad when they exposed Marchukov.” 98 She protested in vain. On December 30, 1937, the Bureau of the department’s party organization and then on January 4, 1938, the party organization itself voted to purge her for the combined crimes of moral corruption (bytovoe razlozhenie) and hostile political activity.99 Although an intelligent individual who should have known better, Kniazheva had “taken up a personal life (lichnaia zhizn’) with Marchukov.”100 An unforgiving Balalaev put it categorically: “Sexual contact (bytovaia sviaz’) is political.”101 Four days later, Marchukov’s successor as head of the Regional Department of Education, Liusov, removed Kniazheva as deputy head of its Elementary Schools Sector.102 Chudakova too experienced criticism of her personal behavior and performance as director of Junior Secondary School No. 11. On January 8, 1938, at a meeting of the school’s pedagogical conference, attended by the school’s staff and representatives from the Stalin district’s party committee and department of education including Konchevskaia, accusations of poor leadership and sexual misconduct reached fever pitch. The school’s deputy
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director, Taisiia Stepanovna Ishutinova, led the assault. She knew the script well enough for she herself had been purged from the party for “everyday corruption” (bytovoe razlozhenie) in 1936 before her reinstatement shortly thereafter.103 Chudakova had lost control of her school and therefore bore responsibility for pupils who tore portraits of Soviet leaders, cursed, distributed counterrevolutionary literature, scribbled pornographic ditties in their notebooks, and carved on desks. Chudakova refused to discuss any of the school’s problems with her colleagues and behaved rudely toward them when they tried. “Everyone knows,” Ishutinova proclaimed, “about Chudakova’s contact (sviaz’) with Reshetov, an enemy of the people. It was very close contact.”104 Moreover, Ishutinova portrayed Chudakova as the stereotypical female prone to irrational emotional outbursts. At an earlier session of the pedagogical conference when faced with criticism, Chudakova had stomped out of the room without her overcoat. People sent to find her located her only after an hour and when they brought her back she broke out in hysterics (zaketila isteriku).105 In summing up the proceedings, an official of the district party committee called for a political evaluation of conditions at the school and for special attention to “Chudakova’s close relationship (blizkaia sviaz’) with Reshetov and Marchukov.”106 Chudakova denied any sexual contact with either Reshetov or Marchukov insisting that she despised both. On February 6, 1938, she lashed out at her accusers in a letter to Konchevskaia. In it Chudakova rejected all allegations of sexual misconduct in the hope that she might thereby neutralize talk of professional and political deviance. As a young specialist, a graduate of a Soviet higher educational institution, and daughter of a worker, she considered the charges as an insult. “I cannot but express my rightful indignation at such a mindless treatment of a living person. . . . Why me? Really is this the Soviet Union if a woman must bear alone such unpunished assaults on her character (lichnost’) and her dignity (dostoinstvo)?”107 CONCLUSION These drinking binges, of course, do not help a person who would become a complete warrior, a complete revolutionary. Instead they gradually overwhelm a person who then shirks revolutionary struggle and becomes at first a philistine, a drunkard, and then a hostile element, an enemy of the people.
With these words at Kirov’s First Regional Komsomol Congress in September 1937, a delegate, Khromov, crudely but in his own way, elegantly, articulated distinct but interrelated personal and political spheres.108 He needed only to make explicit the implied charge of professional incompetence to make
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complete the symbiosis of errors that dominated Bolshevik discourse in Kirov from 1931 until early 1938. That discourse required the discovery, even invention, of wrongdoing in all spheres when punishing teachers, explaining pupils’ suicide, and purging and imprisoning top educational officials. Once again as with inspectors’ evaluations and internal reports prepared by the bureaucracy, the region’s schools and their administrative organs became discursively dens of moral depravity, professional ineptitude, and political iniquity. Certainly reality in the classroom and administrative offices (if not at home) was bad enough without such theatrical flourishes. That symbiosis was nourished by the belief that the forces of social disorder threatened the health of an emerging socialist society at home, at work, and in the political arena.109 It also relied on an assumption that human nature, the very essence of the personal, whatever Karl Marx’s positive assessment of it, could in fact lead people astray. Khromov, the delegate at the First Regional Komsomol Congress quoted above, observed that Soviet youth promised to avoid excessive drinking, but their very nature (natura) undermined their resolve and pushed them toward counterrevolutionary activity.110 In quite remarkable fashion, Kirov’s Bolsheviks made wine and especially sex the natural corollaries of professional and political misconduct. Teachers purportedly exploited each other and pupils sexually. Alcohol and adventure literature led to sexual licentiousness and suicides among pupils. It made perfectly good sense to Liusov that Marchukov had prostitution and masturbation on his mind when observing his subordinates. Such phrases as “everyday connection” or “everyday relationship” were more than euphemisms for sexual intercourse. They were a way to emphasize that the everyday, the entire personal realm in the life of the people charged, was thoroughly corrupt. Misogynistic attitudes dominated thinking about the sexual threat. In Kirov in the 1930s, not men but women were charged with “sleeping with an enemy of the people.” When discussing conditions that led to suicide, Barinov made the female pupil rather than any boy the source of gonorrhea at school. While the men, Marchukov and Reshetov, behaved personally in a haughty and authoritarian manner, the woman, Chudakova, threw a hysterical fit. Perhaps Kizei and Kniazheva cast aside the script handed to them and promptly distinguished between their real and alleged personal behavior, on the one hand, and their professional worth and political standing, on the other, because they understood the full gravity of accusations of sexual misconduct when brought against women. Chudakova quickly denied any illicit activity and articulated a remarkable sense of self-esteem because she was, as she put it, a “woman in the Soviet Union.” Thanks in part to their disgust for and dismissal of the logic of symbiosis, Kizei, Kniazheva, and Chudakova, as we will see in chapter 8’s discussion of
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the symbiosis’s degeneration, weathered the storm and went on to successful careers. Even Reshetov and Marchukov reappeared in 1940 to attain positions of prominence soon thereafter. The survival of these officials, especially the women, had something to do with their own stout self-defense. As the next two chapters make clear, people of far less stature were also quick to defend themselves and their careers.
NOTES 1. David L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 11, 76. 2. John Bethke Elshtain, “The Displacement of Politics,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 167, and in the same volume Karen V. Hansen, “Rediscovering the Social: Visiting Practices in Antebellum New England and the Limits of the Public/Private Dichotomy,” 269. 3. See the discussion of Hannah Arendt’s notion of a “public space” and a presentation of “the social” by a number of authors in Public and Private, 15, 182, 239, 358, 360. In his commentary on the contributions to the collection, Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), its editor, Lewis H. Siegelbaum, refers to a multiplicity of layers of private and public spheres, which often intersect and are not necessarily mutually antagonistic (3). For articles discussing the private and public in the Soviet Union, see Christina and Eric Naiman, eds., Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 4. Lynn Hunt, “The Unstable Boundaries of the French Revolution,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 4, From the Fires of the Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 14. 5. Anne E. Gorsuch, “Flappers and Foxtrotters: Soviet Youth in the ‘Roaring Twenties,’” Carl Beck Papers, no. 1102 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), especially 13. In her Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), Anne Gorsuch has noted the tendency of many Bolsheviks in the 1920s to associate dirt and other forms of social disorder with disorders of the mind including political deviance (especially 66–67, 92, 118). 6. See the fine section, “Byt, Ethics, Behavior, Deviation,” in Michael DavidFox, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning Among the Bolsheviks, 1918–1929 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 101–117; quote on 101. For a history of the term, “byt,” see Catriona Kelly, “Byt: Identity and Everyday Life,” in National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction, eds. Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 149–167. 7. David-Fox, Revolution of the Mind, 106, 111–112.
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8. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 60–61. 9. Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 4. Naiman also refers to efforts to “colonize private life” (106). 10. Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 74. 11. Oleg Kharkhordin, “Reveal and Dissimulate: A Genealogy of Private Life in Soviet Russia,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice, 333–363. 12. Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 199, 270–272. Many Bolsheviks “individualized themselves primarily by dissimulation” (271). Marc Garcelon calls this phenomenon the depoliticization of life: Marc Garcelon, “The Shadow of the Leviathan: Public and Private in Communist and Post-Communist Society,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice, 324. 13. Igal Halfin, “Looking into the Oppositionists’ Souls: Inquisition Communist Style,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 316–339; Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 14. Jochen Hellbeck, “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931–1939,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York: Routledge, 2000), 95. 15. Jochen Hellbeck, “Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s,” in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, ed. David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 228, 234. 16. Jochen Hellbeck, “Working, Struggling, Becoming: Stalin-Era Autobiographical Texts,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 357. 17. Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). 18. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 123. 19. Catriona Kelly and Vadim Volkov, “Directed Desires: Kul’turnost’ and Consumption,” in Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881–1940, ed. Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 303. See also: Catriona Kelly, “The Education of the Will: Advice Literature, Zakal, and Manliness in Early-Twentieth Century Russia,” in Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Rebecca Friedman, and Dan Healey (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 131–51, and Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially chapter 4, “‘The Personal Does Not Exist’: Advising the Early Soviet Mass Reader, 1917–1953,” 230–311. In “Directed Desires,” Kelly mentions attempts by those who could afford it to purchase such items as tablecloths and lampshades to make their dwelling “more comfortable, private, and self-contained” (299). Any personal or private life was officially regarded as a “subdivision of the unitary whole of ‘communist morality’” (Refining Russia, 315).
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20. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 151. 21. See many such cases from the early 1930s through 1937: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-1828, op. 2, d. 5, ll. 9, 15 ob.; d. 17, ll. 4 ob., 65; Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1955, op. 1, d. 91, l. 31, and f. 902, op. 4, d. 5, ll. 229–230, and f. 1673, op. 1, d. 1, l. 10. For a case in 1937 in Murashi district, 188 km. north of Kirov, involving both a teacher and the head of the local department of education, see GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 64, ll. 39–42, and d. 77, ll. 76–76 ob., 78–81; f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 27–29; and f. 1255, op. 2, d. 386, ll. 54, 126–126 ob. 22. Memorandum from the district department of education to the regional department, December 30, 1937, in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 19, ll. 1–2 ob. Chekmarev taught in the village of Sviatitsa. 23. Information on Shustov in Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2001), 4:274. See also a letter Shustov wrote in June 1939 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 190, ll. 19–19 ob. 24. Biographical information in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 86, l. 26. She had been at School No. 3 since at least the fall of 1934. 25. Suvorov’s recommendation in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 112, l. 105. Additional information regarding Shustova’s popularity with pupils is in a subsequent condemnation of her work at a session of the Stalin district soviet’s party cell, March 19, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 17–22. 26. From testimony given at a closed meeting of the Stalin district soviet’s party cell on March 19, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 17–18 ob. 27. M. Marakhanov, “Samokritiki boiatsia, kak ognia,” Komsomol’skoe plemia, March 21, 1937, 3. 28. For the efforts by the departments of education involved, see: GAKO, f. R1864, op. l/s, d. 173, ll. 32–33, and R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 40. The latter document from the Regional Department of Education is erroneously dated March 20 and mistakenly refers to Shustova as the deputy director at School No. 8. 29. GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 17–22 ob., especially ll. 18 ob.–19. 30. Suvorov’s testimony in GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 17–17 ob. 31. See meetings of the cell on April 1 and May 31, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 24–25, 38–39. Suvorov’s suggestion came at the latter session. 32. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 219, l. 90. 33. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 111. 34. Michel Foucault observes that suicide “testified to the individual and private right to die, at the borders and in the interstices of power that was exercised over life.” Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), 139. 35. For histories of suicide see: Jeffrey R. Watt, Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001); Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, The Curse of Self Murder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Olive
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Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); George Minois, History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Howard I. Kushner, Self-Destruction in the Promised Land: A Psychocultural Biology of American Suicide (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989). 36. My summary does not do justice to the many nuances expressed by adherents of one or the other tendency. Durkheim recognized the importance of personal factors; psychologists acknowledged the role of social forces. 37. Irina Paperno, Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky’s Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), especially 101, 104. For a similar interpretation, see Susan K. Morissey, “Suicide and Civilization in Late Imperial Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 43, no. 2 (1995): 201–217. 38. Kenneth M. Pinnow, “Violence Against the Collective Self and the Problem of Social Integration in Early Bolshevik Russia,” Kritika 4, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 660. See also a discussion of suicide in Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia, 181, and an analysis of suicide among older youth and the party’s response during the 1920s by Monica Wellman, “Integrationsprobleme und Ausgrenzungserfahrungen: Abschiedsbriefe junger Selbstmörder aus Moskau (1920er Jahre),” in Sowjetjugend 1917–1941: Generation zwischen Revolution and Resignation, ed. Corinna Kuhr-Korolev, Stefan Plaggenborg, and Monica Wellman (Essen: Klartext, 2001), 103–126. 39. I discuss below only the more celebrated cases of pupils’ suicides. For additional responses by local, municipal, and regional authorities in early 1934, see GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 4, d. 54, l. 90; in 1935 in GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46 (the entire folder); in 1936 in GASPI KO, f. 1210, op. 1, d. 37, ll 32–34, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 31, l. 19, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 82, ll. 69–71, and f. 2739, op. 1, d. 23, ll. 38–41, 56; in 1937 in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 183, 222–223, 228–232, 245, and f. 1036, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 8, 17–18; and in early 1938 in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, l. 9, and f. 1290, op. 2, d. 253, ll. 3–5 ob. My findings digress considerably from Pinnow’s observation that in the 1930s suicide for the party “was no longer a visible problem” (Pinnow, “Violence,” 676). In his examination of the response to teachers’ suicides in the 1930s, Ewing found a refusal to acknowledge the role of personal causes in some cases but not in instances of suicide by people of unacceptable social origins: E. Thomas Ewing, “Personal Acts with Public Meanings, Suicides by Soviet Women Teachers in the Early Stalin Era,” Gender & History 14, no. 1 (April 2002): 120, 130–131. 40. Kirov’s records reveal that more females than males attempted to kill themselves, but more of the latter group succeeded by choosing the surer method of shooting themselves rather than taking poison. Such trends were (and are) evident in other countries and have prompted serious analysis. 41. On the decree, Stalin’s edict, and its application, see Peter Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 196–211. 42. For investigations and reports by the party committee: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 4, d. 8, ll. 292–295; by Rabkrin, GASPI KO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 139, ll. 18 ob.–28 ob.; by the Department of Education, GASPI KO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 78, ll. 2–3; by the
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Bureau of the municipal party committee, GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 3, l. 72; and by the Komsomol municipal committee, GASPI KO, f. 1656, op. 2, d. 8, l. 142. 43. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 4, d. 8, l. 294. 44. See the report of January 1934 in GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 4, d. 54, l. 90. 45. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 105–106. 46. See Marchukov’s handwritten order of December 6, 1935, written in the upper right-hand corner of the report: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, l. 105. 47. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, l. 111. 48. This information in Vershinin’s memorandum of April 21, 1936, to the district prosecutor and to Marchukov: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 68, l. 25. 49. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 68, l. 25. No doubt Vershinin was motivated to discharge Chistoserdov in part to avoid any payment of back salary. 50. See Marchukov’s written comments at the top of his copy of Vershinin’s request: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 76, l. 22. 51. For this information, see the report from the Pioneers Department of Komsomol’s regional committee in GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 122, l. 73. Chistoserdov was labeled a “White Guardist.” 52. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 82, l. 69. 53. See reports in 1936 to the Regional Department of Education and the regional party committee’s Schools Department in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, ll. 108–110, and d. 386, l. 34, and in February 1937 to the Schools Department in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, ll. 76–78. The latter report charged that Stremousova’s homeroom teacher had taken sexual advantage of her. 54. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 581, ll. 24–26. 55. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 581, l. 28 ob. 56. Kirovskaia pravda, March 14, 1935, 1. 57. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 18–31, see l. 31 for reference to Essen’s suicide. 58. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 692–693. 59. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 5–5 ob. 60. See information from the investigation conducted by an inspector of the Schools Department, Nikolai Georgievich Zakharov, filed on November 11, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 228–232. 61. The letter: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 223, 245. Trapeznikov condemned Kuz’min’s social origins by labeling his father a “large landowner of a Klimkovka factory,” confusing but damning terminology: l. 223. 62. See Liusov’s handwritten note on the material sent by Kirovskaia pravda: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 222. 63. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 228–232. 64. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, l. 69. 65. GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 25, ll. 1–17; Trapeznikov’s suicide mentioned on l. 8. 66. Hellbeck noted that the diarist, Alexander Afinogenov, a Soviet playwright, spoke of his previous “degeneration” as a person and party member as if he had contracted a disease: Hellbeck, “Writing the Self in the Time of Terror: Alexander
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Afinogenov’s Diary of 1937,” in Self and Story in Russian History, ed. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 76–77. Halfin found Bolsheviks using the term to mean ideological decline after contact with an unhealthy class environment: Halfin, Terror in My Soul, 103. See also Halfin’s discussion of such attitudes in the 1920s in Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), especially the section, “The Opposition Medicalized,” 64–68. See Kharkhordin’s discussion of the interrelated evils of disease, infection, and degeneration in Bolshevik discourse in Kharkhrodin, The Collective and the Individual, 138–140. In his campaign speech at Moscow’s Lomonosov State University, February 12, 2004, the Russian Federation’s president, Vladimir Putin, referred to the “destructive forces of the decay (razlozhenie) of state power (gosudarstvennost’) during the collapse of the Soviet Union.” See www. kremlin.ru/text/appears/2004/02/62215.shtml (November 12, 2004). 67. Naiman, Sex in Public, 16, 116. For a discussion of this phenomenon and its connections with alleged female sexuality, see Foucault, The History of Sexuality. On professional and official views regarding sex in the 1920s and an association of sexual deviance with political crime in the 1930s: Frances Lee Bernstein, The Dictatorship of Sex: Lifestyle Advice for the Soviet Masses (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007). 68. Note Naiman’s comment that for Bolsheviks “discourse about sex was not to decrease sexual desire but to arouse it” (emphasis in the original): Naiman, Sex in Public, 147. In a somewhat analogous argument, Cynthia Hooper has pointed out how during the terror Soviet officials regarded the family “as a key site of potential political corruption”: Cynthia Hooper, “Terror of Intimacy: Family Politics in the 1930s Soviet Union,” in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, ed. Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 65. 69. This information from Reshetov’s autobiography of July 8, 1935, in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 582, ll. 23–24. 70. See meetings of the department of education’s party cell: GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 64, 78–79, 81 ob., 84. 71. This information from Kizei’s testimony before the Purge Commission in 1934 in GASPI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 19–20, and special files on Kizei in GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, and f. 1293, op. 8a, d. 1066. At the regional department, Kizei was an inspector of cadres. In September 1934, a Purge Commission had reduced Kizei’s status to that of “sympathizer” for political illiteracy. That fall she successfully appealed the decision. For the punishment and appeal: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 21, and d. 239, ll. 276–277, 279. 72. This information in a special file on Kizei in GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, l. 17. 73. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 133–135, 142. 74. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 23, l. 353. 75. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 8a, d. 1733, ll. 1–6 ob. 76. See references to Marchukov’s “rich apartment” by Barinov at the meeting of the Regional Department of Education’s party organization, December 7, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 120.
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77. I will discuss the orchestration of a crescendo of these charges and Marchukov’s response in chapter 7 on the terror. 78. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, l. 136. 79. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 128–129. Liusov also based his criticism on a number of complaints about Marchukov’s behavior from school officials: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 44, ll. 29–35. The head of the Stalin district’s department of education, Konchevskaia, recalled Marchukov’s indictment of a teacher for prostitution and labeled it both abusive and completely false in so far as in the USSR “there is no prostitution just as there is no unemployment”: l. 35. 80. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 136, 141. In Russian: prestupnoliberal’noe i gniloe rukovodstvo. 81. The charges were made at meetings of the department’s party organization and of its Bureau and in reports to them and to the party’s regional committee. See the meeting of December 7, 1937, in f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 114, 120, 122; a session of the organization’s Bureau of December 30, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 125–125 ob.; meetings of the party organization on January 4 and April 17, 1938, in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, ll. 5–7, 23 ob. 82. On Karpova: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 6. On Kizei: GASPI KO, f. 551, op. 2, d. 94, l. 2. On Chudakova, see comments at a pedagogical conference of Junior Secondary School No. 11, January 8, 1938, in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 34–34 ob. 83. For Kniazheva’s testimony on December 30, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 124–125. 84. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 125 ob. 85. See testimony at a pedagogical conference at Kirov’s Junior Secondary School No. 11, January 8, 1938, in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 34–34 ob, 42. 86. See Balalaev’s comments at the December 7 and 30, 1937, sessions of the Bureau of the department’s party organization, GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 122, 125 ob., and at the January 4, 1938, session of the department’s party organization, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, ll. 6–7. Balalaev had been a party member since 1920 and at this time served as head of the regional department’s Planning and Finance Sector. See his questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, f. 17, op. 9, d. 568, ll. 82–82 ob. 87. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 125 ob. 88. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, ll. 17–20. It is in a special file on Kizei. A few months earlier, Bobkov had been transferred to Moscow where he would hold senior posts in agricultural administration until his retirement some time in the 1950s. See GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 8a, d. 247. 89. See testimony at the meeting of the regional department’s party organization of October 15, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 88–89, and Liusov’s report to the party’s regional committee later that year in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 133–134, 142–143. 90. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 87. In Russian: Poniala li ty, chto svoia sviaz’ s Reshetovym politicheskoe delo?
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91. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 87–88. In Russian: On sidit peredo mnoi—risuetsia. 92. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 89. 93. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 89. 94. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 36, l. 196. 95. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 189, l. 58. The threat was all the more ominous because the department’s acting head, Aleksei Ivanovich Shabalin, noted in this same memorandum the firing of nine teachers and the arrest by the security police of an additional seven for alleged political crimes. 96. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 113–114. 97. Testimony at a meeting of the department’s party organization, January 4, 1938, in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 5. 98. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 124–126 (quote on l. 126). Kniazheva repeated this defense at the party organization’s session of January 4, 1938: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, ll. 5–6. 99. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 124, and f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, ll. 7–8. The Zhdanov district committee confirmed the purge on January 9: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 126, l. 25. 100. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 6. 101. As quoted by Mariia Terent’evna Kulakova at a session of the department’s party organization, April 17, 1938: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 23 ob. The English translation does not do justice to the powerfully evocative and blunt Russian, spoken in the local Viatka dialect: Raz bytovaia sviaz’ est’, to znachit i politicheskaia. 102. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, l. 15. 103. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 10, d. 621, l. 1. 104. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 40–53, quote on l. 42. Thirteen individuals attended the conference. Chudakova was apparently not one of them. 105. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, l. 41. 106. Comments by Khudiakov: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, l. 53. 107. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 169, l. 38 ob. Much earlier, in September 1936, Chudakova had filed a secret complaint with the regional party committee’s investigative organ, the Group for Party-Soviet Control, regarding Marchukov’s behavior toward special children, a matter discussed in chapter 7. 108. GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 1, l. 346. 109. I am aware that David Shearer has retreated from his earlier view that the party’s perceived threat of social chaos is critical to an understanding of the origins of the terror in the 1930s. Nevertheless, while now emphasizing the primacy of the threat of war, Shearer continues to take note of an official fear of mass social disorder. See David Shearer, “Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD during the 1930s,” in Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, ed. Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 85–117. 110. GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 346–347.
4 The Art of Complaint, 1931–1938
A HISTORY
Letters of complaint, plea, and denunciation have long played an important role in Russian history. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people, big and small, submitted petitions to regional authorities and frequently to the tsar himself. Putting to good use the notion of a special bond between tsar and people, peasants frequently petitioned the autocrat to advance their own interests.1 Under Nicholas II, requests and pleas from people representing all walks of life “poured into the Emperor’s Petitions Chancellery” which employed over a hundred officials to process them and report their findings to the tsar. In addition, peasants personally handed the tsar their requests when he traveled or they came to St. Petersburg to leave them at his palace.2 Once in power, the Bolsheviks maintained this at once popular and regal tradition. Lenin encouraged people to petition him directly and spent considerable energy and time reading these items, many of which concerned trivial personal matters.3 Stalin as well demonstrated a keen interest in this form of communication. In April 1919 he established a Complaints Bureau at his Peoples Commissariat of State Control and at its replacement in 1920, the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate. In April 1932, Stalin wrote a short piece published in Pravda, “The Importance and Tasks of the Complaints Bureau,” in which he emphasized the Bureau’s role in the fight against “inertia, red tape, and bureaucratism.”4 In the mid-1930s, a celebration of the right, indeed obligation, of people, both prominent and barely visible, to share their concerns with regional and central authorities combined with an equally ostentatious glorification of the importance of little people. At the First All-Russian Conference of 91
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Stakhanovites, November 17, 1935, Stalin praised the award-winning workers gathered there as simple folk waging a struggle below against hostile bureaucrats above wedded to old norms and the past.5 Glorification of common citizens, wise in their simplicity, continued and reached its zenith at the Central Committee’s plenary session in February and March 1937 where Stalin again emphasized the importance of little people. Leaders witnessed events from one side, the masses from another. The solution of problems required listening to the people. “So all this means not only to study the masses but to learn from them. . . . And as long as [the Bolsheviks] maintain a link with their mother, the people, they will have every chance to remain invincible.”6 Moscow’s efforts struck a responsive chord among its people. The Russian specialist in folklore and classical and European literature, Ol’ga Freidenberg, responded to the banning in 1936 of her book, Poetics of Plot and Genre, with a letter to Stalin. I wrote to Stalin. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I still sincerely believed in acts of sabotage, the tricks of local scoundrels, and the deliberate distortion of Party instructions. It was said that Stalin wished to do right and that he read all letters addressed to him. I resolved to act in my usual way, by personally appealing to the highest authority, without intermediaries, half measures, and compromises. Disarmed as I was, one weapon was left to me: my pen, my honesty, and my passionate conviction.7
Sharing Freidenberg’s faith in the center’s ability to put right evil bureaucrats’ wrongs, ordinary people bombarded their “betters.” In the mid-1930s, Izvestiia received about 5,000 letters a day. Workers submitted thousands of complaints to newspapers about incompetent managers and difficulties on the job. The Soviet Civil Defense Society (Osoaviakhim) successfully encouraged its members to send letters to the central press exposing bureaucratic deceit and incompetence. Collective farm workers sent similar letters by the thousands to the newspaper Krest’ianskaia gazeta [Peasants Gazette] in 1937 and 1938.8 Not to be undone by their fellow citizens, the little people of Soviet education—pupils, parents, custodians, teachers, and inspectors—sent a deluge of complaints and pleas to Moscow’s institutional giants—Narkompros, the Central Committee, the USSR and Russian Republic’s Council of Peoples Commissars, Pravda, Izvestiia, the press arm of the Soviet government, and the teachers union’s central headquarters and its newspaper, Za Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie. One letter was addressed simply, “Moscow, The Kremlin,” another, “Moscow. Central Politburo” (the Political Bureau, the policy-making arm of the party’s Central Committee).9 Many appeals were sent directly to Stalin; to Molotov, Chairman of the USSR Council of Peoples Commissars; and to Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s widow, a Nar-
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kompros official and “All-Union Grandmother,” as one supplicant put it.10 Kirov’s citizens likewise bombarded the Regional Department of Education, the regional party committee, and the local newspapers, Kirovskie rebiata (Kirov’s Children) and Kirovskaia pravda, with such items, made all the more impressive by the imprecise address to which they were sent and their humble, sometimes poorly written prose.11 All these letters, whether to Moscow or Kirov, hammered away at monotonously familiar topics: belated pay; inadequate physical facilities at school; the absence of apartments; shortages of fuel, paper, pencils, and textbooks; requisitioning of school equipment and buildings by local party and security police organs; pupils’ poor behavior; and abusive behavior by rude and heartless bureaucrats.12 A number of historians have examined many such letters from a variety of citizens (and not just teachers) and the campaign of which they were a part. Several of them have insisted that the vast majority of letters were not registered and only a few of those that were merited the appearance of an investigation. Golfo Alexopoulos has concluded that almost all letters submitted to central authorities encountered “indifference and neglect, as complaints were ignored and filed away, lost, even burned.”13 In his recent book on letters of denunciations submitted during the 1930s, Francois-Xavier Nérard made the same point.14 However, most analysts have stressed the determined, if theatrical, response letters provoked. Years ago when using the Smolensk Party Archive, Merle Fainsod found evidence of “fairly careful processing” and frequent follow-up investigations.15 Peasants took advantage, Sheila Fitzpatrick has more recently written, of the regime’s “certain automatic reflexes” in responding to denunciations from below that were “routinely investigated.”16 “Writers could reasonably hope,” Fitzpatrick concluded, “for a response to their letters.”17 In her study of letters submitted during the 1930s to Soviet leaders, Sarah Davies found considerable evidence of careful recording and classification of these items and of a response to them.18 Everyone agrees that the entire process had its manipulative aspects. The center fostered the impression that it cared about popular sentiment and stood ready to avenge abuses committed by less elevated officials. It also encouraged people to think that they were participating in a process that was correcting the malfunctions of an otherwise sound system. Historians have, however, disagreed, often sharply, over the meaning of these letters for their authors and recipients. Nérard found that while authors of letters of denunciation sought to advance their own agenda including the settling of old scores and conflicts, they in fact almost exclusively promoted the interests of the ruling party-state. By the very act of writing, authors acknowledged the omnipresent and omniscient nature of existing power relationships.19 In contrast, Robert Thurston has argued that the letter-writing campaign, albeit with
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clear-cut elements of showmanship, was tantamount to participatory politics. “It would be useful to think of the Soviet system as authoritarian above,” Thurston concluded, “but participatory below [for] complaints and suggestions consistently flowed upward.”20 Fitzpatrick has observed that letters on a particular topic bundled up by Pravda and sent on to the Politburo served as an important source of information regarding public opinion and the functioning of the bureaucracy.21 In a study of the Soviet Civil Defense Society, William Odom reached a similar conclusion. The regime regarded the letters as a useful source of information about actual conditions and in this manner received an accurate accounting unavailable through official channels.22 Tom Ewing has regarded letters and telegrams from teachers as evidence of informal negotiation between Moscow and teachers in which the latter “often succeeded in achieving their objectives.”23 Nevertheless, by blaming local officials for their difficult conditions, teachers accepted willy-nilly the center’s explanation of all problems and exonerated Moscow in the process. As teachers and central authorities found common ground, the latter quickly seized upon the former’s complaints to reinforce its own point about culpability and justify a further centralization of power.24 Nérard has made the same point, but more forcefully. While the center, in his opinion, failed to respond to letters of denunciation, it used them as an exercise in power, orchestrating a campaign to blame “enemies” for any real and alleged failures of Moscow’s own policies.25 In an examination of letters of complaint and denunciation from Voronezh, Kang-Bohr reached a similar conclusion. The Kremlin took such correspondence as evidence of “arbitrary, high-handed and bureaucratic attitudes” by local and regional officials and as a justification to wage a fierce campaign against them.26
TEACHERS’ TALES FROM KIROV TO MOSCOW AND BACK I have found that central, regional, and local authorities responded to letters of complaint and denunciation in a way that was, to be sure, theatrical, cynical, and exploitative, but at the same time often helpful to the complainant. Although they neither led to anything like “participatory politics” nor became so-called objective sources of information for the party-state, letters from teachers during the early and especially mid-1930s played an important role in the governance of Soviet schools and in a multidimensional relationship between the Soviet State and its citizens. The least in Kirov to the greatest in Moscow made it so. For letters sent by teachers to Stalin, his Secret Chancellery (Osobyi Sektor) devised a special form requiring of Narkompros an investigation and a subsequent report to the chancellery. The
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Central Committee’s Secretariat used a similar form and procedures for the many items it received regarding schools.27 Narkompros then dutifully took up the problem directly or passed it on to its lower organs, sending along its own forms requiring an investigation and response. In the meantime, Narkompros’s Complaints Bureau kept its door open to the public from 10:45 AM to 5 PM each working day. Narkompros’s chief units received oral and written complaints every day from 2 PM.28 On February 15, 1938, the Commissar of Education in Moscow, Petr Andreevich Tiurkin, ordered all such inquiries sent to it to be marked, “Complaint—investigate immediately” and required that its inspectors take with them a list of complaints when venturing into the regions.29 Kirov’s administrative organs for education acted in similar fashion. At the Regional Department of Education, Marchukov and his chief deputies opened their doors at 2 PM to receive people wanting to present a complaint or request.30 The regional, municipal, and district departments of education insisted over and again on careful registration of items in a special card file or Book of Complaints and a follow-up investigation.31 The regional party committee’s Schools Department and Kirov’s newspapers, Kirovskaia pravda and Komsomol’skoe plemia (The Komsomol Tribe), devised special forms to mail to the appropriate bureaucratic organ along with a copy or the original of a complaint requiring an investigation and report by a specific date.32 They also had another form, usually a 3x5 postcard, to send as a reminder that the matter had not been processed by the required date.33 Teachers cherished their right of complaint. They lived and worked in a highly regimented environment in which “others” made and implemented critical decisions. If, as I have pointed out elsewhere, many teachers pursued their own agenda in the classroom, outside of it they had little influence.34 School administrators, and heads of district departments of education, appointed from above exercised near-dictatorial powers. The teachers union did little more than organize special vacations for a few and persuade, indeed coerce, all of its members to undertake political study (read the Short Course after September 1938) and engage in civic (social) work from liquidating adult illiteracy to helping with the sowing and harvest campaigns.35 Higher authorities controlled the agendas at district teachers’ conferences and only a select few attended regional or national conclaves. Therefore, writing a complaint, plea, or denunciation was one avenue of expression and influence open to teachers. Moreover, especially during the mid-1930s a complaint could lead to the delivery of paper to a school, the sudden appearance of a blackboard (if not chalk) to another, or the provisioning of manufactured goods to teachers in a remote area. A denunciation could provoke the dismissal, even arrest in 1937, of an allegedly rude and soulless educational official.36 It happened
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often enough in cases celebrated in the national and local press that teachers were quick to use, if they did not fully believe in, “the system.” To be sure, it was grand theater at its most grandiose. Party and state organs neither in Moscow nor in Kirov could register let alone investigate properly all the correspondence. The repeated insistence on careful processing and a reliance on postcard reminders indicated a less than perfect response. Some complaints were never registered, others lost soon thereafter. Administrators complained of a “soulless-bureaucratic attitude” toward such items, “chaotic record keeping,” and “criminally unacceptable red tape” in their investigation.37 The posting of office hours was one thing, receiving of people another. In a case discussed in detail below, Vishvtsev, the director of a junior secondary in Salobeliak, 200 km. southwest of Kirov, journeyed the considerable distance to Kirov twice in 1937 to meet with Marchukov. On both occasions, Marchukov refused him an audience. No doubt many letters and telegrams as well as visitors went unheeded. And yet until 1938 many others prompted attention and a response. Criticism by rote of agencies and administrators for failing to track and respond to most complaints should not be taken at face value when originating in a political environment that required condemnation of bureaucrats, whatever the facts of the matter. Most scholars, cited above, who have examined Moscow’s response to these items have found a proclivity to initially give the complainant the benefit of doubt. Kirov’s archives reveal over and again the same thing at least until 1938.38 Teachers wrote about a wide variety of topics. In a straightforward way, they requested employment or transfer, pre-paid vacations, or material assistance. This chapter and the one that follows, however, are not about this type of correspondence, rather they focus on far more complex letters, usually of complaint and denunciation, submitted from 1931 to early 1938 and the responses they elicited. As I discuss immediately below, the nature of these letters varied over time and, as described in detail in chapter 10, their style and content changed significantly after 1938.39
THE LITANY OF SUFFERING AND VICTIMIZATION In the early 1930s, teachers adopted an impertinent tone when addressing administrative organs about their problems. In the spring of 1932 the director of an elementary school, Anna Nikolaevna Mitiagina, demanded the firing by the regional department of an incompetent teacher or else she, the director, could not be held responsible for flunking at year’s end all of the teacher’s twenty-eight pupils.40 On September 9, 1932, an elementary schoolteacher
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wrote to the Regional Department of Education regarding shortages of textbooks and other academic materials. “Such a situation is unbearable. I’ve reached the end of the road.”41 One month later, she wrote again “for the third time,” asking for a transfer to a better appointed school.42 On March 16, 1933, another teacher wanted back pay owed or she would take the matter to court. She added: “It would be best if you dealt with me without any red tape.”43 By the mid-1930s, complainants wrote a different kind of letter in both style and content. First, they adopted a beseeching and humble tone. Second, they portrayed a Manichean world of good and evil in which they, the authors, represented what was right, their enemies, what was evil, and the individual to whom they appealed, what was virtuous. Privileging the personal, writers signed their letters with a return address prominently displayed and highlighted the name and position of the alleged perpetrators of wrongdoing. Third, authors expressed an abiding faith in the system. Renegade officials not the party-state’s structure or agencies were the source of all the trouble. The appeal itself and expectation of a response stemmed from a belief that a solution would soon follow. Fourth, authors seized upon the hopes, dreams, and myths propagated in speeches of leaders, editorials of newspapers, celebrations of revolutionary holidays, and popular films to authenticate the injustice done to them and to inspire officials to put things right. In playing on the personal, authors presented an autobiographical sketch, sometimes written separately at the beginning or end of the letter, sometimes interwoven into the larger narrative. When interspersed in the body of the letter, the sketch often interrupted the story and made it hard to follow. Yet it was this, the personal, even when clumsily put, that was the heart and soul of the complaint. The aggrieved highlighted, when possible, their humble origin as the child of a worker or peasant and their devotion to the cause as represented by the Soviet state. They emphasized as well the suffering they and their dependents had endured. Male complainants underscored their inability to provide for their family because of a demotion or dismissal from work, physical deterioration that occurred as a result of incarceration, and the emotional distress of a wife or mother. Female authors pointed to the psychological stress brought on by the wrong done to them and how they had initially responded with emotional outbursts before a male official who nevertheless remained heartless and obstinate. Authors included snippets of biographical information on the perpetrators of the injustice, often hearsay about an individual’s social origins as a child of a merchant or clergyman or gossip about the person’s political pedigree as a soldier in the White Army or member of a political party other than the communist. Yet any focus on wrongdoers’ past paled in significance with a preoccupation with their personality, evil incarnate, rude, abusive, and mean. Often the issue was precisely that—not a
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single act but a pattern of brutish behavior toward the complainant. Finally, the personal meant submission of the plea or complaint to a specific official or officials, asking them as kind and merciful rulers to take personal umbrage at the injustice and to do something about it.44 Kirov’s little people of education knew the script well as several representative examples that follow ably demonstrate. Authors began with the proper salutations and opening lines. In 1935, Liubov’ Nikolaevna Brusenina wrote Vladimir Dmitrievich Mazurov, head of the regional party committee’s Schools Department: “I know of you by your articles and comments in Kirovskaia pravda. Everyone speaks of your great sensitivity toward people. That’s why I decided to turn to you for help even though I am not at all acquainted with you personally.”45 Others played up their devotion to children. One teacher demonstrably discussed how for years she had trudged her way to a rural school through mud each autumn, then snowdrifts in the winter.46 Nor were they any less adept at theatrically underscoring their base existence and the official promise of something better. In April 1937, thirteen teachers at the Matvinur Junior Secondary School in Sanchursk district, about 280 km. southwest of Kirov, wrote Moscow’s Izvestiia about a shortage of food, firewood, and apartments that “puts us in the ranks of something like abandoned contemptible people.” Such conditions, they continued, “are incompatible with our Stalinist epoch.”47 In early 1936 thirty pupils and the director of Stoliar Junior Secondary School in the town, Rudnichnyi, in the Kai district, signed a letter submitted to Abram Iakovlevich Stoliar, head of the region’s party committee, after whom their school was named. They wrote of an overcrowded physical facility and an acute shortage of textbooks and notebooks. Unless the situation was remedied, teachers and pupils could not justify the school’s display of “our beloved name” and students could not prepare themselves to become Komsomol’s next generation.48 Stoliar passed the letter on to the regional committee’s Schools Department where its deputy head, Liusov, turned not to the Regional Department of Education but directly to the agency responsible for the printing and distribution of academic materials, the Book Trade Association of State Publishers (KOGIZ), and to the executive committee of the region’s soviet. KOGIZ immediately sent a shipment of textbooks and notebooks to the school and the soviet loaned its subordinate soviet in the Kai district the handsome sum of 10,000 rubles for improvement of the school’s physical plant.49 In the summer of 1936, Vasilii Ivanovich Vishvtsev, director of a junior secondary school in Salobeliak district, proved insufficiently vigilant by mentioning to the deputy secretary of the local Komsomol committee that Trotsky had once held important posts in the infant Soviet regime and too vigilant
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when he complained that the draft of a new constitution allowed former enemies, kulaks and soldiers in the White Army, to vote. For his indiscretions, he was fired. After unsuccessfully appealing to local and regional authorities and then to Narkompros, and twice refused an audience by Marchukov in Kirov, Vishvtsev wrote to Daniil Egorovich Sulimov, the chair of the Russian Republic’s Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom) on May 3, 1937. Vishvtsev admitted his error and begged for mercy due him as the child of an agricultural laborer and laundress, who without a job could make ends meet only by selling off his personal belongings.50 Sulimov asked Kirov’s regional party committee to investigate, sending a copy of his order to Vishvtsev. An investigation followed in which Liusov came to the nearby town of Iaransk to take Vishvtsev’s testimony.51 As the case dragged on, an anxious Vishvtsev appealed to the regional committee in late July or early August with a more fetching litany of suffering and victimization. For eight years he had devoted himself to his craft and to his pupils and had many awards to prove it. Sulimov’s response had raised his and his mother’s hopes, but a failure to act caused her considerable emotional anguish and her rapid physical decline. The local Komsomol official, the source of all the trouble in the first place, behaved abusively by boasting, when Vishvtsev had once again turned to him, that “we have executed you politically” (tebia politicheski rasstroeli). “My path,” Vishvtsev concluded, “is that set by Stalin and the Communist Party.”52 Vishvtsev struck all the right notes but in vain, presumably because his alleged heretical politics trumped all other considerations. The regional committee’s Schools Department confirmed the charges brought against him and approved his dismissal.53 Administrators knew the litany of suffering and victimization well enough to employ it on their own behalf. From January to October 1937, Zakharov, the demanding inspector for the regional party committee’s Schools Department who, as we have seen in the previous chapter, embellished the significance of a suicide, submitted three written appeals. He surely felt he had the right to complain not only because of his current position but also because of his credentials as a Bolshevik self-made man. Born in 1906, the son of a miner, Zakharov dropped out of school after the seventh grade to work successively in a bakery, laundry, and leather factory. After holding a number of posts in the Young Communist League, he had joined the Schools Department in 1936.54 The substance of Zakharov’s letters was simple: he wanted an apartment instead of the single room he and his family of four possessed with a kitchen they shared with nine other families. The style and manner of his letters were far more complex. Zakharov proceeded methodically up the chain of command. He first turned to Zolotukhin, head of the
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regional soviet’s Housing Department. His request unfulfilled, Zakharov wrote next to the head of the regional committee’s Schools Department, and then directly to the secretary of the regional party committee.55 The first two letters emphasized that he and his wife, sister, and child had endured cramped conditions unbecoming someone in his position and harmful to his family’s health. Neighbors occupied the kitchen morning and night forcing him to prepare dinner for his family on a small stove in his room. Not content with a mere description of the material environment, Zakharov transmitted the horrors of surrounding sounds and smells, as he and other inspectors had often done in their reports on schools. A family next door, some members of which had spent time in prison, cursed and sang indecent (blatnye) songs all night. A smithy next to the apartment building added to the commotion by working around the clock, noise perhaps more bearable than the omnipresent stench penetrating his room from the building’s common toilet also next door.56 He and his family occupied “hell and not an apartment.”57 Zakharov’s third letter was more desperate. By now, his wife had given birth to a second child. The regional soviet had promised him an apartment in a new complex built for its employees, but Zakharov had just learned that his family was not in fact on the list. Neither he nor his family could sleep. He could not work or “even exist as a human being.”58 Anger then trumped suffering. Zakharov blamed Zolotukhin: “He knows how I live, he shoved me into this hole.”59 During the following two months, Zakharov continued to submit reports on schools to the Schools Department even as he waited for new lodging.60 His wait ended in mid-December in an unpleasant way. That month the security police arrested and imprisoned him as an enemy of the people.
CONCLUSION Regional and central authorities did not expect to find much useful information in letters of complaint. Kirov and Moscow encouraged authors of these items to rely on the very hyperbole and invention that administrators themselves, as we have seen, employed in their own reports. Nor did party and state organs read these letters as sources of practical suggestions for the making and implementation of policy. Complaints and denunciations were far too personal and too focused on a narrow issue, often the conduct of a single individual, to serve any such purpose. However, it was precisely the personal and the particular that made these letters immensely important to
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those who wrote them and thereby useful as expressions of hope and belief in the Soviet Union for the officials who received them. These letters, therefore, empowered both author and reader. Complainants did not expect any change in the system that dominated their lives. For them, even at their boldest and angriest, the structure of the party-state was not at issue. They signed their name and provided their address and wrote, sometimes to Stalin in Moscow or Stoliar in Kirov, with the faith that someone in power could and would address the specific problem. They expected a favorable response precisely because of a belief that the system mandated the justice they sought. That many of these letters were read and elicited a response, if only a promise to investigate, reinforced the faith, if only temporarily, that some way, somehow, little people could find just the right person to handle their case. The process also simultaneously acknowledged and strengthened arbitrary power above. In a larger European context, James C. Scott has written that letters of desperation addressed to the sovereign amalgamated “two contradictory elements: an implicit threat of violence and a deferential tone of address.”61 However, complaints and denunciations from below in the Kirov region discussed in this and the following chapter challenged not central but local power, usually an individual by name. By asking for intervention from above, complainants thereby reaffirmed the right if not the desire of higher authority to exercise its immense arbitrary might. Empowerment of both citizens and the center’s officials through such letters from below is not lost on contemporary Russians. The press secretary of the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris El’tsin, observed that simple people, “as in Stalin’s time,” held the firm conviction that people around El’tsin deceived him and thus it was their responsibility to ask him to resolve problems they and others encountered. They sent him thousands of letters a day.62 In 2001, President Vladimir Putin’s “Office of Citizens’ Appeals” received 565,000 letters. An additional 492,000 people telegrammed or sent internet messages during the week preceding Putin’s widely publicized national call-in show that December and in September 2005 over a million in another such program.63 On a far less regal but nevertheless ceremonial occasion, on November 23, 2000, Kirov’s mayor, Vasilii Alekseevich Kiselev, took telephone calls from the city’s citizens from 2 to 3 PM.64 Two cases from the mid-1930s and featured in the next chapter illustrate well the style and content of letters of complaint, the nature of the investigations and decisions that followed, and, in the end, the empowerment of both people and the state. The first involves the schoolteacher, Vera Petrovna Bulygina, the second another teacher, Evgeniia Terent’evna Chernykh. 65
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NOTES 1. Valerie Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), and Nancy Shields Kollman, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 59–61, 111; Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976). 2. Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 113–114. 3. John L. H. Keep, Power and the People: Essays on Russian History (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995), 371. For a summary of the Soviet state’s sponsorship and encouragement of complaints in the 1920s and 1930s, see Golfo Alexopoulos, “Exposing Illegality and Oneself: Complaint and Risk in Stalin’s Russia,” in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864–1996: Power Culture, and the Limits of Legal Order, ed. Peter H. Solomon, Jr. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 169–173. 4. I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1951), 13:135. 5. I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1967), 1:88–89. 6. Pravda, April 1, 1937, 2. 7. The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910–1954, ed. Elliott Mossman and trans. Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 163. Freidenberg received a response that provided some relief from the harsh criticism. 8. Robert W. Thurston, “Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1931–1941,” Journal of Social History 24, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 553; Robert Thurston, “The Stakhanovite Movement: Background to the Great Terror in the Factories, 1935–1938,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 142–160; William E. Odom, The Soviet Volunteers: Modernization and Bureaucracy in a Public Mass Organization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 110, 148–151, 200, 327. Something of the same thing occurred in Nazi Germany where Hitler’s chancellery received at least 1,000 letters and petitions every working day. See Robert Gellately, “Denunciations in TwentiethCentury Germany: Aspects of Self-Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic,” in Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 185–221, and Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 93. 9. For the latter letter, Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 215. 10. For one such letter to Krupskaya, Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’noPoliticheskoi Istorii, f. 12, op. 1, d. 752, l. 63. 11. Teachers usually wrote considerably better if imperfectly. For many examples of ungrammatical and poor style and an effort to present it in English translation, see
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Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents, ed. Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 12. See entire files of these complaints and pleas: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [henceforth GARF], f. A-2306, op. 69, d. 2413–2415, 2501–2502, 2504, 2516, 2562–2582, 2776–2777. 13. Alexopoulos, “Exposing Illegality,” 176. 14. Francois-Xavier Nérard, Cinq pour cent de vérité: La dénonciation dans l’URSS de Staline (1928–1941) (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 204–224. 15. Merle Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 378–408 16. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 200, 260. See also Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Readers’ Letters to Krest’ianskaia Gazeta, 1938,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 166. 17. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in TwentiethCentury Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 177. Based on a survey of letters in a number of archives, Fitzpatrick concluded that perhaps 25 to 30 percent of the letters received some kind of response (177). In a study of letters of denunciation to the Soviet secret police from 1944 to 1953, Vladimir Kozlov has found indications of frequent follow-up investigations: Vladimir A. Kozlov, “Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944–1953,” in Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 121–152. 18. Sarah Davies, “The ‘Cult’ of the Vozhd’: Representations in Letters, 1934– 1941,” Russian History 24, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 131–147. 19. Nérard, Cinq pour cent de vérité, 337–343, 352, 366–375. 20. Thurston, “Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule”: 553. 21. Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks!, 156. Matthew Lenoe similarly emphasized the utility of letters in the 1920s “as a vital part of the state’s mechanism for gathering intelligence on popular moods and adjusting propaganda to them”: Matthew E. Lenoe, “Reader Responses to the Soviet Press Campaign Against the TrotskiiZinov’ev Opposition, 1926–1928,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 89. 22. Odom, The Soviet Volunteers, 290, 299. 23. E. Thomas Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 41. Also Matthew E. Lenoe, “Letter Writing and the State: Reader Correspondence with Newspapers as a Source for Early Soviet History,” Cahiers du Monde russe 40, no. 1–2 (January–June 1999): 139– 170, and Golfo Alexopoulos, “Voices Beyond the Urals: The Discovery of a Central State Archive,” Cahiers du Monde russe 40, no. 1–2 (January–June 1999): 199–215. 24. Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism, 41–42. 25. Nérard, Cinq pour cent de vérité, 352, 383. 26. Youngok Kang-Bohr, “Appeals and Complaints: Popular Reactions to the Party Purges and the Great Terror in the Voronezh Region, 1935–1939,” EuropeAsia Studies 57, no. 1 (January 2005): 135–154, quote on 150. Kang-Bohr’s article
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was reprinted as chapter 5 in his Stalinismus im der ländlichen Provinz: Das Gebiet Voronež, 1934–1941 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006). 27. For example: GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2415, ll. 89–90; also GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 165. See one such form sent to Kirov in June 1937 in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 165. 28. Order from the Commissar of Education, Tiurkin, February 15, 1938, in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 72, l. 31. 29. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 72, l. 31. For many items forwarded to Kirov’s Regional Department of Education by Narkompros, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 243; f. R-2333, op. 1, dd. 8, 49, 50, 68; and R-2342, op. 1, dd. 4, 68, 69, 72, 74. 30. Order of July 13, 1937, by Marchukov in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, l. 350. 31. By the regional department in 1934, 1937, and 1938 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 103, l. 274, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, l. 350, and op. 2, d. 19, l. 81; and f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, l. 92. By the municipal department in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 142, l. 33 ob. By the Urzhum district department of education in 1937 in GASPI KO, f. 4369, op. 1, d. 1, l. 78. 32. By the newspaper, Komsomol’skoe plemia in GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 93, l. 24 (from early 1938); by the Kirov regional party committee’s Schools Department in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 205, ll. 17–18 (in 1937); and by the newspaper, Viatskaia pravda in GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 3, d. 1, l. 9 (in 1931). 33. See such reminders from Narkompros to Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, September 1935, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 309, l. 25a, and from Komsomol’skoe plemia in early 1938 in GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 93, l. 23. 34. On teachers and their own agenda, see Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 86–97. 35. When the union’s regional committee did respond to complaints, it generally upheld the decisions of educational officials. See many such cases in GASPI KO, f. 6715, op. 2, especially d. 2. 36. Kirov’s archives are replete with many such cases. For example: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 386, ll. 58–60, and f. 1955, op. 1, d. 11, l. 126, and d. 60, l. 33; GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 150, 216, 521, and f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 50, ll. 447, 451–451 ob. 37. See comments in 1934 by Tsekher, the head of the Regional Department of Education in Gorky province, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 103, l. 27; by Narkompros in 1937 listing three cases in particular from Kirov in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 4, l. 191; and by the Commissar of Education, Tiurkin, in February 1937 in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 72, l. 28. 38. Nérard, who in his recent book emphasized over and again the neglect of the vast majority of letters of denunciation, pointed out in an earlier article that such letters sometimes elicited a response, if not from the security police, then from other state and party organs. Francois-Xavier Nérard, “Les organs du contrôle d’Ėtat et les journaux dans l’URSS de Stalin. Des auxiliaires de la police politique?” Cahiers du Monde russe 42, no. 2–4 (April–December 2001): 263–278.
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39. Unlike Kozlov, I do not make a major distinction between complaints and denunciations for a complaint often involved sharp criticism, even a denunciation, of officials allegedly responsible for the problem (see Kozlov, “Denunciation and Its Functions,” 121). Nor do I follow Fitzpatrick’s classification of letter-writers into “Supplicants,” who submitted private complaints asking for justice without any invocation of rights, and “Citizens,” who wrote to state their opinions, criticize policies, and finger corrupt officials while invoking their rights including their right to be heard. (See Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks!, 179–180.) As will become evident in this chapter and in chapters 5, 9, and 10, educators who wrote until 1938 often displayed the characteristics of both “supplicants” and “citizens.” Increasingly after 1938, they invoked their professional rights, a point of cardinal importance in chapter 10. 40. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 31, ll. 26–27, 31. 41. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 30, ll. 3–3 ob. 42. Letter of October 14, 1936: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 30, l. 7. 43. GAKO, f. 2528, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 34–34 ob. In Russian: Luchshe vsego Vam nuzhno rasschitat’ so mnoi bez vsiakoi volokity. 44. Nérard discusses especially well the discourse of letters of denunciation. Using the vocabulary and tropes determined by the ruling party-state, denouncers employed skillfully the technique of self-debasement, spoke of the personal wrongs done them by evil authority figures, and sought to establish an intimate relationship with the person addressed: Nérard, Cinq pour cent de vérité, 289–291, 297–325. See also a discussion of a manipulative, in his view, use of offical jargon in letters of denunciation in Jörg Baberowski, “‘Die Verfasser von Erklarungen jagen den Partiführern einen Schrecken ein’: Denunziation und Terror in der stalinischen Sowjetunion 1928–1941,” in Denunziation und Justiz: Historische Dimensionen eines sozialen Phänomens, ed. Friso Ross and Achim Landwehr (Tübingen: Edition Discord, 2000), 165–199. On the personal and familiar in letters, see the commentary in Stalinism as a Way of Life, 21–22, and Davies, “The ‘Cult’ of the Vozhd’”: 136, 138. In her study of letters in the Smolensk Party Archive, Margareta Mommsen found that people wrote from the heart, focused on the personal faults of their antagonists, and used official language to make their case more appealing. Women in particular addressed officials in a personal way. Margareta Mommsen, Hilf mir, mein Recht zu finden: Russische Bittschriften Von Iwan dem Schrecklichen bis Gorbatschow (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1987), 164–165, 207–208. Analyzing letters submitted during the 1920s and 1930s, Golfo Alexopoulos concluded that their authors “mourned fate and expressed sorrow for themselves” and placed “a burden of conscience squarely on the reader”: Golfo Alexopoulos, “The Ritual Lament: A Narrative of Appeal in the 1920s and 1930s,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 121, 129. For pleas and complaints during perestroika, see chapter 3, “Litanies and Laments: The Discursive Art of Suffering,” in Nancy Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 83–126. 45. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 32. 46. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 174, ll. 105–107 ob. 47. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 194–195. 48. GAKO, f. R-2333, op.1, d. 28, l. 98 ob.
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49. GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 28, ll. 95,100. The petitioners had hoped for, even more, the construction of a new building. 50. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 230, 234 ob. 51. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 229, 234b–234v ob. 52. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 234b–234v ob. 53. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 218. It did not help matters that Sulimov was arrested in June 1937 and shot that November. 54. Zakharov’s autobiographical sketch dated October 4, 1937, in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 267–269. 55. The letters are in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 262–264 ob. 56. Zakharov’s reports from 1936 to the end of 1937 are in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, ll. 28–29, 52–55, 83–84, 89–91. Also: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 35–37, 181–184; d. 207, ll. 103–106; d. 208, ll. 15–18, 24–27; d. 211, ll. 54–60; d. 219, ll. 232–236; d. 223, ll. 228–232. 57. Zakharov’s second letter: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 263. 58. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 264. From 1935 to 1937, the regional soviet constructed two four-storied buildings on the high embankment overlooking the Viatka River at the beginning of Kommuna (now Moskovskaia) Street. On the buildings: B. V. Zyrin, “Zastroika goroda Kirova 1930-e gody,” in Entsiklopediia zemli Viatskoi, vol. 5, Arkhitektura (Kirov: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe predpriiatie “Viatka,” 1996), 236. 59. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 264 ob. In Russian: On menia v etu dyru sunul. 60. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, ll. 228–232, and d. 206, ll. 181–184. 61. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 96. 62. Viacheslav Kostikov, Roman s prezidentom (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), 117. For a sampling of letters submitted to the Soviet press during the late 1980s: Dear Comrade Editor: Readers’ Letters to the Soviet Press under Perestroika, ed. and trans. Jim Riordan and Sue Bridger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), and Small Fires: Letters from the Soviet People to Ogonyok Magazine, 1987–1990, ed. Christopher Cerf and Marina Albee with Lev Gushchin, trans. Hans Fenstermacher (New York: Summit Books, 1990). 63. “Petitioning Tsar Vladimir for Help,” Moscow News, May 17–19, 2002, 1–2. The same message of empowerment of the state and of Putin as its representative was hammered home daily in news broadcasts by Russia’s main television channel showing the president, somewhat informally in his personal manner but in a highly formal setting, receiving people from all walks of life. 64. Viatskii krai, November 21, 2000, 1. 65. My interest in and use of these letters corresponds to the methodology employed by Natalie Zemon Davis in her Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). I am more interested in how and what Bulygina and Chernykh said than in what may have in fact happened. In either case, the available documentation does not provide an objective account.
5 Power to the People and to the State: Great Performances by V. P. Bulygina and E. T. Chernykh
(1) REAL FICTION IN FOUR ACTS Is it possible . . . that [one can] lose sight of the other kind of reality, or reality which is no less true . . . and which, however rarely it may come to light, is no less entitled to be recognized than the hardest of the hard facts which stare one in the face? —M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, The Pompadours: A Satire on the Art of Government
The Plot
The four acts in this play had more than their share of drama. They were provided first by Vera Petrovna Bulygina, a teacher at Pudem Junior Secondary School, in letters written in 1935 to Kirovskaia pravda, as mentioned previously a publication of Kirov’s regional party committee, then by that newspaper’s embellishment of her tale, and finally by a climactic scene in Pudem on January 13 and 14, 1936. The play occurred in two locales, in Kirov and in Pudem, the latter a village located in the Udmurt Autonomous Republic, 180 km. east of Kirov, an area consisting of Russians and Udmurts, a Finno-Ugric people, almost evenly divided in number. In Pudem, the complainant, Bulygina, was something of a pariah. Her community hoped to expel her from its midst; its officials, their collusion facilitated by appointments of their wives to the school’s faculty, hoped to fire her. Bulygina exercised her right to take the play to a regional stage where she demonstrated a remarkable command of the litany of suffering and victimization. In letters to Kirovskaia pravda, Bulygina represented 107
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herself as the heroine—the daughter of a worker, a caring mother, devoted teacher, and the persecuted female driven to shrieking and ill health—and her antagonists as the villains—heartless, soulless, incompetent, corrupt, and abusive officials with suspect social origins. Act I. Trouble in Pudem
We know a great deal about Bulygina and her difficulties in Pudem primarily from her two letters submitted to Kirovskaia pravda in September and October 1935. 1 It was her story and she knew how to tell it skillfully exaggerating and inventing as she went. Bulygina began her teaching career in 1912. Eleven years later, she joined the faculty at Pudem’s Junior Secondary School to teach physics and biology. In 1933, however, her duties changed with the appointment of a new school director, V. K. Danilov, who took over Bulygina’s courses in physics. While continuing to teach biology, Bulygina was assigned lessons in agriculture and responsibility for the upkeep of the school’s plot and orchard. She also began to teach short courses in agronomy and animal husbandry at the local collective farm. Bulygina was not pleased with her new assignment. She believed that Danilov had been appointed as a result of machinations by local leaders to insure that an Udmurt, regardless of qualifications, lead the school and that she, a daughter of a worker, had been forced to suffer for it. For a time she tried to make the best of it. Unacquainted with agronomy, Bulygina struggled to learn the subject. Despite Danilov’s alleged failure to support and fund her efforts, she maintained the school’s plot and orchard in good order. It was more, however, than Bulygina could bear. By the spring of 1934, her nerves were strained and her preexisting rheumatism and heart condition worsened. Although a doctor prescribed a stay in a health resort for a rest and cure, the local union refused to fund the trip and she could not go. That fall, Bulygina’s workload eased somewhat but in a way not to her liking. The curriculum issued by Moscow’s Commissariat of Education for the 1934–1935 academic year reduced the labor portion of the curriculum, in Pudem’s case, agriculture, from about five to three hours a week.2 The school’s administration did not assign her additional hours in another subject and thus Bulygina suffered a reduction of pay. In early 1935, Bulygina found an outlet for her frustration. That spring she and another teacher at the school, Gorshkov, were appointed to a commission to investigate the local rural cooperative. Bulygina found that among his many faults, the cooperative’s chair, L. V. Tronin, had supported Danilov’s continuation as the school’s director despite the latter’s utter
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incompetence. Bulygina repeated her charges at a meeting of the district’s teachers union that spring. There Bulygina insisted that Danilov, although an energetic and politically developed person, had been a poor administrator who had behaved “not like a Soviet worker or pedagogue” but instead “like a petty tyrant-landlord or petty tyrant-merchant.”3 Danilov had been rude toward teachers he disliked while failing to discipline those he favored. Bulygina added that Danilov had refused to support her efforts to maintain the school’s garden. Later that year on August 8, local authorities including Danilov, Tronin, and L. D. Volkov, the latter the head of the district’s department of education, met to discuss the staffing of schools in the district. In a legal exercise of their power, they decided to send both Bulygina and Gorshkov to another school in Liumsk, a small town 20 km. from Pudem. They insisted that they did so in order to provide that school with veteran teachers. Neither Gorshkov nor Bulygina accepted their new appointment. Gorshkov simply avoided it and any additional controversy by leaving the district, an illegal act on his part but the type of behavior that often went unpunished. Bulygina stayed to fight, regarding orders for her transfer as punishment for her criticism of Danilov and Tronin. Moreover, she found evidence of nepotism in appointments to the school. L. F. Mecheva, daughter of a former factory foreman and kulak, allegedly capable at best of teaching in the primary grades, had been promoted by her friend, Danilov, to teach literature in the school’s secondary grades. Volkov had appointed his own wife to the school’s faculty as well as the semiliterate wife of the head of the district’s trade office (raivnutorg), who once in place beat her pupils. In August with Bulygina’s removal, Volkov became more brazen replacing her with Nina Mikhailovna Belozerskaia, the sister of the wife of Vorontsov, the local party boss. At the same time, Volkov designated Vorontsov’s wife as Gorshkov’s replacement. On August 25, Volkov and Vorontsov responded to Bulygina’s defiance by revisiting an incident that had occurred earlier that year. In March, Udmurt and Russian pupils had fought at the school. At that time both Bulygina and Gorshkov had been implicated in instigating the trouble. On April 11, the Bureau of the district’s party committee investigated and charged neither Bulygina nor Gorshkov. Now, however, Volkov and Vorontsov held Bulygina responsible and charged her with chauvinism. They threatened an indictment unless Bulygina left quietly for her new appointment. Unintimidated, Bulygina remained in Pudem seeking all the while an audience with Volkov. On September 16, he finally agreed to see her. As a veteran teacher, Bulygina told him, she deserved better. A forced transfer would create undue hardships because of her nervous condition and rheumatism.
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Moreover, she had a house, garden, and cow in Pudem and older parents in town that required her constant care. Her son, she added, opposed the move. Volkov responded aggressively to Bulygina’s challenge of his authority. She could not have her old job back and for good measure, he added, she was stripped of her accreditation as a teacher for her refusal leave Pudem. On September 21, Bulygina turned to Kamashev, the chair of the district soviet’s executive committee. He too refused to help. According to Bulygina, he grabbed her by the hair then pushed her to the door while, as Bulygina recalled, “I shouted and cried like a female shrieker” (klikusha). The executive committee’s staff rushed over to quiet her down and pour her a glass of water. Regaining her composure, Bulygina nevertheless remained defiant. She did not “live in a fascist country.” The conspiracy against her was an egregious case of “local nationalism” (mestnyi natsionalizm). “I’ll go to Moscow. I will go to Bubnov [Commissar of Education for the Russian Republic]. I won’t ever give up.”4 Bulygina made good on her threat. Unable to afford the trip to Moscow, she sent a telegram to Bubnov protesting her transfer and annulment of her accreditation. At Pudem’s post office, she encountered more resistance. The postmaster refused to send her complaint, while agreeing to forward it later. After a few days, a suspicious Bulygina checked to discover that her telegram had been sent two hours after her departure but only after a modification implying that the problem had been resolved with her consent. Bulygina protested to any and all who might listen. No one helped when she approached the local offices of the teachers union, security police, and prosecutor. Nor did Kalinin, the Commissar of Education of the Udmurt Autonomous Republic, respond to her telegram of complaint. Bulygina found Vorontsov more receptive, but only with an offer to furnish her with a document that, in effect, renewed her teaching certificate and allowed for her appointment to Liumsk. Stubborn as ever, Bulygina refused and demanded her old job back. Shortly thereafter, Vorontsov and Kamashev offered Bulygina a position as an inspector of schools for the district department of education.5 She refused this appointment as well. She had good reason to do so. Throughout the 1930s teachers rarely sought such a post because it paid poorly (often less than an experienced teacher would receive) and required considerable travel and paperwork. The position would also mean that she would serve under Volkov, whom she despised. At the same time, Bulygina amassed sufficient evidence to force an indictment of Kamashev as a drunkard and embezzler. Yet in response local authorities rushed to protect one of their own. The case against Kamashev did not go to trial. Although removed as a chair of the soviet’s executive committee, he continued to work for it all the while remaining in the same room with the same pay.6
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Act II. “They Have Thrown the Teacher, Bulygina, Out of the School”
Bulygina turned to yet another authority. On September 26 she sent a letter to Kirovskaia pravda. The editors knew a good story when they saw it. They handed Bulygina’s initial letter to their chief educational reporter, Nikolai Vasenev. On October 4, he published his account under the provocative title, “They Have Thrown the Teacher, Bulygina, Out of the School.”7 Skillfully dramatizing Bulygina’s narrative, Vasenev portrayed her as the aggrieved daughter of a worker and a devoted teacher persecuted by inhumane, abusive, and corrupt colleagues and local administrators. Vasenev made Volkov the stereotypical soulless bureaucrat uninterested in the difficulties Bulygina’s transfer posed to her, her son, and elderly parents. For good measure, Vasenev observed that Volkov’s wife, one of the beneficiaries of local nepotism, was the daughter of an exiled kulak. Refusal by the local party boss, Vorontsov, to help “had not been accidental” because his wife and sister-in-law, both teachers at the school, benefited from Bulygina’s dismissal. Kamashev was the prototypical rude administrator fond of meting out verbal and physical abuse. In an imaginative flair of his own, Vasenev added that as a result of all these machinations, Bulygina had suffered a nervous breakdown. Vasenev ended on a theatrical note: “How can this happen in our time after Comrade Stalin’s speech when the concern for the individual person has been taken to such great lengths?!” He expressed surprise that the Udmurt Republic’s Narkompros had not responded to Bulygina’s telegram. Vasenev called for the direct intervention of the Autonomous Republic’s highest authorities, its party committee and the Executive Committee of its Soviet. Act III. The Counterattack
Bulygina’s letter and Vasenev’s article presented only one side of the story. No doubt her opponents felt they acted appropriately. By her own account, Bulygina was a difficult person, quick to challenge people in authority, short and quarrelsome with fellow teachers and townspeople.8 When Pudem’s officials conspired to remove the town’s troublesome character, they acted in accord with the desire of many others at the school and beyond. When the same officials appointed their wives to positions at the local school, they proceeded in ways common in the Russian Republic. The rapid expansion in the 1930s of the number of schools and pupils created a serious shortage of teachers. Wives of local officials were often chosen to teach. Although they usually did not have specialized pedagogical training, they did have a secondary schooling that made them more qualified than many of their peers.9 Bulygina’s immediate successor, Belozerskaia, was a case in point. Belozerskaia had graduated from a womens gymnasium in 1918 and had since
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taught in elementary schools. Just prior to her appointment to Pudem’s school, she had been a director of a junior secondary school. When transferred to Pudem, she took up Bulygina’s responsibilities as a biology teacher and also became the school’s deputy director.10 Be that as it may, local officials abused their powers in a way unusual even in a society accustomed to it. In fact, the situation was worse than Bulygina and Kirovskaia pravda dared at the time to present it. Officials carefully crafted their wives’ appointments to coincide with childbirth and a four-month paid maternity leave guaranteed by the state. A game of musical chairs ensued among three women. Almost immediately upon her replacement of Bulygina, Belozerskaia, far advanced in her pregnancy, went on paid maternity leave. At the same time, Vorontsova, the wife of the district’s party boss, and recently appointed to the school, began her maternity leave. Volkova, the school director’s wife, also pregnant, replaced Belozerskaia and upon Belozerskaia’s return later in the year took a maternity leave.11 On October 12, Ovsiannikov, chair of the teachers union’s regional committee, visited Pudem to investigate the charges made eight days earlier in Kirovskaia pravda. Volkov and Vorontsov turned him away at a meeting of the teachers union with their own and teachers’ criticism of Bulygina.12 They then made good their threat to seek Bulygina’s indictment for chauvinism. The next day, October 13, an investigator in the district prosecutor’s office summoned Bulygina to give testimony and on the next day formally charged her.13 Bulygina counterattacked. One week later she submitted a second, more appealing, letter to Kirovskaia pravda. Although she continued to heap scorn on Danilov, Volkov, Vorontsov, Kamashev, and other co-conspirators, she now targeted her fellow teacher, Mecheva, who, according to Bulygina, had inspired the attack on her. Bulygina highlighted her own highly proper socialist credentials in sharp contrast to Mecheva’s. Bulygina’s father had been one of those workers at a local factory who in 1906 had forcibly removed Mecheva’s father, a foreman, from the factory in a wheelbarrow. Although unable to return to work, Mechev and his family survived well enough as kulaks who owned a considerable amount of fertile land. Though heavily taxed after the 1917 revolution and then deprived of their property, his family somehow avoided arrest and exile and, in fact, continued to lead a privileged existence. Local authorities had promoted an undeserving Mecheva to instructor of literature in the secondary grades. Despite his background, the elderly Mechev received a state pension. Ovsiannikov, Bulygina continued, had shown little interest in her case. He had criticized her for writing to Kirovskaia pravda rather than submitting an appeal to the union. Despite his relatively lofty position, he had fallen prey to the accusations leveled against her by Volkov, Vorontsov, Belozerskaia,
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and others at a meeting packed with their supporters. She was not allowed to speak in her own defense and Ovsiannikov refused to see her before his departure the following day. No one had come to her aid, Bulygina continued, because of her indictment for chauvinism. It was an accusation, she observed, “as easily made as it was to accuse someone of witchcraft in the Middle Ages.” Bulygina ended on a fetching personal note. The entire affair had led to a further deterioration of her health, but she would continue protesting because “I cannot abide by such unpunished activity.”14 While Kirovskaia pravda did not publish another article, Bulygina’s effort began to get results. On November 3, the Udmurt Autonomous Republic’s Commissariat of Education ordered her reappointment to Pudem’s Junior Secondary School. Yet resistance continued. On November 10, the union’s local sharply expressed its opposition and criticized Bulygina.15 Finally, two weeks later, on November 19, Pudem’s district department of education ordered Bulygina back to work as a biology teacher, replacing Belozerskaia in that post, although the latter, now returned from maternity leave, continued as the school’s deputy director. As might be expected, things did not go smoothly. To be sure, Danilov had been removed for unknown reasons some time before Bulygina’s return, but the same people who had joined forces against her remained secure in their positions and their wives continued at the school. Bulygina’s own petulant character hardly helped matters. At the close of Bulygina’s first day back on the job, November 20, she told the school’s new director, Timofeev, that her pupils were woefully ignorant because of Belozerskaia’s utter incompetence as a teacher. She would have to start her courses anew. Perhaps she exaggerated for effect; if so, her efforts proved counterproductive. Timofeev immediately informed Belozerskaia, who the next day, according to later testimony, shouted at and cursed Bulygina. Timofeev refused to help Bulygina receive back pay for the nearly three months she had been refused employment.16 Even Kalinin’s direct intervention did not bring Bulygina relief. On December 13, Kalinin ordered Volkov’s dismissal and indictment for his treatment of Bulygina. He declared Volkov’s wife to be an organizer of a slanderous campaign against Bulygina and, for good measure, a socially alien daughter of an exiled kulak and ordered her dismissal from the school’s faculty. However, supported by Vorontsov, both Volkov and Volkova openly defied the order and remained in their posts. Act IV. Redemption
On December 7, G. M. Dekhterev, writing as a “citizen of Omutninsk,” took up Bulygina’s case in a lengthy letter submitted in three copies to Abram
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Stoliar, chair of Kirov’s regional party committee, to Aleksandr Alekseevich Bobkov, chair of the executive committee of the region’s soviet, and to the Udmurt Autonomous Republic’s party committee and soviet. 17 It is not clear who Dekhterev was or why he found Bulygina’s case so compelling. Quite likely he had earlier befriended Bulygina or himself had clashed with Volkov, Vorontsov, and their allies. His town of Omutninsk, although not in the Udmurt Republic, was located nearby, about 30 km. north of Pudem. Dekhterev appended copies of Bulygina’s earlier letters to Kirovskaia pravda, which perhaps Bulygina had sent him. Dekhterev knew well the litany of complaint. First, a cabal of officials had persecuted a veteran teacher. Second, Bulygina experienced physical and emotional pain throughout her ordeal. She continued to suffer because of a campaign of slander against her at the school and because of a refusal to provide her with back pay. Third, local leaders were thoroughly corrupt. Highlighting the appointment of pregnant wives and the musical chairs that followed, Dekhterev caustically commented that he could hardly oppose the growth of the country’s population, but it was unbecoming of state employees to appoint their wives to positions on the eve of their childbirth and subsequent paid leave.18 For good measure, Dekhterev noted that Vorontsov had seized the second floor of a building assigned to the local Civil Defense Society and converted it into his own spacious apartment. Although Kirovskaia pravda had not been able to goad its sponsor, the regional party committee, into action with its earlier article, Dekhterev’s effort prompted the committee’s aggressive intervention. On December 19, Mazurov, head of the committee’s Schools Department, examined the correspondence.19 Several weeks later, he dispatched a state inspector from the Regional Department of Education to Pudem for a thorough investigation.20 Other important people already involved in the case followed. On January 13 and 14, the inspector along with Ovsiannikov, Vasenev, and Kalinin descended on Pudem, temporarily the center of the Kirov region. The very presence of these prominent figures was meant to overwhelm local officials. And yet resistance continued. According to the inspector’s report submitted to Mazurov on January 17, on the first day, January 13, Vorontsov and the secretary of the district’s Komsomol committee declared their intention to retain Volkov as head of the district’s department of education. At the same time, Zlobin, Kamashev’s replacement as chair of the local soviet’s executive committee, ordered Volkova’s reinstatement at the school (it is likely that she had never left). Both Vorontsov and Zlobin informed the inspector to his face that “in any event we will remove Bulygina from the district in the spring.”21 The local prosecutor’s office reiterated his intent to indict neither Volkov nor his wife as Kalinin had earlier ordered.
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It was not an equal contest. The issue had become not so much Bulygina but local resistance. Events of January 13, Mazurov’s inspector concluded, corroborated a continuing campaign of slander against Bulygina and “direct manifestations of local nationalism.”22 Regional authorities would have to overpower their local counterparts. They did so on January 14. On that day, Volkov was finally removed as the de facto head of the district’s department of education and his deputy, Kirpikova, who had refused to do so earlier, now removed Volkova from the school. On that same day, a local court sentenced Kamashev to one year of forced labor. On or about that date the regional prosecutor’s office dismissed the indictment against Bulygina for chauvinism. Mazurov’s inspector, however, remained dissatisfied and recommended more aggressive intervention in order to end “local nationalism.” He preferred that Kamashev receive a sentence of three years and wanted Volkov, now characterized as the son of a pre-revolutionary policeman, and his wife, Volkova, indicted for slander. He also called for back pay to Bulygina for the period she had not been allowed to teach. For good measure, the inspector added that Bulygina, “a daughter of a worker,” had been criticized by Belozerskaia and Mecheva, individuals with “class-alien” origins. Although taking note of the continuing uncooperative behavior of Vorontsov, the inspector made no recommendation, allowing party authorities to decide how to handle one of their own. Twelve months later, in December 1936 the Udmurt Republic became independent of Kirov’s regional authorities. Kirov’s officials had nevertheless made their point about their dominance the previous January before losing jurisdiction over Pudem and then interest in Bulygina. Although Bulygina finished the 1935–1936 academic year at her school in Pudem, the available record makes no reference to her at the school or in the community thereafter. Local officials and colleagues probably continued to make her life miserable and convinced her to leave the scene. Of course, Bulygina might have bridled her petulance and retreated into anonymity at the school, but such behavior would have been entirely out of keeping with her character. Meanwhile several of her antagonists remained to gain positions of prominence. In the fall if 1937, Belozerskaia became Pudem district’s schools inspector, an important, albeit burdensome, post. She continued in this position until 1940, when she became the secretary of the local soviet’s executive committee.23 Even Volkov, after his removal as head of the department of education, landed safely enough for the time being at the helm of the local Komsomol committee. The following year, however, on November 27, the Udmurt Republic’s Komsomol boss, Titel’baum, resurrected charges of Volkov’s improper social origins as the son of a police constable and that of his wife’s as the daughter of a kulak. Finding the symbiosis of errors described in chapter 3,
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he added that Volkov had engaged in drinking bouts, worked poorly with fellow Komsomol members, and failed to conduct antireligious activity. While Volkov argued that he had never concealed his “impure” social origins, he admitted to excessive drinking and failures at work. He was removed from his post.24 It is likely that Volkov’s arrest followed. (2) FOOLISH WISDOM If any among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let them become a fool that they may be wise. —I Corinthians 3:18
As with Bulygina’s case, we know a great deal about Evgeniia Terent’evna Chernykh’s primarily because of the five letters she wrote, among many others, that have been preserved in Kirov’s archives. Like Bulygina, Chernykh knew how to tell a story spinning it as she saw fit. She did not command the vocabulary or grammar of the Russian language, as her detractors were quick to point out, but she knew well the litany of suffering and victimization and expressed it with remarkable skill. The style and content of her letters struck a responsive chord among state and party agencies from Kirov to Moscow. In the nation’s capital, Stalin’s Secret Chancellery, the Central Committee’s Schools Department, and the newspaper and press arm of the Young Communist League, Komsomol’skaia pravda, took an interest and over a two-year period provoked multiple investigations of her complaints. The Scene
Near or at the end of the 1933–1934 academic year, Chernykh, an elementary schoolteacher with over fifteen years’ experience, was fired from Ankushino school in the Sovetsk district, located about 140 km. south of the city of Kirov. The school’s director, Kuz’minikh, had recommended the dismissal, and the head of the district’s department of education, Mikhail Emel’ianovich Bushuev, approved. They had a strong case. Earlier in her career, Chernykh had been removed from schools in neighboring districts, including one in Suna, 50 km. northeast of Sovetsk, and from other schools in Sovetsk for poor teaching and an abrasive personality.25 Chernykh had long relished playing the role of critic of fellow teachers, school administrators, and local officials. While such behavior conformed nicely to Moscow’s encouragement of common citizens to unmask enemies and expose the incompetent, it rankled people in her own community. Moreover, Chernykh was an easy as
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well as visible target. She had less than seven years of education herself, a not uncommon but nevertheless minimal amount for teachers in rural areas. Perhaps most significantly, together with her sisters, Chernykh had resisted collectivization in Sovetsk by retaining a private farm. Victory and Defeat
Chernykh articulated her concerns wisely in the political jargon of the day. Upon her dismissal in the spring of 1934, she immediately protested, presenting herself as the little person abused by corrupt and insensitive officials. Although the district’s party committee turned her away, she found a more receptive audience at a meeting of the party faction of the Sovetsk soviet’s executive committee. On June 26, the Bureau of the district’s party committee overturned her firing and reprimanded Bushuev for his part in the dismissal.26 Two months later, on August 16, the department of education’s party cell ordered the firing of Kuz’minikh, reprimanded Bushuev, and criticized the party’s district committee for its initial failure to assist Chernykh.27 Chernykh’s success resulted from an effective presentation of her case and from unusually favorable, albeit temporary, circumstances. The party reprimanded and fired Kuz’minikh in part because she was allegedly the wife of a kulak. On the very day, June 26, the party committee’s Bureau punished Bushuev, it also took note of a cardinal sin, the loss of his party card. It decided to issue him a new one, but removed him as head of the local department of education’s party cell. Two weeks later, the Bureau fired Bushuev after he appeared in a drunken state in a Pioneer camp and in the town’s park where he rode his bicycle recklessly among people out for a stroll. His purge from the party soon followed.28 That fall, Chernykh resumed her teaching career at another school in the district. Unmoved by her recent difficulties, she quickly alienated colleagues and officials. On August 23, 1935, the Presidium of the Sovetsk soviet’s executive committee heard considerable testimony from teachers and administrators regarding Chernykh’s multiple pedagogical, personal, and political sins.29 Her detractors accused her of ignorance, even illiteracy, an inability to control children in the classroom, rudeness toward pupils (she shouted at them), avoidance of conferences organized by the school and by the district department of education, and a refusal on three separate occasions to come to the district department of education to discuss her work. Moreover, Chernykh had angered colleagues by her incessant carping and, it was said, her uncultured behavior. She allegedly wore her hat and coat in the classroom, chewed boorishly on a piece of bread during breaks, and spat on the floor. No doubt, Chernykh deserved some of the criticism but the charges conformed neatly to
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stereotypical accusations launched at people, big and small, who were singled out as examples of all that was wrong with education. Yet Chernykh’s greatest sin was probably her possession along with her two sisters of a cow, a shed, and a small farm of almost six acres. In their retention of private property, the Chernykhs were clearly marked people. In 1932, 39 percent of peasant landholdings in the USSR remained uncollectivized, but that percentage had dwindled rapidly thereafter, the product of punitive taxation and compulsory sowing plans and procurement quotas.30 Not only had Chernykh and her sister opposed collectivization, they had also refused to pay taxes on their land in 1934 and in 1935. They purportedly rejected demands that they contribute to the collective good by purchasing insurance on their property and contributing to the ostensibly voluntary but, in fact, compulsory, “self-taxation” fund for the maintenance of schools, roads, and other community projects. Chernykh made matters worse by invoking her right as a private farmer not to participate in brigades organized for sowing and harvesting of collective farm lands in 1935. When the soviet in Lugovaia criticized one such refusal in its wall newspaper, Chernykh scribbled across its page, “A Rotten Brigade” (Gad Brigada). When accused of not paying her taxes, she counterattacked with letters sent hither and yon alleging that the local collective farm itself had not paid its fair share of taxes and had avoided the delivery of considerable grain to the state by concealing almost fifty acres of its cultivated land.31 According to Chernykh, local authorities responded with still more persecution. The soviet seized 500 rubles of her pay ostensibly to cover taxes and a local court sentenced her to six months of corrective labor, presumably to be served by working on the collective farm. While losing most of their land, Chernykh and her sisters kept their cow and shed.32 The following fall Chernykh took advantage of a severe shortage of teachers in remote areas. She found a position in a school in the neighboring Pizhanka district. She did not fare well there. Testimony from Sovetsk of Chernykh’s professional unfitness convinced the Regional Department of Education to fire her from her new post and to annul her teacher’s certification.33 Try, Try Again
Chernykh appealed her dismissal to higher authority. On December 17, 1936, she sent a handwritten letter addressed “Moscow. Central Politburo.” Although unable to express her concerns in a coherent and articulate fashion, as her detractors rushed to point out, Chernykh made her case well enough— Sovetsk’s local authorities had persecuted her in response to her thirty or more letters in which she had accused them of illegal activity.34 Chernykh probably sent the same letter to Kirov’s regional party committee for on
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December 21, the deputy head of its Schools Department, Liusov, asked the Sovetsk party committee to investigate the charges. The news of Kirov’s interest may have pleased Chernykh, but for the time being what followed could only disappoint her. On December 31, Sofiia Ivanovna Ezhova, a former teacher whose own education was limited to little more than a secondary education but now head of the party’s Culture and Propaganda Department in Sovetsk, submitted a report rejecting all of Chernykh’s accusations.35 At the same time, the Regional Department of Education and the regional committee of the teachers union reached the same conclusions.36 Matters did not, however, end there for, as Chernykh hoped, Moscow intervened. Chernykh’s letter had struck a responsive chord in Moscow, all the more so because of its poorly articulated address on the envelope’s outside and prose inside. At the Kremlin, Poskrebyshev, head of the Central Committee’s Secret Chancellery, and who reported directly to Stalin, forwarded Chernykh’s letter to Kirov’s regional party committee on February 10, 1937. He sent along with it a form requiring an investigation of her complaint and a report back to the Chancellery’s Fifth Department (V Chast’), an organ responsible for handling correspondence sent to Stalin.37 Duly instructed, Liusov ordered yet another investigation by forwarding Chernykh’s letter to the Sovetsk party committee.38 In a report dated March 23, Ezhova, now the deputy secretary of that committee, denied for a second time all of Chernykh’s charges. Challenged rather than impressed by Chernykh’s simple prose and self-portrayal as the victim of a cabal of evil bureaucrats, Ezhova moved to protect herself and her colleagues. She presented Chernykh as an expert at dissimulation and as a person addicted to playing the role of the pure but unfortunate victim persecuted for exposing class enemies. In actuality, Ezhova averred, Chernykh’s denunciations amounted to the transmission of “foolish rumors” (vzdornye slukhi). Her behavior had resulted in her multiple firings over the years; the Regional Department of Education had justifiably found her unfit to teach.39 Ezhova did find that the Lugovaia’s rural soviet had illegally taken not 500 but eighty rubles out of Chernykh’s pay but the Presidium of Sovetsk’s soviet had ordered a return of the money. After receiving Ezhova’s report, Liusov forwarded it under his own signature to the Secret Chancellery’s Fifth Department.40 Rebuffed but undeterred, Chernykh persisted and regional authorities continued to react, albeit largely negatively, to her initiatives. She asked the regional committee of the teachers union for reinstatement as a teacher at a school in the Sovetsk district. On March 8, its Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) rejected her claims finding her guilty of rudeness toward pupils and fellow teachers and of “political hooliganism.”41
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Chernykh tried yet again. On March 28, she wrote the party’s regional boss, Stoliar, complaining that the union had made its decision without an investigation. Its chief investigator, Nikolai Ivanovich Shel’piakov, had come to the district but failed to see the obvious. She could give him, Chernykh quipped, one of her two pairs of glasses but it would not help for he was intent on turning a blind eye to injustice in order to help the class enemy. 42 Stoliar sent Chernykh’s letter to the regional soviet’s executive committee, which on April 2 in a letter to Chernykh chastised her for a confusing presentation of her case. It followed with a classic bureaucratic shuffle. If she had problems she should turn to the soviet’s executive committee or the union local.43 Turned away by regional authorities, Chernykh once again appealed to Moscow, this time on May 19 to the newspaper, Komsomol’skaia pravda. She repeated her familiar charges with additional flourishes about the poverty, poor instruction, and absence of self-criticism in the Sovetsk district, all the result of incompetent leadership.44 On June 10, the newspaper’s Department of Workers’ and Peasants’ Letters sent Chernykh’s letter to the Schools Department of Kirov’s regional party committee. The Schools Department had little choice but again, now for the third time, to do what it was told and asked Shel’piakov to return for a second time to Sovetsk to investigate the charges and take appropriate measures.45 He did so and once more pointed the finger of blame at Chernykh. The Schools Department then informed Komsomol’skaia pravda that Chernykh’s firing was justified and her charges groundless. It added that in May the Central Committee of the teachers union had reviewed the case and approved Chernykh’s purge from the teaching profession.46 A stubborn Chernykh turned to a still higher authority. On August 9, 1937, she wrote the Central Committee’s Schools Department. Signing her letter, “a former teacher,” Chernykh accused the center’s press of ignoring her little corner of the Soviet world, Sovetsk and Pizhanka districts, where enemies of the people humiliated her and other decent hard-working people. Chernykh introduced a new charge. The local department of education had refused to pay her 300 rubles for her past work and it also had withheld summer pay to teachers.47 In so doing, Chernykh demonstrated remarkable political acuity. Strapped for funds, district departments of education throughout the Russian Republic had frequently delayed teachers’ pay, and sometimes refused to pay summer salaries altogether. It had been behavior roundly and repeatedly condemned by the highest organs of the party and state but continued nevertheless. The Central Committee’s Schools Department ordered the regional party committee’s Schools Department to examine Chernykh’s allegations. Now for the fourth time, the Schools Department ordered an investigation, on this
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occasion by the Pizhanka district’s party committee. The committee did so and reported on October 27 that salaries had not been paid on time but that by now the department of education had provided teachers what was due them, including summer pay, and that it had issued Chernykh the 300 rubles owed her.48 On November 15, an impatient Schools Department in Moscow, still waiting for a response and intent that simple people such as Chernykh get at least the appearance of their due, again demanded of its counterpart in Kirov an investigation of Chernykh’s accusations of August 9.49 The answer was already on its way. On that very day, Kirov’s Schools Department sent the results of its most recent investigation. It hoped to put an end to the affair once and for all with a sweeping denunciation of Chernykh’s personality, her past teaching, refusal to pay taxes, and poor attitude toward the collective farm in Sovetsk. It embellished as it went. Chernykh was so ignorant that collective farmers had been shocked and wondered how she could ever have become a teacher.50 In the meantime, Moscow’s Narkompros overruled Kirov’s regional authorities and ordered Chernykh’s reinstatement. She began teaching at the Chasovensk Elementary School in Pizhanka district.51 Her position was by no means secure. In 1938, her antagonist in 1934, Bushuev, returned to good order. Taking advantage of the party’s effort to restore many of its members heretofore purged (and surviving), Bushuev petitioned the Bureau of Sovetsk’s party committee on December 16 for reinstatement. The Bureau approved in part, it said, because Bushuev had been falsely accused three years earlier of mistreating Chernykh.52 Chernykh did not help her own case by refusing, for reasons unclear, to improve her professional credentials. A campaign launched in 1936 required all elementary schoolteachers to have seven years of general education and, in addition, a degree from a teachers college. Chernykh had failed to complete even seven years of basic schooling. In May 1939 Pizhanka’s department of education fired her and the Regional Department of Education stripped her of accreditation as a teacher because she lacked the appropriate training. Local and regional departments and now Narkompros as well rejected her appeals for a new position. Chernykh counterattacked with, by her own estimation, over a hundred letters, accusing a cabal of local and regional authorities of persecuting her and other citizens in Sovetsk and Pizhanka. The Sovetsk prosecutor accused Chernykh of libel and this time, instead of seeking a sentence of six months of forced labor, he committed her on May 25, 1940, to a six-month period in an insane asylum in Kotel’nich. Upon her release in late November, Chernykh appealed yet again for her recertification as a teacher and a position in an elementary school, each time turned away by the local and the Regional Department of Education.
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On July 25, 1941, Chernykh turned to a higher authority with a handwritten six-page letter to Stalin. She had neither forgotten the litany of complaint nor improved her command of Russian grammar and spelling. “Whom better than you should I tel (sic) of such mean behavior,” Chernykh began, “by some local workrs (sic) in Sovetsk and Pizhanka districts of the Kirov region, by regional workrs (sic) and workrs (sic) of the center. Who else other than we, former poor peasants, should reveal all these outrages especially at a time such as this when the Fascists have invaded our Motherland.” Chernykh turned angrier and vulgar. “Here all kulak asskissers, all kulak bums, all the reptiles, and all the trash have behaved arrogantly, all sorts of vermin have reared up.”53 Chernykh proceeded to summarize her difficulties since 1935. Ignoring that she ever held a private farm she insisted that her problems began when she and her sisters could not pay taxes owed by a relative, presumably their brother, on proceeds from land he had rented. Thereafter local officials had, as she put it, regarded her as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and refused her work and acted abusively when she happened to gain an audience with them. Impoverished, she and her sisters could not care for their cow, which was then seized by the local collective farm. All good and decent people in the area, Chernykh insisted, received little pay and inadequate bread for work completed on a collective farm. “I ask you not to send my complaint to Kirov or Sovetsk,” Chernykh pleaded. Instead she wanted Stalin to take a personal interest and compel local and regional authorities to post her to a new school. As was customary, all such correspondence addressed to Stalin was channeled to the Fifth Department of his Secret Chancellery. It received Chernykh’s letter on August 16. Events moved rapidly thereafter for, unlike as in previous instances, her letter did not provoke even the appearance of an investigation. Disregarding Chernykh’s plea not to send her complaint to Kirov, the Secret Chancellery forwarded her letter on August 22 to Kirov’s regional party committee along with its own standard form asking for a report. Four days later, that committee asked the Regional Department of Education for an explanation. On August 29, the department laconically responded that both it and Narkompros had found Chernykh professionally unfit. She had neither the proper credentials nor the physical stamina to perform up to expectations in the classroom.54 Satisfied with the response, on August 30 the regional party committee informed Chernykh, Sovetsk’s party committee, and Stalin’s Secret Chancellery of the department’s decision and its reasons. The deputy head of the committee’s Cadres Department did ask the Sovetsk party committee to help Chernykh find other employment.55 Unlike their reaction to Chernykh’s complaints in 1937, this time central, regional, and local agencies settled the matter within fourteen days, able to do so for reasons discussed in the conclusion below.
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CONCLUSION Bulygina, Chernykh, local officials, regional newspapers, Kirov’s Schools Department, Moscow’s daily press, the Central Committee’s Schools Department, and Stalin’s Secret Chancellery all engaged in theater at its dramatic best. Letters of complaint and denunciation from Pudem, Sovetsk, and Pizhanka were as marvelously scripted and theatrical as the orchestrated response they elicited in Moscow and Kirov. To be sure, it was serious theater with much at stake for the individuals and institutions involved. Bulygina and Chernykh believed in what they were doing as good Soviet citizens using and thereby reinforcing the system. The Kremlin played to the hilt Stalin’s promise to cater to the people by its demand for investigations, but it showed little or no concern for the fairness of the proceedings that followed. Thus while Moscow and Kirov devised special forms to require an investigation and postcard reminders to do so, they stopped short of devising instruments to question the result of any action. In any case, due process was not at issue for fair proceedings and a just appraisal would have been impossible amidst the hyperbole that trumped hyperbole from Pudem and Sovetsk to Kirov and Moscow. Remarkably, district authorities steadfastly defended their own interests. In Sovetsk, Ezhova denied Chernykh’s accusations and added a few theatrical flourishes of her own regarding the complainant’s character and abilities. Ezhova managed well enough so that in December 1937 she became a schools inspector for the Regional Department of Education. Pudem’s officials acted impudently when confronted with regional power, even when face-to-face with the region’s leaders. However, when the issue became clearly one of power, as in Bulygina’s case, regional authority overwhelmed local resistance. Irrespective of the final outcome of their complaints, two “little people” had dominated for a while the local, regional, and, if only as bit players, the national stage. However, when Chernykh returned to the larger arena in 1941, a far different scene transpired. Her complaint remained the same, a tale of personal woe at the hands of abusive officials, told to Stalin with the hope that he would take personal interest in her case. Earlier such a letter from Chernykh had set off a chain reaction of investigations, scripted and ceremonial but nevertheless forcing local and regional authorities to go to great lengths to defend their conduct and leading to her reappointment on two occasions. Bulygina too had returned for a time to her school in Pudem after a series of exposes and investigations. Yet in 1941 Chernykh’s complaint was dumped in two weeks. Of course, with the fate of the USSR hanging in the balance following the German invasion of Soviet territory on June 22, 1941, officials from Moscow
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to Kirov had other things to do besides agonize over Chernykh’s problems. However, the dismissal of her complaint had little to do with the war and more to do with trends evident since 1938. As will be discussed in detail in chapter 10, beginning that year teachers could no longer provoke the concern of officials high and low with the kind of personalized appeal in style and content that heretofore Chernykh as well as Bulygina and others had submitted. The issue was no longer whether an administrator had behaved in an abusive manner or even whether Chernykh had spat on the floor. The interest a complaint might now elicit and the chances for a positive response depended on whether officials had violated specific laws governing teachers and whether the grievant was professionally qualified. At the end of the decade, the Kremlin sought a bureaucracy that functioned in an orderly, rational, and predictable way. In this altered setting, complainants could no longer expect even the appearance of an investigation of any alleged suffering endured by the virtuous citizen at the hands of an official who had behaved rudely but in a legally correct way. However, as we will see in chapter 10, many teachers realized that they could now count on a serious response to letters invoking their rights as professional educators.
NOTES 1. See Bulygina’s two letters, the first submitted to Kirovskaia pravda on September 26, 1935, and in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 15–17, with a copy in the files of the regional party committee in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, ll. 52–54; and the second submitted on or about October 19 or 20, 1935, in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op.1, d. 580, ll. 55–56 ob. The second letter is undated but a faint handwritten “19-20 okt” is written on the last page of the carbon copy located in the files of the regional party committee. The depiction of events that follows is largely based on her first letter. 2. For the curriculum in place from 1932 to the spring of 1934, see Programmy srednei shkoly (gorodskoi i sel’skoi), 5-8 goda obucheniia (Moscow: Narkompros, 1932), 37–38, and for the 1934–1935 academic year, Biulleten’ Narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniia, no. 25 (September 1, 1934), 12. 3. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 55 ob. 4. Bulygina’s letter, GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 15–17. In depriving Bulygina in effect of her accreditation, Volkov assumed powers of the Regional Department of Education. Many heads of district departments of education acted in a similar fashion during the mid-1930s. 5. This information from the article in Kirovskaia pravda, October 4, 1935, 2. 6. See Bulygina’s second letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 55, and a subsequent letter by her supporter, G. M. Dekhterev, December 7, 1935, to the party’s
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regional committee and regional soviet’s executive committee in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 46. 7. Kirovskaia pravda, October 4, 1935, 2. 8. Bulygina acknowledged her unpopularity among Pudem’s teachers in her second letter to Kirovskaia pravda: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op.1, d. 580, ll. 55–56 ob. See also a similar acknowledgment in Dekhterev’s letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op.1, d. 580, ll. 49–50. 9. Universities in the United States (and elsewhere) frequently find positions for spouses of university administrators and of local officials. 10. Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii Udmurtskoi Respubliki [henceforth TsDNIUR], f. 554, op. 2, d. 255, ll. 1–5; f. 16, op. 4, d. 15217, ll. 46–48, and d. 15237, ll. 339–341. 11. From Dekhterev’s letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 47. On December 28, 1938, a resolution of the USSR’s Council of Peoples Commissars, the party’s Central Committee, and the Central Council of Trade unions complained of pregnant women who sought employment prior to childbirth and promptly quit their jobs after their four-month paid maternity leave. 12. As Bulygina put it in her second letter to Kirovskaia pravda, no investigation occurred: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op.1, d. 580, ll. 55–55 ob. 13. From Bulygina’s second letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 55 ob., and a report from an inspector of the Regional Department of Education, January 1936, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 49. 14. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 56 ob. 15. Dekhterev’s letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 46. 16. Dekhterev’s letter, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, ll. 46 ob.–47. 17. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, ll. 46–47 ob. 18. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 47. 19. Someone wrote in hand “to c[omrade] Mazurov (t. Mazurovu) 19 dek.” at the top of Dekhterev’s letter: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 46. 20. It is not clear why Mazurov chose to send a state inspector rather than one of his own inspectors. 21. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 50. 22. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, l. 51. 23. TsDNIUR, f. 554, op. 2, d. 255, ll. 1–5; f. 16, op. 4, d. 15217, ll. 46–48, and d. 15237, ll. 339–341. Later Belozerskaia headed the party’s local department for agitation and propaganda. 24. TsDNIUR, f. 2414, op.1, d. 3, l. 9, and op. 1, d. 2, ll. 1 ob.–4. 25. Sources on Chernykh’s life until her dismissal and reinstatement in 1934 at a school in Sovetsk are as follows: a report by S. I. Ezhova, deputy secretary of Sovetsk’s party committee, to the Schools Department of the regional party committee, March 23, 1937, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 219; a session of the Bureau of Sovetsk’s party committee, June 26, 1934, GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 125, l. 134; a session of the party cell of Sovetsk’s department of education, August 16, 1934, GASPI KO, f. 1460, op.1, d. 137, ll. 11–11 ob.; and Chernykh’s letter to the Central Committee’s Politburo, December 17, 1936, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op.1, d. 210, ll. 215–215 ob.
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26. GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 125, l. 134. 27. GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 137, ll. 16–16 ob. 28. On Kuz’minikh: GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 137, l. 16 ob. On Bushuev: GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 125, ll. 134, 138. 29. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 136–139 ob. The district department of education did not officially fire her until October 12, but I suspect she did not begin the academic year at the school. The department’s action was a formality. The available record does not indicate the names or positions of people in attendance on August 23. 30. For a discussion of this phenomenon: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 153–158. In July 1934 the Central Committee reached a decision to put an end to the remaining nine million private farms, a decision implemented over the next eighteen months. See I. E. Zelenin, “Byl li ‘Kolkhoznyi neonep’?” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 2 (April 1994), 116. At the end of 1937, almost 6 percent of all farmsteads in the Kirov region remained in private hands comprising, however, only 1 percent of the area’s cultivated land: G. G. Zagvozdkin, “Triumf i tragediia 30-kh godov,” Entsiklopediia zemli Viatskoi, vol. 4, Istoriia (Kirov: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe predpriiatie “Viatka,” 1995), 380. Chernykh made it clear in her later letter to Stalin, July 25, 1941, that she had two sisters: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, l. 122. ob. 31. In her letter to the Central Committee’s Politburo, December 17, 1936, Chernykh claimed that over a three-year period she had written more than thirty letters charging the collective farm and local officials with illegal activity. She did not indicate to whom she had written. See GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 216. Chernykh’s refusal to cooperate in sowing and harvesting may have antagonized collective farmers all the more so because her plot of land, like so many other private homesteads, might well have been in the midst rather than on the edge of the area under the collective farm’s cultivation. 32. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op.1, d. 210, l. 219. I suspect that the soviet garnished her wages to cover taxes owed. See also Chernykh’s later letter to Stalin in 1941, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, l. 123. 33. See the information presented at the meeting of the Orgburo of the teachers union regional committee, March 8, 1937, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 138. It could well be that Chernykh’s lack of training requisite for teaching elementary grades had something to do with her dismissal. However, the available record indicates that other, personal and professional, factors highlighted here played the major role. 34. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, ll. 215–215 ob., 217–218 ob. The pages are misnumbered, skipping l. 216. 35. This report is not available. Information on it comes from Ezhova’s subsequent report to the Schools Department in March 1937: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 219. For biographical information, see Ezhova’s questionnaire for the party’s census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, f. 17, op. 9, d. 576, ll. 78–78 ob.
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36. These reports are unavailable but are mentioned in Ezhova’s report, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 219, and at a meeting of the Orgburo of the union’s regional committee, March 8, 1937, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op.1, d. 211, l. 138. 37. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 214. 38. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, ll. 215, 219. 39. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 219. 40. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 194–195. 41. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 138. 42. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 277–279 ob. 43. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 280. 44. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 225–226. 45. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 224. 46. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 227–228. 47. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 272–272 ob. 48. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 271, 274, 274a. 49. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 281. 50. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, l. 276. 51. This and following information on Chernykh’s life and career over the next four years comes from a letter Chernykh wrote to Stalin on July 25, 1941. The original six-page handwritten copy is in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, ll. 122–125 ob. 52. GASPI KO, f. 1460, op. 1, d. 261, l. 242. The Bureau submitted its recommendation to the party collegium of the Commission of Party Control of the Central Committee for the Kirov region. The Bureau noted that Bushuev admitted his errors, including excessive drinking, and had recently served well as head of the local House of Culture. 53. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, ll. 122–125 ob. In Russian: Komu, kak ne Vam ia dolzhna sobshchit’ (sic) o takikh podlykh delakh zdeshnykh mestnykh nekotorykh rabotnikakh (sic) v Sovetskom i Pizhanskom raionakh Kirovskoi oblasti, oblastnykh rabotnikakh (sic) i rabotnikakh (sic) tsentra. Kto, kak ne my, byvshie bedniaki, dolzhny vskryvat’ vse bezobraznye dela osobenno v eto vremia, kogda fashisty napali na nashu rodinu. Zdes’ vse kulatskie prikhvosti, vse kulatskie otreb’e (sic), vse gady, ves’ musor, vse obnagleli, vsia nechist’ vstala na dyby. 54. For all this correspondence, see GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, ll. 121, 126. 55. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, ll. 127–129.
Ivan Nikitich Balalaev (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
Mariia Ignat’evna Kniazheva (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
Students and teachers at Viatka’s Soviet Party School, 1927/1928. Reshetov is the second from the right in the third row. Ognev is the second from the left in the third row. (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
Ivan Afanas’evich Liusov (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
Nikolai Alekseevich Rodionov (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
Elena Mikhailovna Baibarza (Used with permission of GASPI KO.)
6 “My Friend, I’ve Hit Rock Bottom”: Politics and Friendship
Friendship is no doubt difficult to record historically, for it is much less likely to leave written records than long-standing animosities and personal feuds. . . . We cannot of course reckon without the ties of friendship and affection, even if they so often defy any sort of documentation. —Richard Cobb, Reactions to the French Revolution
BUREAUCRACY AND PERSONALITY
Perhaps it should go without saying that administration involves more than rules and procedures. In a highly centralized state such as Stalin’s USSR, personality, personal contacts, and personal favors, factors sometimes ignored by historians in the rush to emphasize social and cultural forces, played an oft-hidden but critical role.1 This chapter focuses on the relationship between two administrators at Viatka’s Department of Education, Anatolii Stepanovich Reshetov and Aleksandr Ivanovich Ognev. Whatever else they may have been at home, in public both acted as tough bureaucrats. At another, more personal, level of reality, they established a relationship that led Reshetov at peril to his own career to help his beleaguered friend. Reshetov’s effort failed, testimony to the limits of personal influence when confronting larger historical forces that showed no mercy to individuals such as Reshetov and Ognev. And yet, Ognev and Reshetov, both arrested and imprisoned as enemies of the people in 1937, returned to positions of influence in 1940 probably because someone somewhere took a personal interest in their cases, insured their survival, and brought them back. 129
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Two warnings are in order. First, it is not a pretty tale. Both Ognev and Reshetov (as well as others featured here) treated teachers and subordinates contemptuously. When Reshetov rushed in to help Ognev, he proposed to sacrifice someone else for the sake of his friend. Second, Reshetov and Ognev often read the script, played their parts, and did what was expected of them. Such behavior may well account for their bureaucratic toughness on the job. And yet when dealing with each other they found ways to modify the roles assigned to them.2
THE ACTORS Ognev and Reshetov were strikingly alike. They came from similar backgrounds and followed similar career paths. Born in 1902 into a middle peasant family, Ognev received little more than an elementary formal education and worked as an agricultural laborer into the early 1920s. He joined the Young Communist League in 1923, served in the Red Army from 1924 to 1926, and entered the Communist Party on March 13, 1926.3 Reshetov was born in 1904, the son of poor peasants. After completing a rural elementary school, he performed a number of odd jobs, as discussed previously, and joined Komsomol in 1924 and two years later the Communist Party. In 1927 both Reshetov and Ognev entered Viatka’s Soviet Party School, one of many such institutions designed to train party propagandists.4 The following year, they enrolled in the Department of Social Sciences and Economics in Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute. While there Ognev taught at Viatka’s School No. 4 and Reshetov taught political economy at Viatka’s Evening Communist University. The two had become friends at the Soviet Party School, a relationship that continued at the Institute where they were roommates and members of the same brigade assigned academic tasks as well as extracurricular activities in support of the First Five Year Plan. They both graduated in 1931. While at the Pedagogical Institute, neither Ognev nor Reshetov escaped the scathing criticism that accompanied the mad dash for industrialization and collectivization and a corresponding intolerance of anything that smacked of political deviation. Ognev in particular experienced difficulties when in April 1929 the Sixteenth Party Conference launched a general purge. Appearing before the Pedagogical Institute’s Purge Commission on October 10, 1929, Ognev admitted that his father was a well-to-do peasant who possessed considerable land and a profitable business castrating animals. The father had also earned interest from loans made to fellow peasants. Ognev further acknowledged that in 1924 while in the army he had voted for a resolution supporting Zinoviev and the Leningrad party organization’s opposition to Stalin’s lead-
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ership. As a soldier and later as a student at the Soviet Party School, he had been reprimanded by his party cell for excessive drinking and inappropriate conduct. His confession over, Ognev hastened to point out that he had cut off all contact with his father, that he had quickly changed his vote in 1924 to support of the official party line, and that he had recently given up drinking.5 Ognev survived the purge’s proceedings to remain a party member in good standing.6 Several weeks later, he proved his political mettle by denouncing colleagues who had been insufficiently self-critical. Speaking as the editor of the party and Komsomol wall newspaper at the Pedagogical Institute, Ognev told a meeting of the Komsomol cell on October 24, 1929, that some party members downplayed their errors in articles they had submitted.7 Yet one month later, on November 25, 1929, Ognev invited trouble with criticism at an open meeting of the Institute’s party cell attended by seventy full and candidate party members, 158 members of the Young Communist League, and 292 students and faculty not associated with the Communist Party. He rose to speak for his comrades in and out of the party who were dissatisfied with requirements to combine academic study and practice teaching with work in factories and participation in all manner of campaigns against alcoholism, adult illiteracy, and workers’ absenteeism. Moreover, students enrolled in the Department of Social Sciences and Economics were required to take too many courses including those in technology and labor irrelevant to their subject. Ognev objected as well to poor living conditions and to plans to immediately place first- and second-year students in the third year without adequate preparation.8 At the time no one found Ognev’s remarks particularly objectionable no doubt in part because they accurately conveyed the sentiment of his comrades and colleagues. At his own hearing before the Purge Commission, Ognev’s friend, Reshetov, admitted to dissatisfaction of students with living conditions but denied it had any political significance.9 That December, Ognev again complained of poor conditions including the absence of a sufficient number of trousers and shoes.10 A year later, Ognev was not so fortunate. When Ognev expressed reservations about the forced pace of collectivization and the brutality accompanying it, questions arose again about his suspect father and about the political reliability of Ognev’s wife, Lidiia Aleksandrova Ogneva, also a student at Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute since 1928. Her sister’s husband had been arrested (although eventually freed) in the Industrial Party (Promparty) case that led from November 25 to December 7, 1930, to a show trial of individuals charged with industrial sabotage. Worse yet, Ogneva was the daughter of a well-to-do tailor in Iaransk, a town located in the southwest portion of the region, well heeled enough that in these difficult times he supplied his daughter and her husband with parcels of food.11
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In November and December 1930, a cornered Ognev rushed to protect himself. He roundly condemned so-called right-opportunist criticism of collectivization, denounced comrades at the Institute allegedly guilty of such heresy, and admitted his past failure to censure them with sufficient vigor. Unmoved, the party’s cell in the Institute’s Department of Social Sciences and Economics voted on December 20, 1930, to purge Ognev, a decision confirmed on January 4 by the Bureau of the Institute’s party organization.12 The assault on Ognev swept up his friend and roommate, Reshetov. Like Ognev and so many others, Reshetov had made a display of ideological and political toughness, consistently criticizing fellow party members for an absence of ideological élan, insufficient political activity, and unwillingness to engage in political study. At Reshetov’s hearing before the Purge Commission in the fall of 1929, colleagues testified as well to his belligerence. While approving Reshetov’s party membership, the Commission castigated him for rudeness toward his fellow students.13 However, in 1929 and 1930, Reshetov had made his friend, Ognev, an exception, declining to join the chorus condemning him and paid a price for it. When on December 15, 1930, the Bureau of the party cell of the Institute’s Department of Social Sciences and Economics voted to purge Ognev, it also criticized his communist classmates, a group that included Reshetov as one of its leaders, for a failure to condemn Ognev’s opportunism.14 Reshetov still proved reluctant. When the department’s party cell met five days later, on December 20, Reshetov acknowledged the absence of class vigilance in the group, but when criticizing by name individual members he conspicuously omitted Ognev.15 Two weeks later, on January 4, 1931, Reshetov had learned his lesson. When addressing the Bureau of the Institute’s party organization, Reshetov now admitted that he had ignored the dangers posed by Ognev’s opportunist activities.16 The struggle against opportunism and the class enemy, Reshetov then declared to a meeting of his comrades enrolled in the Institute’s third year, must be a tough one.17 The Institute’s party Bureau condemned Ognev and reprimanded his classmates, first and foremost among them, Reshetov, for a “conciliationist attitude toward right opportunism.”18 A repentant Ognev appealed his purge on February 13, 1931, to the Control Commission of Viatka’s municipal party committee. Duly noting his admission of error, the Commission restored Ognev’s membership by reducing his purge to a severe reprimand. At the same time, it singled out Reshetov and several others for conciliation of Ognev’s apostasy.19 A subsequent report charged that Ognev and Reshetov, among others, had put their group’s selfinterest over and above the party’s agenda.20 Now instructed as to proper behavior, on April 5, 1931, at a closed meeting of the party cell of the Institute’s Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Ognev acknowledged the
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existence at the Institute of elements of opportunism and his own past association with them. Reshetov admitted that he had failed to denounce harmful behavior of his colleagues and had found self-criticism a painful exercise.21 Appropriately humbled, Reshetov and Ognev returned to their studies. Both graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in 1931. On January 4, 1932, the Institute’s party organization annulled Reshetov’s earlier reprimand. Reshetov stayed on at the Institute to teach history until his appointment as head of Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education on February 28, 1934. For a brief period Ognev served as director of Viatka’s Industrial Technicum. In April 1932 he began work for the Viatka Department of Education as an inspector of social studies. He also served as the department’s deputy head until Ivan Nikitich Balalaev’s appointment to that post in September 1933 and occasionally even after that when Balalaev was out of town or indisposed.22 In the meantime, Ognev’s wife graduated from Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute and took up teaching at its workers faculty (rabfak), preparing individuals with weak academic backgrounds for subsequent study in a higher educational institution.23
OGNEV THE BUREAUCRAT, 1932–1934 At Viatka’s Department of Education, Ognev faced the daunting task of achieving glorious results in most difficult circumstances. The department expected him to monitor instruction in urban and rural schools, far too many for even an ambitious and committed bureaucrat to supervise let alone visit. Ognev adjusted his workload by taking direct responsibility for most of Kirov’s urban schools and sending out junior inspectors to examine all others.24 As if he did not have enough to do, the department’s party organization obligated Ognev as well as his colleagues to participate in seminars and circles for the study of the recent and current political scene. When the party organization acknowledged that various enterprises rarely if ever fulfilled their obligations to support schools, it sent out the department’s already overworked staff to goad them to improve their performance. It assigned three enterprises to Ognev.25 Given the demands on his time and energy and the limited resources at his disposal, Ognev could do little to help schools. His behavior, however, made a bad situation far worse. Ognev expressed no apparent sympathy for colleagues and educators asked to run schools and classrooms in the most trying of circumstances. He refused to explain his absence or that of his inspectors at schools desperate for at least a sympathetic ear. Even when school personnel came to visit him at his office, he could neither find the time to
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meet with them nor the will to explain how difficult it was to accommodate their requests for help. The same impersonal attitude prevailed in his work with colleagues at the department for whom he had little time and on whom he dumped a great deal of work without apology or a kind word.26 Perhaps he chose to be the tough and distant administrator in order to shield himself from the inevitable criticism from subordinates and teachers that would arise from such difficult conditions. If so, he failed. In September 1932 the director, Anna Panteleevna Kislitsina, of an elementary school in the village Bakhta, about fifteen km. west of Viatka, wrote to Ognev about the severe shortage of textbooks and visual aids. “Such a situation is intolerable,” she bristled, “one can’t go on.”27 Ognev failed to acknowledge the letter by passing it off to a subordinate who also, perhaps out of futility, did not respond. On October 14, 1932, Kislitsina wrote again, for a third time she said, asking for her release and a transfer to another school.28 On October 27, 1933, a director of another school asked Viatka’s Department of Education to release him from his position because he had tired of the department’s inability to help and of Ognev’s combative personality.29 In a brusque manner typical of Soviet bureaucrats at the time, Ognev had indeed repeatedly demanded strict adherence to regulations and fulfillment of all tasks regardless of their impracticality. In March 1933, knowing full well how overburdened teachers were with many students and assignments, Ognev harshly blamed teachers for pupils’ poor performance, accusing them in particular of a failure to check pupils’ notebooks for errors.30 Later that year, on December 10, he chastised directors for pupils’ poor work.31 Two weeks later, Ognev delivered a bruising report to Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education on the state of instruction in social studies in the district’s schools with special attention to Viatka’s School No. 3. Without acknowledging the difficulty of teaching such a highly politicized subject under constant revision, Ognev criticized teachers for failing to use the past to sanction the party’s current policies. In particular, they underestimated the significance of the party’s and Stalin’s role in history.32 In a similar report submitted to the department on July 10, 1934, Ognev evaluated the teaching of social studies and history in twenty-seven schools. Although this time he acknowledged difficulties created by an absence of textbooks, teaching manuals, and visual aids, he nevertheless blamed the human element, teachers, for poor instruction. Teachers were lazy, planned their lessons poorly, and underestimated the party’s significance in the 1905 revolution.33 In still another report on School No. 3, Ognev emphasized the negative—alleged poor instruction by teachers and poor discipline among pupils.34
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DIFFICULTIES IN 1934 In late summer 1934, as part of a national purge ordered by the party’s Central Committee, the party organization of Viatka’s Department of Education formed a Purge Commission to examine the credentials and performance of party members at the Department and in the city’s schools. It grilled those called before it about their social origins and political biography and tested their knowledge of the party’s past and present. Convening in August and September the Commission conducted its hearings in the presence of several party members and candidate members and many nonparty personnel, some of whom actively participated. Matters usually proceeded according to a script that avoided serious consequences. Those called before the Commission praised, then mildly criticized, their work and that of the institution they represented. The Commission followed in kind with relatively tame resolutions leaving the school and individual in question untouched. By midSeptember, when the Commission released its final report, it had reviewed sixteen party members and three candidate members. It recommended the purge of only one full and one candidate member.35 On August 19, 1934, Ognev disrupted the relaxed manner with which the Commission functioned. That day he attended a session that examined Avgusta Aleksandrovna Glushkova, a veteran teacher of mathematics with eighteen years’ experience, recent recipient of several teaching awards, and director of Viatka’s Krasin School No. 6.36 Glushkova spoke positively of pupils’ academic performance and discipline. Ognev felt otherwise, relentlessly blaming the director and her teachers for a shortage of textbooks, poor promotion examinations, and poorly disciplined pupils who played cards, smoked, and sold cigarettes.37 Ognev’s aggressive behavior did not go unchallenged. Glushkova remained silent before Ognev’s onslaught, but one of her teachers, the history and geography instructor since 1917, Lidiia Aleksandrovna Bolvanovich, boldly replied. Pupils did not play cards, she asserted. Only last spring Ognev had called the school one of the city’s best. Ognev’s dramatic reversal of opinion, Bolvanovich declared, demonstrated his inability to think for himself (nesamostoiatel’nost’) and his enthusiasm for the negative when it seemed to serve him and the occasion.38 Even the Commission thought Ognev’s observations extreme. It did not call for Glushkova’s purge and limited its recommendations to standard formulas: find more firewood, hire more teachers who were members of Komsomol and the party, improve political instruction among teachers and pupils, and work more closely with parents.39 Glushkova remained the school’s director then and for years thereafter.40
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On the very day that Ognev spoke harshly of Glushkova, he received more than a dose of his own medicine at another session of the Purge Commission when it took up his case before nine communists and fifty-five others.41 It was a rugged affair orchestrated by higher authorities. The language and content of the accusations hurled at Ognev were appropriately “political” and well rehearsed in advance. Nevertheless, his accusers joined the fray with unfeigned enthusiasm. In his short career, Ognev had made many enemies at the Pedagogical Institute, at the department where he worked, and in the schools for which he was responsible. They took this opportunity to vent their anger and frustration. Teachers, Balalaev, and Natalia Alekseevna Kartasheva, head of the department’s Extracurricular Sector and party organization, spoke out against Ognev. They accused him of multiple sins including those that had led to his previous purge. Kartasheva in particular doggedly pursued Ognev with an attack on his behavior at the Pedagogical Institute in 1930 and later at Viatka’s Department of Education. She spoke with authority as one with all the proper biographical credentials. Born into a peasant family, Kartasheva had not finished a secondary school when she took special courses that allowed her to become a rural teacher. Like Ognev and Reshetov, she then entered Viatka’s Soviet Party School followed in 1928 by enrollment in Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute where she quickly became a full member of the party.42 Upon her graduation in 1932, Kartasheva went to work along with Ognev at Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education. At Ognev’s hearing, Kartasheva recalled in meticulous detail Ognev’s sins and those of his wife in 1929 and 1930. While Ognev complained loudly of shortages of food and clothing at the Pedagogical Institute, and even, according to Kartasheva, encouraged his peers to boycott studies until the situation had improved, he and his wife hoarded their bounty of food sent by her rich father, refusing to share it with anyone.43 Worse yet, according to Kartasheva, the pair still refused to mend their ways. They maintained contact with his wife’s suspect parents, her mother living with the Ognevs in the winter and their child with the parents in the summer.44 As in 1930, Ognev still placed creature comforts, food in particular, over party service. Once every five days, the party group of the Viatka Department of Education met for political study, but Ognev, though attending, complained: “I can’t manage without lunch, I must think about myself first of all and then take up political study.”45 Balalaev followed by observing that while at Viatka’s Department of Education, Ognev had refused to join campaigns in the countryside in support of collectivization and the liquidation of adult illiteracy. Ognev had put his personal interests over and above his social obligations and inappropriately preferred to care for his child rather than engage in civic activity.46
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In the opinion of teachers and fellow workers in attendance, Ognev conducted himself in an impersonal and rude way. He had refused to meet with teachers in the field or at the department in Viatka and he had dumped work on others. Balalaev summed up their criticism nicely: Ognev had been too impersonal. Not to be outdone, Kartasheva added: “Ognev is too distant at work; he’s a bureaucrat through-and-through.47 The Commission voted to purge Ognev from the party, the only individual to receive from it such a harsh sentence. Highlighting the importance of the personal, its resolutions emphasized first and foremost Ognev’s refusal to help teachers and visit schools and his alleged arrogant behavior at Viatka’s Department of Education and at schools when he did show up. In the Commission’s opinion, he was little more than a careerist (shkurnik).48 On October 5, 1934, the Purge Commission of Viatka’s party organization rejected Ognev’s appeal as did the Gorky Regional Purge Commission a short time thereafter.49
RESHETOV EMBATTLED Reshetov was conspicuously absent at Ognev’s hearing. He had more than enough troubles of his own. On September 8, 1934, the Purge Commission took up his case with twelve full and candidate party members and ninety-four others in attendance.50 Scathing criticism followed of his and his department of education’s performance in every area for which they were responsible. Teachers, school directors, and colleagues at the department attacked Reshetov for his friendship with Ognev in 1930 (and implicitly thereafter), for his failure to visit schools, rudeness toward directors with whom he deigned to meet, refusal to participate in various political campaigns (as if he had the time), and for shortages of everything from teachers and textbooks to notebooks and materials for school construction and repair. They also blamed him for teachers forced to live in urban areas without apartments or even without a separate room and in rural areas without the free or deeply discounted clothes, shoes, and food promised. They also held Reshetov responsible for tardy payment of salaries, often months in arrears. Reshetov’s deputy, Balalaev, joined in. Reshetov had irresponsibly overturned his, Balalaev’s, decisions regarding the hiring and firing of teachers. In particular, over Balalaev’s objections, Reshetov had appointed and refused to dismiss teachers with suspect social origins and those previously purged.51 Balalaev did not mention Ognev as another individual protected by Reshetov but he did not have to, it was readily apparent to all. Perhaps Balalaev’s criticism was in part payback. Six days earlier, on September 2, 1934, the Purge Commission examined his brother, Fedor Nikitich
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Balalaev, director of Viatka’s Junior Secondary School No. 1. Reshetov usually avoided the Commission’s sessions, but on this occasion he came to dominate. He began with faint praise—Balalaev was a good director, but then Reshetov turned mercilessly critical. Balalaev had failed to improve his knowledge of politics and with a degree only from a Soviet Party School had exaggerated his command of academic matters.52 Reshetov himself exaggerated for in fact Balalaev had graduated from an Evening Communist University and had studied for two years in the correspondence division of Kirov’s Pedagogical Institute. Reshetov’s onslaught may have reflected his own self-consciousness about his own limited formal education as a youth and an immodest pride in his own educational and administrative achievements thereafter. At his own session with the Purge Commission, when acknowledging that early in life he had only four years (if that) of elementary schooling, Reshetov hastened to add that he had subsequently read a great deal on his own thereby gaining the knowledge necessary for entry into a Soviet Party School and then the Pedagogical Institute.53 Anyone who had accomplished less than he (and Ognev who had a similar record) perhaps merited scorn even if, as in Fedor Balalaev’s case, he had lost a leg in battle while serving in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.54 Reshetov took the floor to speak in his own defense. His department lacked the funds and other resources to improve conditions for teachers and schools. He had appointed people with questionable social and political backgrounds, including two daughters of priests, because of an acute shortage of teachers. He had few doubts about the trustworthiness of those teachers whose suspect parents had died years ago. As for Ognev, Reshetov made no effort to defend his friend but rather disingenuously denied that in 1929 and 1930 he had supported Ognev’s complaints or coddled him.55 The Commission was unmoved. Although it stopped short of recommending Reshetov’s purge, it harshly criticized his leadership and the performance of his department. He was responsible for the shortages experienced by schools and teachers, poor instruction, double shifts at many schools, and appointment of class-alien, politically hostile, religious, and ignorant teachers. With remarkable precision, it concluded that 11.8 percent of all teachers were the sons and daughters of “former” people and should be removed.56 It also insisted that the department eliminate dual shifts within ten months, a requirement as impractical as its demand to fire all suspect teachers. On September 25, 1934, the department of education’s party organization met to discuss the Commission’s harsh conclusions.57 Here Balalaev ended his grumbling and joined forces with his boss to defend their agency and own authority before the Commission’s impractical recommendations. Balalaev suggested that representatives from the party, teachers union, and department
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edit the Commission’s findings. Reshetov proposed limiting the Commission’s role to that of a consultant. Members of the Commission moved to quash this rebellion by calling for an adjournment and a continuation of the discussion on another day. Despite objections, the meeting ended abruptly by procedures not entirely clear. On the next day, September 26, the Department’s party organization reconvened with fifty-six in attendance, twenty-one more than on the eve. Over the last twenty-four hours everyone had gotten the message—the Purge Commission was not to be trifled with. Reshetov called his behavior of the day before a “big political mistake.” Balalaev confessed that he and Reshetov had “demobilized the masses at the cultural front.”58 Others in attendance criticized themselves for not denouncing Reshetov and Balalaev on the twenty-fifth, still others denounced the denouncers for not being sufficiently self-critical. A nonparty participant, Ustiuzhaninov, spoke most caustically. The day before Reshetov and Balalaev had delivered “bombastic speeches” (vysokoparnye rechi), their behavior reeked of the “the stench of a decaying snooty intelligentsia” (intelligentskii dushok).59 A unanimous resolution condemned the two for doubting the Commission’s wisdom.60
OGNEV’S APPEAL After a rejection of Ognev’s appeal in Viatka and Gorky, Ognev went to Moscow and from there in February 1935 wrote to Reshetov requesting documentation necessary for reinstatement into the party. He had written before and thus, as he put it, this letter was his last and desperate plea.61 The Central Committee planned to take up his case on May 1. Ognev needed Reshetov’s written testimony that while at the Viatka Department of Education, he, Ognev, had had no direct responsibility for rural schools and that teachers had lodged no complaints about his work. Ognev misrepresented the actual situation and would have Reshetov do so as well. As has been already noted, Ognev had been responsible for all the schools in Kirov and the surrounding area. Although he had reported primarily on urban schools, to be sure, he had also submitted aggressively critical evaluations of their rural brethren. Teachers from all corners of the district had complained about his leadership and behavior. But for Ognev the situation was extreme. “Is it possible you will refuse me in this? You surely understand the importance of it [the information].” The purge had ruined him psychologically and economically. He had no job and had sold his last things to get by. “I am miserable. . . . So, my friend (brat), it’s come to this. I’ve hit rock bottom. . . . I can’t live like this any longer.
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Really 2.5 years in GorONO [the Municipal Department of Education] and I earned this.” Ognev begged Reshetov to find him a job, any job, even as a bookkeeper or accountant, and an apartment anywhere in Kirov. Ognev ended with a final plea: “Don’t deny me this final chance, honor my request.” Anyone conversant with the history of petitions presented to the tsar or with later letters of plea and complaint, as discussed earlier, will find much that is scripted in Ognev’s letter. He was financially destitute and psychologically broken. Not the system but rather a horrible convergence of circumstances had betrayed him. Ognev duly prostrated himself before Reshetov begging him to set things right for a loyal friend and a servant of the Soviet system. His posturing and stereotypical discourse aside, Ognev asked Reshetov to take real risks in his, Ognev’s, behalf. By his silence, Reshetov had helped his friend before, Ognev now wanted aggressive action.
RESHETOV AS BUREAUCRAT AND FRIEND What would Reshetov do? What could he do? He was a tough bureaucrat, to be sure, but not a faceless one and not one without a flair for initiative. On August 21, 1934, he refused Bolvanovich’s request for release as deputy director of Krasin School No. 6 so she could devote more time to teaching but then suggested that her director reduce her administrative load.62 Later that year, he reprimanded Antonina Nikolaevna Charushnikova, director of Junior Secondary School No. 2, and ordered that within two days she honor her promise to the parents of a pupil to provide twenty rubles for the purchase of shoes.63 On September 29, 1934, Moscow’s Commissariat of Education ordered the introduction in all schools of fiftyminute rather than forty-five-minute lessons. Reshetov complained immediately in a letter to Narkompros. Fifty-minute lessons extended the school day to such an extent that the second shift would end at 7:30 or 8:00 PM. Such a late hour would make teaching and learning difficult for teachers and pupils, especially as the attention of the latter would lag, and would preclude extracurricular activities after both shifts. Reshetov also took this opportunity to complain once again that noneducational agencies occupied former school buildings in direct defiance of a state law requiring their return to educational authorities.64 Objections by Reshetov and colleagues in other urban areas throughout Soviet Russia helped compel change. On September 27, the Regional Department of Education informed Reshetov that Narkompros had decided that schools with three shifts might retain the forty-five-minute lesson.65 Then in December the Orgburo of the party’s Central Committee annulled Narkompros’s decree.66 Reshetov’s efforts to
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regain control over former school facilities produced mixed results. Prior to the beginning of the new academic year in 1935, his Municipal Department of Education won back several buildings, but Narkompros officiously rejected Reshetov’s demands for funds for their repair.67 In August 1936, Narkompros told Reshetov that it had taken measures to return to his department a school building occupied by a veterinary institute. Reshetov petulantly wrote across the communiqué: “Tell them that the building has still not been released.”68 Reshetov showed similar spunk when he defended his turf and his schools. In May 1936, Moscow ordered the transfer of schools in the Russian Republic that served children of transportation workers from the jurisdiction of Narkompros and its local departments of education to the Commissariat of Ways and Means (Transportation). For the city of Kirov, the order required the transfer of three elementary and two secondary schools in good repair by July 1.69 Reshetov delayed implementation, refused to use his funds for their repair, and oversaw the stripping of their equipment (especially workshop and laboratory items).70 Reshetov was not alone in his behavior. Heads of other district departments of education in the Kirov region resisted in the same way.71 Twice in 1936, Narkompros’s deputy commissar, Boris Mikhailovich Volin, complained about the employment of such tactics throughout the Russian Republic.72 Yet no matter how bold his intentions, Reshetov understood that he had to pick his moments carefully. His reluctance to denounce Ognev in 1929 and 1930 had led to a severe reprimand. Any current effort to help his friend could well imperil his own position at the department of education, one already under damaging scrutiny. In February and March 1935 the Municipal Department of Education’s party organization met four times to lambaste him for a continuing failure to purge schools and his own staff of class- and sociallyalien individuals and others who were deemed politically untrustworthy.73 One critic declared that Reshetov as well as everyone else in authority had to adopt the demeanor of secret police officials, “chekisty.”74 On March 16, Reshetov’s colleague, Mikhail Lavrentievich Zabolotnykh, one of the municipal department’s inspectors, declared that his boss refused to investigate and purge his agency.75 That same day, a secret session of the party organization ordered Reshetov to purge his department and schools of all socially alien elements within ten days.76 On September 11, 1935, Kirovskaia pravda carried a scandalous piece, “On the Coarsest Errors of the Regional and Municipal Departments of Education,” accusing both departments of a failure to implement the latest decree critical of teachers’ instruction, pupils’ conduct, and administrators’ performance issued on September 3 by the USSR’s Council of Commissars
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and party’s Central Committee. In particular, it accused Reshetov of obstructing the decree’s discussion at School No. 6 by the people Ognev had abused the previous August, Glushkova and Bolvanovich, the school’s director and deputy director. In so doing, Reshetov had committed a “huge political mistake.”77 The municipal department’s party organization resolved to correct his behavior by sending him into the field. Irrespective of all other administrative duties he had, Reshetov was to meet with teachers, pupils, and parents of Elementary School No. 1 some time between September 11 and 13 and with the personnel of the school’s sponsoring enterprises on either September 14 or 15.78
RESHETOV HELPS Knowing the risks involved, Reshetov obliged his friend. On September 13, 1935, the Central Purge Commission in Moscow annulled Ognev’s purge and readmitted him into the party.79 Ognev then returned to Kirov where he found employment at the local office of the Statistics Administration. Some time after the beginning of the academic year, Reshetov submitted a request to the municipal party committee with a copy to Mazurov, head of Kirov’s Schools Department, asking for approval to remove Ivan Alekseevich Toropov as director of Turgenev School No. 10 and appoint Ognev to the post.80 Once again, Reshetov demonstrated pride in his conquest over modest beginnings and scorn for anyone like Fedor Balalaev, earlier, and now Toropov, who had not achieved so much. Like Ognev and Reshetov, Toropov came from humble beginnings but had failed to advance as impressively as they. Born in 1904 into a family of middle peasants, Toropov left school after four years, thereafter working as a cobbler’s assistant and as a carpenter. He became the labor instructor at the Turgenev school in 1930 and two years later its director.81 Reshetov began his letter by denigrating Toropov’s qualifications. He had only an elementary education and thus could effectively manage only the technical aspects of administering a school such as insuring its cleanliness and supply of materials. The school’s pupils behaved and studied poorly. In contrast, Ognev possessed a degree from a higher educational institution and two years’ experience as an administrator at the Viatka Department of Education. Reshetov hastened to add that the party had recently restored Ognev to its ranks. Reshetov, of course, said nothing about Ognev’s controversial past. None of Kirov’s schools had escaped harsh criticism, but, as Reshetov well knew, Toropov’s received more than most. On February 19, 1933, none other than Ognev, acting as the deputy head of Viatka’s Department of Education,
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complained that despite his previous warning, once again the school’s doors remained locked shut at 8 AM forcing children to wait outside in the cold. Ognev ordered Toropov to find the guilty person and take disciplinary measures.82 In April 1934 Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education ordered fourteen of its secondary school teachers with only a secondary education, including Toropov, to improve their credentials.83 On August 19, 1934, when the Purge Commission examined Toropov, it found that his school lacked a sufficient quantity of firewood, books, and notebooks. More ominously, the Commission declared that Toropov had improved neither his professional qualifications nor his knowledge of party history. When questioned, he could not recall Trotsky’s position on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that in early 1918 had ended the war between Germany and Soviet Russia.84 From May 4–7, 1935, Mariia Nikolaevna Shel’piakova, the municipal department’s chief inspector, probably on Reshetov’s direct order, investigated the Turgenev School. Her report called particular attention to undisciplined pupils.85 And yet Toropov survived. Neither the Purge Commission in 1934 nor subsequent investigations including Shel’piakova’s found problems that distinguished the Turgenev school from any other in the city. All schools suffered from shortages of everything from firewood to notebooks and experienced problems with instruction and discipline. Moreover, in a remarkable display of loyalty, Toropov’s colleagues came to the Purge Commission’s hearing to speak forcefully on his behalf as a good leader and comrade (the kind of testimony remarkably absent at Ognev’s examination).86 Despite Toropov’s weak academic credentials and his ignorance of Trotsky’s alleged heresy in 1918, the Purge Commission stopped short even of reprimanding him.87 That fall Toropov dutifully began to improve his credentials by taking evening courses in the local communist university.88 Reshetov’s effort on behalf of his friend failed. We can surmise that Toropov survived for the moment because of his own popularity at the school and because Ognev, even though restored to party membership, remained too hot to handle. Leading officials, especially those in the municipal and regional party committees, were understandably disinclined to take a risk for Ognev, a person with a tainted political past, improper social connections, and well-known reputation for rude behavior toward teachers and colleagues. For the time being, Toropov remained at School No. 10 as its director. On August 18, 1936, Kirov’s municipal party committee expelled Ognev from the party (his third such purge).89 Yet perhaps with the help of friends Ognev managed well enough that year with an important but apparently “safe” position as a senior consultant and shortly thereafter as head of the region’s Bureau for the All-Union Census. His appointment and wellbeing were only temporary.
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ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT With the exception of Ivan Nikitich Balalaev, none of the main characters in this story survived the year 1937 unscathed. Reshetov and Ognev were arrested as enemies of the people and Toropov fired as the school’s director. Whether real or imagined, Ognev’s past heresies made him a likely candidate for purge and arrest. Now his position with the region’s census bureau doomed him. In early 1937, Moscow tallied the results of the census taken in 1937 and immediately suppressed the results because the number of Soviet citizens proved far less than expected. On March 25, the secret police arrested the Bureau’s head followed by more dismissals and arrests of colleagues in the capital and throughout the country as spies and enemies of the people.90 On June 27, 1937, the security police arrested and imprisoned Ognev as an enemy of the people.91 Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education fired Ognev’s wife who had been teaching history since the previous fall at Kirov’s Pushkin Secondary School No. 17, dismissed for contact with an enemy of the people (her husband).92 In the meantime, Reshetov experienced escalating difficulties. On April 15, 1937, at a closed meeting of the department’s party organization, his colleagues charged him once again with rudeness and quarrelsome behavior at work. They dredged up his past association with Ognev as an indicator of his, Reshetov’s, membership in a right-opportunist organization. Moreover, they implicated him in a case discussed in detail previously in chapter 3, the failure to fire immediately a teacher, Shustova, following the arrest of her husband as a Trotskyist. Reshetov denied any right opportunism but admitted that he been insufficiently tough with Ognev and too abrupt with colleagues. Reshetov rushed to explain, however, that he had been rough with subordinates because they failed to complete their work on time. As for Shustova, he denied his own past support of her and placed all of the blame squarely on Marchukov, head of the Regional Department of Education. Reshetov disingenuously claimed that Marchukov had overturned his, Reshetov’s, order to fire her when Marchukov insisted that “in no way is the wife of a Trotskyist to be fired because she had said nothing about the arrest of her husband.”93 On July 10, 1937, the security police arrested Reshetov as an enemy of the people.94 A farcical mixture of fact and fiction followed, as discussed earlier, that found him guilty of gross sexual as well as political and professional misconduct. Some time in 1937, Takhteev, the unforgiving inspector for the Schools Department, submitted his observations on the directors of Kirov’s schools. He was quite critical of most including Toropov. Takhteev recommended Toropov’s temporary retention as director while suggesting that the party’s
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municipal committee summon him for further evaluation.95 On August 9, 1937, the Regional Department of Education fired Toropov and elevated his deputy, V. P. Voskresenskii, to the post.96 CONCLUSION Reshetov and Ognev played the roles expected of them and other bureaucrats. Asked to do the impossible, to achieve a perfect school system but without the requisite human and material resources, they responded by developing the persona of the imperious insensitive bureaucrat, but they were not always able to do so. A desperate Ognev appealed to his friend in a stereotypical way but asked him to behave in an unusual fashion. Reshetov responded by helping Ognev regain his party card and attempting to appoint him as director of one of Kirov’s schools. In this affair, both Ognev and Reshetov demonstrated the best and worst of the human condition. Ognev, the tough and merciless bureaucrat who had scapegoated teachers, school administrators, and colleagues when it served his interests, now pleaded with Reshetov to end such treatment when it victimized him, Ognev. The equally tough bureaucrat, Reshetov, now at considerable risk to his own career, came to the assistance of his friend. He did so in part by exercising his power in the most arbitrary of ways, exaggerating and embellishing Toropov’s faults as he went. It came to naught in 1937. The security police arrested and imprisoned Ognev and Reshetov as enemies of the people. And yet perhaps Reshetov’s efforts to assist Ognev helped in unseen ways in the future. Both Reshetov and Ognev survived their imprisonment to return to Kirov and to prominence, a point discussed in detail in the following chapter. The lesson of friendship may not have been lost on someone who protected both men and, as we will see, many other educational officials who were arrested, including Marchukov. Politics in Kirov followed the usual script but, it must be said, without eradicating the personal altogether. NOTES 1. Moshe Lewin has appropriately emphasized the variety of persons and personalities represented in the Soviet bureaucracy: “The widespread idea that this huge machinery was picking types of persons responding to a preferred blueprint, invariably fanatical, invariably monolithic ideologically, predictably mediocre and dumb, necessarily also always self seeking—cannot be accepted.” See Moshe Lewin, “Rebuilding the Soviet Nomenklatura, 1945–1948,” Cahiers du Monde russe 44, no. 2–3 (April–September 2003): 249.
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2. As bureaucrats, both Reshetov and Ognev acted aggressively and decisively in a way that conformed to the “masculinity” often displayed in the 1930s in Soviet posters, paintings, and monuments. Their public image was, therefore, nothing like the wounded even bedridden man frequently portrayed in socialist realist novels and films. For the contrast in images, see Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). 3. Information presented to the Purge Commission for the party cell of the Viatka Pedagogical Institute in the fall 1929 in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’noPoliticheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 105–106, and his questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii [henceforth RGASPI], f. 17, op. 9, d. 592, ll. 51–51 ob. 4. For biographical information on Reshetov, see materials of the Purge Commission for the party cell of Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute, fall 1929, in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, l. 81 ob., and his questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in RGASPI, f. 17, op. 9, d. 597, ll. 64–64 ob. 5. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 105 ob. –106. 6. The decision on Ognev in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, l. 134 ob. Of sixtythree people examined by the Purge Commission, in the end it purged only five and reprimanded sixteen. See the initial decisions and then response to appeals in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 140–141, 147–148, 151. The purge of the party throughout the Soviet Union continued until the opening of the Sixteenth Party Congress in June 1930. Of a total of about 1.25 million members, 116,000 were purged and another 14,000 left voluntarily. This information from Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Vintage, 1960), 435. 7. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 56, l. 90. 8. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 56, ll. 103–105 ob. See a discussion of an acceleration of the course of study in many higher educational institutions in the USSR in late 1929 in Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921– 1934 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 190–191. Whether he realized it or not, Ognev objected to demands by the recent plenary session in November of the party’s Central Committee: see Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s”ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, 9th ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1984), 5:20–22. 9. Reshetov’s hearing occurred on September 25, 1929: GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, l. 81 ob. 10. Comments at a meeting of the Institute’s party membership in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 56, l. 111 ob. See also comments about these remarks at a later session of the Bureau of the party cell in the Institute’s Department for Social Sciences and Economics, December 15, 1930, in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 102 ob., 113. 11. This information from hostile testimony at Ognev’s hearing before a Purge Commission in 1934 in GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 3. 12. For the charges, Ognev’s testimony, and decisions on December 20, 1930, and January 4, 1931, see GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 116–120, and GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 72, ll. 1, 22.
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13. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 6–7, 81–82, 129 ob. 14. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 68, l. 113. 15. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 116–116 ob. Reshetov now spoke of an “Ognevshchina.” 16. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 72, l. 1. 17. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 81, l. 11 ob. 18. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 72, l. 22. Reshetov was issued a severe reprimand. 19. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 72, l. 24. 20. See the report on the work of the party’s organization at the Pedagogical Institute in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 72, l. 73. They were charged with “gruppovshchina.” 21. GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 73, ll. 27–27 ob. 22. Ognev signed documents as the department’s deputy head in February 1933: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 46, l. 60. 23. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 56, l. 9. 24. Ognev referred to this arrangement in his letter to Reshetov, February 19, 1935: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 209, l. 49. 25. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 27–27 ob. 26. See exaggerated, to be sure, testimony to this effect at Ognev’s hearing before the Purge Commission of the department’s party organization, August 19, 1934: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 1–3. 27. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 30, ll. 3–3 ob., quote on l. 3 ob. In Russian: Takoe polozhenie neterpimo! Dal’she ekhat’ ne kuda! Priamo vzyvaet! 28. GAKO, f. 1864, op. l/s, d. 30, l. 7. I have not found a response from Viatka’s Department of Education. 29. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 9, l. 23. 30. Ognev’s comments at a session of the municipal department’s party cell, March 16, 1933, in GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 3, d. 1, l. 37. 31. Comments at a meeting of the municipal department’s party cell, December 10, 1933, in GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 34–34 ob. 32. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 123, ll. 1–7. 33. On December 22, 1933: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 204, ll. 12, 16, 17, 23. Teachers also failed to check and test pupils’ knowledge. 34. Undated report submitted to Viatka’s Department of Education: GAKO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 127, ll. 269–269 ob. 35. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 66, 70. As we will see, Ognev was the one party member purged. As already mentioned, the Commission recommended the demotion of Kizei from candidate member to sympathizer. This Commission usually consisted of three individuals: Liamin, Kulikov, Sennikov. They probably came from outside the region as required by party directives mandating the purge. 36. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 53–57. Glushkova was also the head (partorg) of the school’s party organization. On Glushkova’s tenure and awards, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 55, l. 5, and d. 45, l. 134. 37. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, l. 57.
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38. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, l. 57. 39. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 71–72. 40. Glushkova was still the school’s director in the fall of 1938 and was teaching mathematics there two years later. See GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 186, l. 8 (for 1938); d. 214, ll. 54 ob. –55 (for 1940). She was replaced as director in the fall of 1939 by Bolvanovich: GASPI KO, f. R-1290, op. 4, d. 31, l. 181. 41. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 1–3. 42. See biographical information presented on her behalf when applying for party membership in October 1928 in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 48, ll. 141–141 ob., as well as information presented at her hearing before the Institute’s Purge Commission that fall in GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 58, ll. 45–45 ob., and in her questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in RGASPI, f. 17, op. 9, d. 580, ll. 72–72 ob. 43. Testimony at a session of the Purge Commission, August 19, 1934, in GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 2–3, 43. Although no doubt getting some help from Ogneva’s father, the Ognevs led a spare life. In October 1928, Ognev applied for a special subsistence loan from the Pedagogical Institute’s party and Komsomol organization: GASPI KO, f. 27, op. 1, d. 49, l. 219. 44. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 3. Two weeks later Kartasheva had an opportunity to demonstrate just how one should deal with a tainted relative. When her own case came up before the Purge Commission on September 8, she emphasized how she had ended contact shortly after her mother married a disenfranchised person: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 44. 45. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 2. 46. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 3. 47. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 3. In Russian: Ognev formalen v rabote, bol’shoi biurokrat. 48. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 1. 49. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 59, l. 287, and f. 1293, op. 9, d. 311, l. 6. 50. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 48–53. 51. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 50. 52. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, l. 6. 53. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 47. In 1934 Reshetov classified his profession before entering the party as “hired farmhand” (batrak): GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 83, l. 43. 54. Biographical information provided at the Commission’s hearing: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, l. 4. 55. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 48–50, 54. 56. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 66–69; for its recommendations, ll. 71–72. 57. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, ll. 60–62. 58. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 63. 59. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 177, l. 64 ob. 60. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 8, l. 121. 61. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 209, ll. 49–50. I have not seen the earlier letter. This letter is dated February 19, 1935.
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62. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 45, ll. 146–146 ob. 63. Reshetov did so on December 15, 1934: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 45, l. 183 ob. 64. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 87, ll. 316–316 ob. Former school buildings were used in Kirov (and elsewhere) as, among other things, offices, private apartments, and dormitories for railroad workers. 65. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 87, l. 317. 66. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 575, l. 6. The Orgburo criticized Narkompros for not seeking the party’s sanction in the first place. It did allow fifty-minute lessons in rural schools where dual shifts were usually the exception: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 688, l. 177. 67. GAKO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 175, l. 36. 68. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 314, l. 40. 69. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 316, ll. 109, 135. 70. See the complaint of the Gorky Railroad Department, August 7, 1936, in GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 49, l. 143. 71. See the complaint of the Kirov Department of the Northern Railroad Administration, November 13, 1936, in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 386, ll. 14–15. 72. See Volin’s letters to departments of education in July and August 1936 in GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 140, 144. 73. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 64, 78–79, 81 ob., 84. 74. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, l. 64. 75. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 78–78 ob. 76. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 81 ob. 77. “O gruboi oshibke kraiONO i Kirovskogo GorONO,” Kirovskaia pravda, September 11, 1935, 3. 78. GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 10, l. 16. 79. See the file on Ognev in GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 311, l. 6. 80. A typed but undated copy of Reshetov’s letter is in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 209, ll. 18–18 ob., a document surrounded by items from July and August 1935. The first document that follows is dated August 11, 1935 (l. 20). The letter has Reshetov’s original signature signed in red ink, l. 18 ob. It has corrections in red ink and two erasures and typeovers. Another copy is in the party archive: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 580, ll. 1–1 ob. It is an original copy with the typewriter’s impressions readily apparent. 81. On Toropov’s background: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 26, ll. 35–36, and d. 56, l. 12. Toropov studied at an Evening Communist University: GAKO, f. 1864, op. l/s, d. 112, l. 110a. Toropov’s resume was not unusual for a labor instructor. In 1933, 60 percent of labor instructors in the Russian Republic had no more than an elementary education: Biulleten’ Narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniia (October 1, 1933), 1. It was unusual for such a person to become a school director especially of an urban school. 82. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 46, l. 61. 83. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 92, l. 17. 84. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 95–97. To be sure, Trotsky’s position was a complicated one—at first opposed to any agreement with Germany, a “no war, no
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peace” formula, and then one that abstained from the final vote on the treaty in the party’s Central Committee. However, given the official assault on Trotsky, ignorance of his past heresy was unacceptable. 85. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 209, ll. 28–29, 40–41 ob. 86. Toropov’s school seems to have been especially popular with parents. In the 1933–1934 academic year, parents’ contributions amounted to 17 percent of its revenue, far more than any other school in Viatka could manage. See budget information in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 129, ll. 30–31 ob. 87. GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 96–97. 88. Toropov completed its second year in 1936: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 149, l. 33. 89. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 311, l. 2. 90. For a discussion of the census and fate of many of its authors, see V. B. Zhiromskaia, I. N. Kiselev, and Iu. A Poliakov, Polveka pod grifom sekretno: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1937 goda (Moscow: “Nauka,” 1996). Robert Conquest observes that the census probably counted 164 million when Moscow expected 170 million: Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 299. 91. Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2001), 4:173, and a report submitted to the Bureau of the regional party committee in late 1937, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, l. 134. 92. On August 4, 1937, the municipal department’s acting head, Shabalin, fired Ogneva (GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 172, l. 28), a dismissal confirmed on August 10 by the Regional Department of Education for “having a relationship with an enemy of the people and for corrupting the work of the pedagogical collective”: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 99 ob. 93. GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 60, l. 5 ob. 94. Kniga pamiati zhertv, 201–202. Reshetov was charged with counterrevolutionary activity under Article 58, paragraph 10. For the Regional Department of Education’s removal of Reshetov: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 85. 95. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 219, ll. 90–92. 96. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 95.
7 A Tragedy: The Terror
IN ALL PROBABILITY
The
convergence of personalities and social forces that accounts for any historical development is too complex and too dependent on contingency to make it inevitable. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that the Stalinist terror, even at its most savage, was highly probable. As a number of scholars have pointed out, most notably Martin Malia, Bolshevik ideology of transformation would likely (if not most assuredly, in Malia’s view) lead to violence upon a human nature and popular culture not as plastic and compliant as assumed.1 As we have seen in the educational sphere, there was certainly enough negative script around to demonstrate a failed project of transformation and to encourage the punishment of those responsible. The quest for perfection, the notion of a symbiosis of errors, and escalating negativity in reporting collectively compelled a preoccupation with, then an assault on, failures, both real and imagined. Moreover, encouraged by Stalin and his Secret Chancellery, authors of letters of complaint presented a Manichean world of good and evil where personal misconduct was equated with high political crimes. Perhaps the fired director of a secondary school, Vishvtsev, would have converted the remark made by his Komsomol boss, “We have executed you politically,” from a figurative expression into a literal act to be taken against his antagonist. Such negativity might not serve as the cause of anything like the Stalinist terror, as Moshe Lewin and other historians have pointed out, but it could fuel it once it began.2 Harsh behavior had for years been part of Viatka’s educational scene. When in 1929 and 1930 Ognev expressed reservations about collectivization and conditions at Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute and his friend, Reshetov, proved 151
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reluctant to condemn him, Ognev was purged and Reshetov reprimanded. Four years later, the suspect social origins of Ognev and his wife and their allegedly greater concern for their child than for the party’s all-consuming agenda led to Ognev’s second purge. That year as well, colleagues at the Municipal Department of Education and teachers in the field personalized difficult conditions at work and at home by blaming Ognev and Reshetov. Nevertheless, the ideology of transformation and the purges of the early and mid-1930s had produced nothing like the terror to come. The purge of 1933 and 1934 had only a limited impact on schools and the bureaucracy governing them. The Municipal Department of Education’s party organization removed only one person, Ognev, and within a year he had rejoined the party. As we have seen, in August 1934 Kornev survived criticism by his subordinate, Lezhnina, presented first at the school’s cell and then at a meeting of the Municipal Purge Commission. Earlier, in April, the twenty-nine members of the school’s Komsomol organization, almost all of them senior students, underwent purge proceedings with an interrogation that seemed threatening enough requiring specific knowledge of recent political events at home and abroad. “When was the Pioneer organization created?” “Who burned down the Reichstag?” “Who is Thälmann?” (Ernst Thälmann, head of the German Communist Party, arrested in March 1933). Yet everyone passed with membership intact, even Diakonov, a pupil who could not respond to the question regarding Thälmann, had poor marks, and refused to attend extra lessons. In March and April Komsomol units at other schools in Kirov proceeded in similar fashion. Of the total of sixty-nine people examined at schools no. 3, 6, 8, and 10, only three (4 percent) were purged—a labor instructor at No. 3 who had stopped attending Komsomol meetings and two pupils at No. 8, one for poor grades and nonpayment of dues and the other for organizing drinking binges.3 As rhetoric about counterrevolutionaries and enemies of the people in schools and the bureaucracy responsible for them became more frequent and heated in 1935, officials remained unwilling to inhibit education’s mission by a wave of dismissals and arrests. Reshetov took a chance and spoke out for Ognev. In mid-1935, the Regional Department of Education refused to confirm the dismissal of a teacher by the Bogorodskoe district department of education for alleged service in the White Army during the Russian Civil War. It asked the local office of the security police to investigate the charge and the teacher’s documentation to the contrary.4 Later that year, Komsomol’s regional committee responded skeptically to aggressive behavior toward school administrators and teachers by its Svecha district committee. When on November 18, 1935, Svecha’s Komsomol Bureau recommended the firing of a school director for drunken and dissolute behavior, the regional committee
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thought the local had exceeded its authority. On the left-hand margin of the report, someone in Kirov wrote: “The Bureau is much occupied with the work of schools, it even replaces the district department of education.”5 When on November 25, the Bureau found myriad horrors at Svecha School No. 2 and provided a list of class-alien teachers, the regional official wrote sarcastically: “What good horrors!!” (khoroshie bezobraziia!!) and by the list, “There is no indication of activity by a class enemy.”6 Dissatisfaction with predatory district committees dominated remarks at the League’s First Regional Conference in March 1936. There the head of Komsomol’s Pioneers Department, Zakharov, who would become, as we have seen, an inspector for the regional Schools Department, and Liusov, the current deputy head of that department, joined with the regional educational boss, Marchukov, to rein in aggressive locals. Marchukov acknowledged instructional and disciplinary problems in the region’s schools, but he resented the excessive negativity and interference in their operation by Komsomol organs. Criticism had its proper place, but with Komsomol, “It’s as if the picture is poor, as if everything is poor, poor, poor.”7 Marchukov pointedly mentioned a number of good teachers by name. Liusov and Zakharov emphasized that departments of education not Komsomol units were responsible for schools.8 Not everyone associated with Komsomol was pleased with the message and the scolding of Komsomol locals. The League’s press arm, Komsomol’skoe plemia, made no mention of the effort to prop up the authority of departments of education.9 The conference’s resolutions also avoided the issue as did Komsomol district committees that met in April and March to discuss the conference.10 That displeasure soon became official policy. The following year Komsomol’s regional committee assumed a role as the school system’s monitor and supervisor. It now produced reports hammering away at multiple failures from poor instruction and discipline to, more ominously, the presence of counterrevolutionary pupils and teachers.11 At the same time, the regional committee orchestrated the formation in each district of fifteen to twenty brigades of about five senior pupils each to inspect schools. These “raids of the light cavalry,” as they were labeled, found the expected horrors including shortages of human and material resources and rude behavior by pupils and teachers.12 Such negativity produced a wealth of suspects from the classroom to local administrative offices potentially guilty, given the logic of the symbiosis of errors, of heinous political crimes. Yet it would still require a leap of imagination and cruelty to proceed from such accusations and suspicions to multiple firings and the arrest, imprisonment, and execution of politically untrustworthy elements and so-called enemies of the people.
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In his Origins of the Great Purges published in 1985, Getty found a bureaucracy so insubordinate and cumbersome that it provoked in part the terror against it.13 Certainly in the conditions in which they worked, Kirov’s teachers and educational administrators could not hope to approximate what Moscow expected of them. If the Kremlin therefore wanted to use such failure as a reason to launch the terror against Kirov’s educators then it had plenty of reason to do so. However, the “presence of every possibility” and “surrealistic indicators of success” had been part of the scene long before 1937 and had not provoked anything like the terror to come. Moreover, Kirov’s educational administrators meticulously obeyed the center’s orders, Marchukov, as we will see later in this chapter, even to excess, however impractical those instructions were. They erred only in submitting reports inadequately critical of themselves and the schools they managed. The sheer volume as well as content of letters of complaint and denunciation no doubt contributed to a perception in Moscow of an educational system in disarray. However, such letters of complaint followed a script so well rehearsed in advance that officials unlikely regarded them as objective sources of information. Nor was Moscow or Kirov, as we have seen, prepared to equate the subsequent absence of justice for the complainant with insubordination by organs below. Following her denial of Chernykh’s charges and exaggeration of the complainant’s own faults, the local official in Sovetsk, Ezhova, was promoted to the post of schools inspector of the Regional Department of Education. In Pudem, local authorities probably rid themselves of Bulygina. And even when district officials there and elsewhere clearly resisted commands from the regional capital, it was not Kirov’s prerogative or wish to launch a terror in response. The “grand theater,” therefore, in which Kirov’s pupils, teachers, and administrators participated did not produce “the reason” or “the cause” for the decision or decisions that instigated the Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. That theater did, however, create an environment conducive to the terror’s staging and provided the human and institutional players necessary for its performance once it began.14 Teachers became an essential part of that spectacle.
TEACHERS BEWARE In early 1936 a campaign to improve the qualifications of teachers provided the means for their removal for political as well as for professional and personal reasons. On April 10, 1936, the Soviet government required that all elementary teachers have seven years of general education and a degree in education from a teachers college and that all secondary schoolteachers have
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ten years of general education and a degree from a pedagogical institute or university.15 A campaign to check the credentials of all the nation’s teachers followed. As discussed earlier, most instructors who could not meet the new standards were given additional time to do so while retaining their positions. Therefore, between the summer of 1936 and the end of 1940 in the USSR, only 22,000 teachers were dismissed, about 3 percent of the profession, the same percentage of teachers dismissed in the Kirov region. In these relatively few cases, no doubt politics played a role especially in 1937 and early 1938.16 In his study of Soviet teachers in the 1930s, Ewing found that reasons for dismissal ranged from lack of training to heretical political views.17 Official reports admitted to, while assuredly underestimating the role of, political factors in punishing teachers. A 1938 appraisal for Kirov’s Schools Department concluded that of 192 teachers fired from junior and senior secondary schools during 1937 and the first two months of 1938, thirty had been removed as enemies of the people, or for contact with enemies of the people, or, more simply, as politically untrustworthy elements. Of 253 elementary teachers dismissed during the same period, thirteen suffered for the same reasons.18 According to this report, then, only 43 of 445 teachers who were fired, or less than 10 percent, lost their jobs during that period for political reasons, a far cry, no doubt, from the actual number. Teachers were removed for participating in religious baptisms and funerals and directors for allowing use of a school horse to drag a tombstone to the local cemetery for a priest’s burial.19 Alleged concealment of social origins and arrest of a spouse for political crimes also led to dismissal.20 Teachers of history, a politically sensitive subject, were dismissed, as we have seen, for slips of the tongue or honest but heretical statements. Teachers of German language and literature suffered as well. In mid-1937, the Politburo and Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov, chief of the security police, ordered the arrest of all German citizens employed in the defense industry. Their arraignment and that of many others associated in some way or another with Germany and things German followed.21 To its regret, one school in the city of Kirov, School No. 3, had specialized in instruction in German. During the 1920s, the International Organization for the Assistance of Revolutionaries, a group especially active in Viatka, took up the cause of Max Hölz, member of Germany’s Communist Party and sentenced to life imprisonment during the 1920s. While serving his sentence, Hölz was elected an honorary member of Viatka’s garrison, police force, and municipal soviet. Released in 1928, Hölz left the next day for the USSR. Soon thereafter, upon his arrival in Viatka, the city gave him a hero’s welcome. Among his other honors, Hölz had the city’s School No. 3 named after him.22 However, as relations with Germany worsened and everything German, communist or not, became suspect, the school
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quietly dropped the name while authorities targeted its teachers of German. It had not helped matters that in 1933, as we have seen, five of the school’s pupils attempted suicide and that the wife, Shustova, of an enemy of the people arrested in early 1937 served as its deputy director. From November 1937 to May 1938, the security police arrested three successive teachers of the language. The first two, El’vira Ivanovna Emberg and Gertel’, had German surnames, the third, Evdokiia Petrovna Kushova, a Russian.23 Security police also arrested in 1937 the teacher of German at Kirov’s School No. 13 and the regional department’s instructional expert in the language.24 Departments of education in Makar’e, Suna, and Kiknur districts fired instructors in German.25 The audience took the stage to play the role of the eternal vigilant. At meetings of cells affiliated with local departments of education, communist teachers promised to monitor the political content of each other’s lessons, assist the security police in ferreting out enemies in the community, and train pupils to do the same.26 At the Regional Department of Education, colleagues distanced themselves from those arrested by insisting that they had never discussed politics with the accused and by apologizing for not exposing them earlier.27 Other administrators took what they hoped was preemptive action. On September 13, 1937, the deputy head of the region’s Schools Department, Liusov, wrote to the Central Committee’s Schools Department in Moscow that a history textbook used in schools understated the extent of Trotsky’s betrayal in October 1917.28 Within months of his appointment in February 1937 as head of Pizhanka’s department of education, Arkhip Mironovich Chistiakov had fired at least fourteen teachers and scared off many others. Even in a period when such zeal was expected, the local party committee thought it excessive and reprimanded Chistiakov. However, the local committee was probably as equally upset with Chistiakov’s less predatory but bothersome demands for a better apartment and, once getting it, then for its repair.29 Rather than fire him, the committee allowed Chistiakov to resign the position. Shortly thereafter, Chistiakov once again found himself in authority as head of a flax factory in Chernovskoe district, to the north of Pizhanka. On November 28 the Kirov’s Party Control Commission annulled its earlier reprimand.30 DESIGNATED VICTIMS People
Like any Soviet campaign, the terror singled out individuals to celebrate its lofty goals and great achievements. Their number included, as we have seen, Reshetov, Marchukov, Kizei, Kniazheva, and Chudakova. The case against
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Marchukov in particular was a creatively scripted mixture of fact and fiction. According to abundant testimony, Marchukov behaved in a haughty and authoritarian manner toward his chief deputies, other subordinates, and anyone else who came into contact with him. Much to the consternation of his colleagues who arrived at a normal hour, Marchukov preferred to show up no earlier than noon, sometimes not before 2 PM. Anyone wishing to see him, even his chief deputies, had to wait until 4 PM or later for an audience. Heads of district departments of education as well as teachers lingered for hours, even days on end. Some persons of little apparent importance eventually went home without ever seeing the boss. He shouted at those fortunate enough to see him in his office but unfortunate enough to bring news that Marchukov construed as criticism. His colleagues blamed him personally for cramped quarters at work and for a failure to provide them with housing or, for the more fortunate ones, nothing better than an unheated apartment.31 He was purportedly unconcerned when Vera Aleksandrovna Popova, head of the department’s Methods Office, tore her skirt when negotiating her way through desks crowded together.32 When Narkompros and other agencies in Moscow periodically denounced party and state organs for failing to respond to complaints from “little people,” Marchukov officiously criticized his deputies for not taking complaints seriously.33 Strapped for funds, some local departments of education refused to purchase auxiliary instructional materials sent to them by the regional department. When they returned many such items in the spring of 1936, Marchukov promptly sent them back with the cost of return postage tacked on.34 Throughout 1936 and 1937 meetings of the party’s cell at the Regional Department of Education charged that Marchukov stifled criticism, appointed teachers and local officials hostile toward Soviet power, dismissed campaigns for universal secondary education and against illiteracy, and ignored the advice and leadership of the party’s apparat.35 At a session of the department’s party organization on November 14, 1936, the secretary of the organization’s Bureau, Ivan Nikitich Balalaev, complained that Marchukov acted as if the Bureau was under his jurisdiction. The session adopted resolutions that took note of Marchukov’s “nonparty declaration” supposedly made to three fellow communists that the Bureau and organization served under his, Marchukov’s, direction because he was the regional department’s head.36 Marchukov surely did not help his strained relationship with the party’s apparatus when early the following year, on April 17, he submitted an angry memorandum to the regional party committee in which he denounced the Komsomol municipal and regional committees for appropriating and transferring his personnel. He demanded that the party return the individuals in question and forbid such interference in his department’s affairs in the future.37
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In some cases, as already noted, Marchukov purportedly ignored the party’s directives. In another instance he responded too aggressively. On July 4, 1936, the Central Committee abolished pedology, a discipline originating in the west but which had gained immense popularity in the USSR during the 1920s. Its adherents hoped to identify children with learning problems as a result, they thought, of heredity and an inappropriate social environment, and then to provide special classes and schools for them. In the 1930s, however, pedology was no longer in favor in Stalin’s Russia. All children, even those heretofore identified as having special needs, could supposedly through an exercise of will on their part and on the part of devoted teachers overcome any and all obstacles without special treatment. On July 4, the Central Committee made it official. It condemned pedology as anti-Marxist nonsense and demanded a reexamination of all children previously judged to be difficult and slow learners and who had been assigned to their own classes or schools. The party assumed the results of the reexamination and ordered the transfer of almost all such children to regular schools and classes.38 Marchukov knew what to do and proceeded with aplomb. He had only to follow the earlier example of the director, Kornev, of the region’s flagship school, School No. 9. Within fifteen days after the beginning of the 1933–1934 academic year, the first in which the school enjoyed model status in 1933, Kornev had guaranteed a statistically improved performance of his student body by transferring fifteen pupils who lacked, as he put it, elementary discipline to a special school for the mentally challenged.39 Now in 1936 with new marching orders from Moscow, Kornev banished all literature on the subject of pedology from his school’s library and launched a campaign against such so-called pedological labels as “a difficult (trudnyi),” or “incapable” (nesposobnyi), or “incorrigible” (zapushchennyi) child.40 Marchukov may in fact have sympathized with these challenged children for his own son, as discussed earlier, suffered from a speech defect and required special tutoring. Yet he understood that it was best to err, if at all, by zealous implementation rather than run the risk of accusations of complacency, conciliation, and wrecking by being careful. Marchukov created a commission that included Reshetov and Chudakova, a recent graduate, as noted earlier, of the Department for Challenged Children of Moscow’s Pedagogical Institute and teacher at Kirov’s School No. 11, an institution for mentally and physically challenged children, to evaluate its pupils and make recommendations. After twenty days and an examination of all 272 pupils, the commission recommended assigning seventy to normal schools.41 However, on September 23, Marchukov descended on the school where he ceremoniously rejected the commission’s findings and in the course of several hours interviewed the remaining 202 children deciding as he went
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which children could stay and which should go. He ordered two to find a job, dispatched 184 to normal schools, and left at the school two special classes, a first grade for ten children and a second for six. Only the most severely mentally and physically challenged were among these sixteen including children who could only manage basic arithmetical calculations with the aid of matchsticks, one girl who could not dress herself, and another with such a badly deformed jaw that she could make only unintelligible sounds. The whole process was completed so arbitrarily and in such haste that many children were assigned to their present grade even though at their former school the curriculum lagged one year behind what was offered elsewhere. On October 4, 1936, at a pedagogical conference at Kirov’s Junior Secondary School No. 4, teachers complained that of the sixty or so formerly special children just assigned to the school, fifty-eight could not do the work and would have to be demoted.42 Meanwhile, faced with a School No. 11 nearly devoid of pupils, Marchukov ordered the Municipal Department of Education to transfer to this facility seven whole classes and their teachers from schools throughout the city’s three districts, a move that distressed teachers, parents, and children alike. The latter nevertheless received the best accommodations at the school where the two classes of special children meeting in consecutive shifts were confined to a small room reeking with the stench of vodka and something akin to rotting flesh. On September 25, 1936, the regional party committee’s investigative organ, the Group for Party-Soviet Control, having received a complaint from Chudakova, interviewed Marchukov.43 Marchukov defended his behavior as consistent with the Central Committee’s resolution. He added that he had not, in fact, been so cruel as to close a school for special children because he had retained two special classes for them. Marchukov spoke boldly but disingenuously. He had abolished the special school and essentially abandoned the sixteen challenged children who remained. However, the Control Commission and regional party committee, no doubt convinced that Marchukov had indeed done Moscow’s bidding, acted equally disingenuously and dropped the matter. Marchukov defended himself in other ways. He interrupted critical commentary at a meeting of the department’s party organization, February 21, 1937, with retorts of “demagogy,” “slander,” “you lie,” and “I disagree.”44 Regarding a discussion of his rough treatment of subordinates at the meeting of the department’s party organization of February 21, 1937, he insisted that he acted aggressively (goriacho) toward others because he had a tough job that required of him “an uncompromising struggle with insufficiencies.” He was, in effect, the single devoted and competent person at the department who had no choice but to rule in an imperious and authoritarian manner.45 Moreover, Marchukov complained to the regional party committee that his
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department lacked the personnel and funds to meet its obligations to the region’s schools and, in October 1937, even to meet its own payroll.46 At a session of the regional department’s party organization, October 15, 1937, he denied that he intimidated colleagues or that he was insensitive to living conditions experienced by his subordinates. He had no resources, he pointed out, to help them.47 In early 1937, criticism of Marchukov escalated. In an effort to divert criticism from himself at a closed meeting of the Municipal Department of Education’s party organization in April, a cornered Reshetov blamed Marchukov for not firing the disgraced teacher, Shustova, a decision that, in fact, had been primarily Reshetov’s as well as that of his subordinate, Konchevskaia.48 Local departments on cue entered the stage to denounce Marchukov. They blamed him and his department for most if not all the problems plaguing schools from shortages of pencils and paper to arrears in teachers’ wages of three to four months.49 That year Marchukov countered accusations of his own alleged incompetence and political heresy by enhancing his reputation for toughness. He turned away appeals of teachers with such abrupt assessments as “I don’t believe her,” or “she has not reexamined her [hostile ideological] baggage.”50 When in September the region’s prosecutor asked the Regional Department of Education to investigate a common complaint, this time from Kirov’s Arbazh district, about a school in disrepair and without furniture, Marchukov called for an investigation to find enemies of the people purportedly responsible.51 In other cases, he simply refused to grant an audience to teachers fired for making inappropriate remarks about Trotsky, the new Stalin constitution, or Moscow’s 1937 show trial of Piatakov and others even when, as we have seen, the teacher Vishvtsev had journeyed twice from an area 200 km. away. They may have been fortunate. In October after talking to a teacher following her dismissal for drinking and correspondence with enemies of the people, Marchukov asked the security police in her district to arrest her.52 Marchukov’s bold but cruel efforts made no difference. He was a marked man. Previous charges, temporarily discarded, were now revisited in 1937. That spring, the regional party committee’s Group for Party-Soviet Control thought better of its acceptance of Marchukov’s explanation the previous September of his behavior toward challenged children. It now regarded his conduct as a sign of his own personal and professional degeneracy. It concluded further that Marchukov had deceived the party by claiming that he had not closed the special school. Irrespective of its own complicity in the matter, the Group now reprimanded Marchukov.53 More ominously, Marchukov’s disrespect for his department’s party organization, first made by its head, Balalaev, in November 1936 but then
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apparently forgotten, returned with a vengeance in Liusov’s report in late 1937. Marchukov had arrogantly dismissed advice from the department’s party organization and from the regional committee’s Schools Department.54 Liusov ended with a demand: “It is imperative to remove him [Marchukov] immediately from work and expel him from the party.”55 Not to be denied its own role in the unfolding drama, on November 28, Komsomol’s regional committee submitted to the party’s regional Bureau a lengthy report on the “scum, scoundrels, and counterrevolutionaries” in school classrooms and administrative offices, for which, it said, Marchukov bore personal and political responsibility.56 The following day, November 29, 1937, Kirov’s two major newspapers, Kirovskaia pravda and Komsomol’skoe plemia, provided by name enemies of the people whom Marchukov had appointed to schools and whom he subsequently protected.57 At the Schools Department, someone wrote across a copy of the article that appeared in Kirovskaia pravda, “Marchukov is removed and purged from the party,” dating the remark December 1, 1937.58 The note was premature but prophetic. On December 3, Marchukov appeared before the regional party committee’s Bureau to respond to charges brought against him by Liusov and others. Once again Marchukov insisted that his department had been provided with insufficient personnel and funds to meet its responsibilities. He had never misled anyone nor patronized enemies of the people. “Comrades, I declare that never in my life have I gotten mixed up with and been in contact with such scum. My life has belonged to the party. For three years, I have worked day and night, I don’t have a personal life (lichnaia zhizn’). I only work. I am an honorable party member.”59 The very denials, one critic observed, proved that Marchukov was indeed an enemy of the people.60 The Bureau dismissed him from his post and purged him from the party for neglecting problems facing schools, abetting sabotage in administrative organs, and protecting enemies of the people.61 On that day, security police arrested him as an enemy of the people. The party’s Schools Department dispatched Liusov to replace Marchukov at the regional department and, as discussed earlier, serious charges of Marchukov’s alleged womanizing would soon follow. Institutions
Not only officials such as Marchukov, but also particular schools were singled out for attack. As previously noted, even before the dismissals of its German instructors, School No. 3 had been targeted. In early 1933, party and state organs pounced on the school for a purported symbiosis of errors after the attempted suicide of five of its pupils, two of which ended in death. Shortly
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after the beginning of the 1933–1934 academic year, Leonid Vasil’evich Suvorov, just appointed in August as director of School No. 4, was transferred to the same post at School No. 3 to correct, as he put it later, the disorder there.62 Suvorov may have helped matters, but the school remained a convenient illustration of all that was wrong with education. In late 1933 and early 1934, the city’s schools inspector, Ognev, condemned the school for inadequate teaching, learning, and discipline. On November 29, 1936, the Bureau of the party’s municipal committee found that instruction in history by Suvorov and another teacher at School No. 3, Vladimirova, failed to inculcate hatred toward enemies of the people.63 As we have already seen, the arrest of the regional party committee’s propagandist, Shustov, became a pretext to attack first his wife, the deputy director at School No. 3, then the school’s faculty and pupils, and finally its director, Suvorov. Suvorov was a likely victim not only because of his association with the school but also because of his suspect social origins, early career, and his past difficulties with the party. Once Suvorov had seemed destined for a career in the Orthodox Church. Born in 1900, the son of a reader of psalms and liturgical prayers, Suvorov graduated from an Orthodox seminary in 1914. His life took a radically different path four years later when he joined the Bolshevik Party. Immediately thereafter he held a number of junior administrative posts in the Viatka region that involved, during the Civil War, requisitioning grain from peasants and goods from merchants. His subsequent service, however, was interrupted on two occasions by his purge from the party, first in 1924 for his refusal to accept a posting to a rural area and second in 1929 for organizing drunkfests with friends. In both cases, the party quickly reinstated Suvorov reducing the punishment to a reprimand. Shortly before receiving a degree from Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute in 1934, he began teaching history at School No. 3. In 1937, as previously discussed, Suvorov admitted to personal and professional errors while insisting on his political innocence. Knowing full well his declining fortunes, in June or July, he complained directly to Moscow’s Narkompros of shortfalls in funds allocated to his school by the city’s department of education and ruling soviet. Narkompros responded after a fashion by sending the municipal department a copy of Suvorov’s complaint.64 On August 25, 1937, the department removed Suvorov from School No. 3.65 Thanks in part to the efforts of his wife, Fekla Ivanovna Suvorova, the head of the Molotov district department of education, Suvorov managed a posting at a school that fell in her district.66 Administrators at another school far less favorably situated suffered a worse fate. Junior Secondary School No. 1, although in the Molotov district, was located across the Viatka river away from the city’s center in a poor working-class district associated with a lumber mill. The attack began in
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March 1937 with an investigation by the Municipal Department of Education’s inspector. Shel’piakova. “Despite optimal conditions created by the party’s and government’s decrees,” Shel’piakova wrote, the school featured all the sordid elements possible from poor administration to shoddy instruction and undisciplined pupils, the fault of the school’s director and deputy director, Ivan Il’ich Goloviznin and Tat’iana Prokop’evna Luppova.67 On March 22 Reshetov responded to the report by providing the school 7,000 rubles to improve its equipment and library, firing Luppova, and reprimanding Goloviznin.68 Three days later the party’s municipal committee upstaged Reshetov by blaming him and the district department of education’s head, Suvorova, for all problems at this and other schools and by labeling both Goloviznin and Luppova “the party’s enemies.”69 Reshetov then fired Goloviznin.70 Several days later, on April 2, 1937, the Molotov district department of education’s party cell labeled Goloviznin and Luppova Trotskyists who had fostered anti-Soviet sentiments among teachers and pupils.71 Arrested soon thereafter, on June 10 both were sentenced for counterrevolutionary activity, Goloviznin to six years’ imprisonment and Luppova to four.72 The city’s most prominent school, School No. 9, was not immune to tough talk and threats. Senior students had avoided attending meetings of the school’s extracurricular parachute club. Although nominally a voluntary activity, skipping such meetings was a serious matter all the more so because this particular group was led by Osipova, head of the school’s Pioneer and Komsomol units. In November 1937, a ninth grader, Nina Boiarintseva, came to the club’s session. Upon discovering few of her fellow pupils in attendance, she called out one who had come and together they went to an apartment of another ninth grader where students had gathered for an evening of unsupervised conversation and fun. Left without a sufficient number of participants to continue, Osipova pursued Boiarintseva to the apartment, entered, and scolded all of those gathered there and ordered them to return to the school. They refused and at least one responded with rude remarks.73 On November 29, the school’s Komsomol committee met to condemn Boiarintseva’s lack of political resolve and her alleged support of a certain Kalinina, purportedly the organizer of all the trouble in the first place and daughter, it was said, of an enemy of the people. Boiarintseva put up a surprisingly stout defense. She and her peers found the parachute circle boring and she had not known that Kalinina posed such a grave danger. The school’s history teacher and Komsomol member, Luchinin, recently reprimanded by the school’s Komsomol unit for heavy drinking, responded with invective appropriate for the terror then waged against adults.74 All knew that Kalinina had spent time abroad with her family and that her upbringing was not “like ours.” “We have no guarantee,” he declared, “that her father is not a spy for
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foreign intelligence.” Kalinina had conspired to disrupt the circle; Boiarintseva cooperated perhaps intentionally. The school’s Komsomol committee voted to reprimand and remove Boiarintseva from her post as a Komsomol leader but it did not, despite Luchinin’s harsh attack, recommend her purge from the ranks of the Young Communist League.75 At about the same time, Kornev, the school’s director, seemed destined for even rougher treatment. Shortly after the beginning of the 1937–1938 academic year, the inspector of schools for the party’s regional committee, Takhteev, reported that Kornev demanded blind submission from his subordinates. Although Takhteev knew well that no communists and only two members of the Young Communist League were on the school’s staff at the time, he nevertheless accused Kornev of neglecting the interests of people affiliated with the party. Takhteev recommended that the city’s party committee summon Kornev for an explanation and consider his removal as director.76 Worse followed. With much fanfare, Moscow set elections for the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for December 12, 1937. In Kirov, the event was celebrated in Kirovskaia pravda with no less ballyhoo than elsewhere. It was a serious affair, minor errors, real or imagined, took on immense importance if only to demonstrate the significance of the great event. Kornev was assigned the task to register new voters in his district and remove from the rolls names of people who had died or moved away. The effort proceeded slowly, too slowly for Viktor Konstantinovich Zefirov, the head of the Zhdanov district’s department of education. On December 5, 1937, at a meeting of the department’s party cell, Zefirov charged Kornev with “criminally negligent behavior.”77 The charge was repeated at a meeting of the district’s soviet and then again by Zefirov at the party cell’s session on December 21.78 Two weeks later, at the cell’s next session, January 3, 1938, higher officials made even more serious charges by questioning Kornev’s motives. Maksim Kirillovich Chepurnykh, chair of the district’s soviet, member of the Municipal Soviet’s Presidium, and secretary of its party organization, observed that local authorities had trusted Kornev, but Kornev had chosen to follow the advice of Marchukov, an enemy of the people. “If Kornev is not an enemy of the people in the fullest sense,” Chepurnykh declared, “then he is close to it.”79
AFTERLIFE Despite the gravity of the charges brought against Kornev, he survived. His two detractors did not. A few days after his criticism of Kornev, Zefirov was arrested by the security police as an enemy of the people, his purge from
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the party followed.80 In February 1938, the Bureau of the Zhdanov district’s party committee ordered Chepurnykh’s removal as chair of the district’s soviet because of the recent discovery that he had bought and sold cattle in the 1920s and for his rude treatment of Kornev.81 Kornev and his school continued to enjoy one of the most veteran and best-trained faculty in the city and fame that went with it. On October 14, 1938, the party’s regional committee created two semi-annual Red Banner awards, one each for the region’s best secondary and elementary school.82 The announcement set off not a spirited competition but orchestrated praise of School No. 9 by the heads of the municipal and regional departments of education.83 On February 20 after more lavish praise of Kornev and his staff at the opening of a conference of the region’s excellent teachers, Petr Loginovich Smirnov, deputy chair of the region’s soviet, took the floor and called Kornev to the front to receive the award. When handing over the banner, Smirnov cautioned Kornev that it was not a permanent award, a comment that prompted laughter among the assembled. Kornev’s collective, he continued, would need to earn the banner in the future if it wished to retain it, a remark again drawing laughter by delegates who surely appreciated the irony of the moment. In accepting the banner, Kornev thanked the region’s soviet and party organization for choosing his school. Befitting the theatrical spectacle just completed, his remarks were followed by thunderous applause.84 More fame followed for the school including another Red Banner that August.85 After the Nazi attack on the USSR in June 1941, Narkompros evacuated its staff to Kirov and set up headquarters at School No. 9. The move brought in its wake one more honor. On August 6, 1941, Narkompros’s Commissar, Vladimir Petrovich Potemkin, officially thanked Kornev as well as the head of the Regional Department of Education, Dmitrii Vasil’evich Vaneev, for making the relocation a relatively smooth affair.86 From August 1943 until January 1947, Kornev served as head of Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education.87 Kornev’s good fortune in avoiding arrest and imprisonment in 1937 and 1938 was unusual for an educator in Kirov who had been accused of high crimes, but his physical survival and subsequent success were not. To be sure, some teachers and administrators disappeared after their arrest never to return. As best I can determine, Goloviznin and Luppova died in confinement. The German instructor, Emberg, sentenced on September 26, 1938, was shot three days later.88 Another instructor of the language, Kushova, who had been arrested, returned to teach her subject at Kirov’s School No. 7 in the fall of 1939.89 However, a subsequent paroxysm of anti-German sentiment following the Nazi invasion of the USSR led to her rearrest in early 1942 and sentencing to ten years’ imprisonment for counterrevolutionary activity.90
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Yet remarkably, as I will discuss in the next chapter, Reshetov, Marchukov, Kizei, Kniazheva, and Chudakova all experienced a far better fate, in the case of Reshetov and Marchukov, surviving imprisonment and returning to positions of importance. They were not alone. In early 1938 many teachers previously fired for political sins returned to work. Their number included Lidiia Aleksandrovna Ogneva appointed by the Municipal Department of Education on February 1, 1938, to teach the third grade at Kirov’s Elementary School No. 4.91 The following fall, Ogneva was teaching history, geography, and constitution at Kirov’s Junior Secondary School No. 20. On February 1, 1939, the Municipal Department of Education named her as one of the city’s twenty-six best teachers. In September 1941, Ogneva became the school’s director, a post she held when the school became Womens Secondary School No. 11 after the introduction in 1943 of gender-segregated education in major urban areas. By the fall of September 1944, Ogneva had become a candidate member of the Communist Party and three years later director and teacher of history at Womens School No. 28, formerly Kirov’s most distinguished School No. 9.92 Her husband, Ognev, staged a more spectacular recovery. Released from prison in late 1939, on January 17, 1940, Ognev unsuccessfully requested of the regional party committee reinstatement into the party’s ranks. Four months later, on April 27, the Central Committee’s Party Control Commission in Moscow overturned the decision and restored Ognev’s party membership while admonishing him for incorrect political conduct that had provoked accusations of opportunism.93 The Zhdanov district’s party committee promised to find him a teaching position and on July 13 Ognev became director of that district’s Secondary School No. 18.94 In November 1941 Ognev left the school to join the Red Army. During World War II he served with distinction on several fronts, and was wounded twice. Following the war, he returned to Kirov to become director of its Institute for Teachers In-Service Training and a senior instructor at Kirov’s Pedagogical Institute. At the same time, the inspector Zakharov, arrested and imprisoned as an enemy of the people in December 1937, returned to Kirov and even more rapidly than Ognev gained reinstatement into the party. On January 17, 1940, the Bureau of the regional party committee overturned his purge while it let stand the charge of political irresolution (neistoichivost’). Several months later, in mid-March, the Party Collegium of the Central Committee for Party Control annulled even that rebuke.95 In January 1938, Liusov left his position as deputy chief of the regional party committee’s Schools Department to head the Regional Department of Education. In May 1938, he was arrested and imprisoned. By September
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of the following year, however, he had returned to Kirov and successfully sought readmission into the party.96 Takhteev, the rugged inspector for the Schools Department, who became the head of the Municipal Department of Education in early 1938, was arrested as an enemy of the people in May.97 Although he suffered from chronic infection of the gall bladder and colitis and without special care would probably have died in prison or a work camp, he survived to return to Kirov in the spring of 1939 to head the Pedagogy Laboratory at Kirov’s Institute for Teachers In-service Training and then, from September, the Institute.98 In April 1938, the regional party committee ordered the removal of Revekka Stoliar as head of the Institute for Teachers In-Service Training and her purge from the party for contact with enemies of the people. Several days earlier, on March 27, the security police had arrested her husband, Maksim Semenovich Lozovskii, head of the regional party committee’s Department for Industry and Transport, and on March 31, her cousin, Abram Stoliar, regional party boss in Kirov since December 1934 until his transfer to the same position in Sverdlovsk in June 1937.99 For the time being, Revekka Stoliar avoided arrest and found employment at a local factory manufacturing school equipment. She applied for a vacant teaching position at School No. 10, only to have her application rejected by municipal authorities. She protested to the local department of the security police and the party’s regional committee. “One thing is clear,” she wrote, “they are afraid to give me this position.” She continued: “How am I able to continue to live in such a situation? When will these tortures end? . . . I have never shown mercy to enemies of the people, I never was and never will be in contact with them.”100 Although the worst horrors of the terror against leading bureaucrats had passed, Stoliar was arrested and imprisoned on November 6, 1938. However, she was released thirteen months later and restored to the party in February 1940.101 No doubt, many of Kirov’s citizens experienced far worse during the terror. In July 1937 the Central Committee approved a list presented by the security police to arrest and execute over 72,000 “kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements” in the Soviet Union including 500 in the Kirov region. It also called for the sentencing of an additional 1,500 in the province to prison terms of eight to ten years. The following September, the Central Committee permitted if it did not in fact demand in Kirov an additional 400 executions and one month later 500 more sentences of death and 1,500 of imprisonment.102 Presumably, as in other regions, local authorities implemented the directive and exceeded the numbers set. Hundreds of members of Kirov’s clergy were summarily shot in 1937 and 1938.103 In 1937 the security police created one of the country’s major concentration camps in the northern part of
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the Kirov region. By June 1941, it contained almost 20,000 inmates.104 A survey by Elena Nikolaevna Chudinovskikh and Vladimir Sergeevich Zharavin, archivists at the State Archive for the Social and Political History of the Kirov Region, found that of the twenty-eight individuals who served as heads either of the regional soviet or party committee in Viatka and Kirov from 1918 to 1938, seventeen were arrested as enemies of the people. Of that seventeen, twelve were shot, often on the very day of their sentencing, and three died in prison or a concentration camp. And yet, as we have just seen, Kirov’s leading educational administrators avoided the worst of fates. I know of no official in Kirov’s regional and municipal departments of education or in the Schools Department of the party’s regional committee who did not survive his or her imprisonment and who had not returned to Kirov by the end of 1940. I have no explanation for this remarkable survival rate. Perhaps someone in the local security police protected those arrested, making certain that they were not transported to the distant gulag and that they were reasonably well treated while in confinement.105 Earlier, Reshetov had taken a chance to help his friend, Ognev. Perhaps now other people in Kirov took similar chances to protect Reshetov, Ognev, Takhteev, and other educational personnel in their time of dire need. As discussed in this book’s introduction, the Viatka region had a rich history of going its own way. That tradition at least for educators may have continued into the period of Stalin’s terror. Be that as it may, a degeneration of the symbiosis of errors, the subject of the next chapter, contributed to the return of those already confined and the decision not to arrest many others, Kizei and Kniazheva among them, charged with serious political offences.
NOTES 1. Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (New York: Free Press, 1994). Some scholars believe the Great Terror to be the result of Stalin’s obsession with spies and a potential fifth column and the threat of war. See David Shearer, “Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD during the 1930s,” in Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, ed. Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 86–117, and Hiroaki Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 53, no. 1: 86–101. 2. On negative information as a factor: Moshe Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State,” in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 65, and James R. Harris, The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 148, 167, 172. On decimation
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of municipal and regional administrations: Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 288–289; Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s–1990s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 220–223; James R. Harris, The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 188–189; and Nicholas Werth, “A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union,” in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, ed. Stephane Courtois (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 193–194 (on Orenburg province). For the terror waged against economic agencies and trade unions, see essays by Oleg Khlevniuk and Junbae Joe in Stalin’s Terror Revisited, ed. Melanie Iliĉ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 38–89. 3. For school no. 3, 6, 10, and 8: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’noPoliticheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1656, op. 2, d. 11, ll. 147–148. 264–265, ll. 297–297 ob., ll. 319–319 ob. 4. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 64, 76. 5. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 13, l. 129. 6. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 13, ll. 132–137. 7. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 693–705, quote on l. 705. 8. For Liusov: GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 689–691; for Zakharov, ll. 596, 709. 9. See Komsomol’skoe plemia’s coverage on March 11, 12, 14, 16, and 18. Kirovskaia pravda also avoided the matter in its issues of March 11, 12, 14, and 17. 10. The resolutions are in Komsomol’skoe plemia, March 27, 1936, 1. For meetings of Komsomol district committees in March and April: GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 86, l. 25; d. 70, ll. 61–63; d. 71, ll. 56–59; d. 75, ll. 76–79; and d. 77, ll. 27–28. 11. GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 124, ll. 84-92. 12. Information on brigades in GASPI KO, f. 1955, op. 1, d. 126, ll. 1–3, 16–17, 33–33 ob. 13. J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 99, 206. 14. Hiroaki Kuromiya’s examination of the terror regards it primarily as a “preemptive strike to prepare for war”: Hiroaki Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 3. Jörg Baberowski points to a number of factors including ideology and a context of violence in Russian peasant culture, but he emphasizes over and again the person and personality of Stalin in bringing about the terror: Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2003). 15. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: Obshcheobrazovatel’naia shkola. Sbornik dokumentov, 1917–1973 g.g. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), 459. 16. For acknowledgment of the role of politics, see comments by the Commissar of Education, Bubnov, in 1936 in Narkompros’s newspaper, Za Kommunisticheskoe Prosveshchenie, no. 107, August 6, 1936, 4, and an article in Uchitel’skaia Gazeta [Teachers Gazette, a publication of Narkompros], May 13, 1938, 12.
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17. E. Thomas Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 242. 18. See the report prepared for the Schools Department: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 258, l. 42. 19. GAKO, f. R-1828, op. 2, d. 17, l. 67, and d. 21, l. 1, and f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 72, ll. 75–75 ob. 20. On social origins: GAKO, f. R-1828, op. 2, d. 5, ll. 9, 15 ob. On the arrest of a spouse: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 72, ll. 73–74. For more firings of teachers for political reasons: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 46, l. 62; f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 18, l. 52, and d. 17, l. 4. 21. Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2002), 94. On the terror waged against people with apparent connections with things “German,” see Kuromiya, Voices of the Dead, 141–154. 22. On Hölz’s controversial behavior when in the USSR until his death in 1933, see Aleksandr Vatlin, “Nemetskii Pugachev,” Rodina, no. 2 (February 2006), 42–49. 23. See indications of arrest in the Book of Directives of the Stalin district department of education, for November 19, 1937, and April 4 and May 11, 1938: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 2, d. 2. As noted in chapter 2, the school’s reports, accentuating as usual the positive, made nary a mention of the problem. 24. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 189, l. 57 ob. 25. GASPI KO, f. 1689, op. 1, d. 45, l. 15; GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 17, l. 86; and GASPI KO, f. 677, op. 1, d. 174, l. 117. 26. See sessions of the Zhdanov district’s party cell in GASPI KO, f. 1289, op. 1, d. 2, l. 3 and op. 1, d. 4, l. 66; and of the cells of the Urzhum and Ziuzdino departments, GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 1, l. 14 and f. 632, op. 1, d. 147, l. 12. 27. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 17, ll. 73, 80. James Harris has observed that mutual recriminations and scapegoating in the Sverdlovsk region created “a tinderbox of tensions to which the centre set a spark in the summer of 1936” with the discovery of a purported Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc of opposition. A wave of denunciations followed that broke up regional cliques. James Harris, “Dual Subordination? The Political Police and the Party in the Urals Region, 1918–1953,” Cahiers du Monde russe 42, no. 2–4 (April–December 2001): 440. 28. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 205, l. 139. Liusov objected to a statement in Shestakov’s A Short History of the USSR that Trotsky had by his braggadocio (khvastlivyi boltlivost’) inadvertently told the party’s enemies of plans for the October 1917 insurrection. Liusov thought Trotsky’s role was far more intentional and treasonous than that. 29. GASPI KO, f. 706, op. 1, d. 149, ll. 122, 132–133. 30. GASPI KO, f. 1257, op. 1, d. 36, l. 270. The commission chastised Pizhanka’s party committee for not providing Chistiakov and his family with better accommodations. It was silent regarding Chistiakov’s aggressive behavior toward teachers. 31. Testimony by Marchukov’s colleagues at meetings of the department of education’s party organization of February 16, 1936, in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 20, l. 1; November 14, 1936, in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, l. 3; October 4, 1937, in
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GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 78; December 4, 1937, GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 110, 114, 118, 120; and a four-page double-spaced memorandum of December 30, 1936, by Vladimir Dmitrievich Mazurov, head of the regional party committee’s Schools Department, to the secretary of the regional party committee, in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, ll. 8, 10–11. Also a report to the regional party committee in early 1936 in GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 2, d. 64, l. 5. 32. Meeting of the department’s party organization, November 14, 1936, in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, l. 3. 33. See Marchukov’s abrupt criticism on January 4 and February 22, 1937, of Kulakova and Kniazheva, head and deputy head, respectively, of the department’s Elementary Schools Sector, and on February 22, 1937, of Sergei Mikhailovich Lobastov and Orlov, head and deputy head of the department’s Secondary Schools Sector, respectively, in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 19, 81. 34. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 316, l. 106. 35. Meetings of the department’s party organization of February 16, 1936, GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 20, l. 6; November 16, 1936, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, ll. 5–7; February 21, 1937, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 10; and March 1, 1937, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 24. See also Mazurov’s memorandum, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, ll. 10–11, and materials gathered in 1937 by the Schools Department of the regional party committee, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 219, l. 215. 36. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 222, ll. 5, 7. 37. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 40, l. 48. 38. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 174. In the Russian Republic in 1936 the percentage of all schoolchildren enrolled in special programs declined from 3.3 to 1.1 percent: F. A. Fradkin, Pedagogika i Psikhologiia (Moscow: Znanie, 1992), 68. 39. See Kornev’s annual report for the 1933–1934 academic year, GAKO, f. R1864, op. 2, d. 127, l. 3. 40. See the school’s report for the 1936–1937 academic year in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 18, ll. 7 ob.–8 ob., 34. 41. Information on Marchukov’s behavior comes from three sources: a letter by Chudakova to the head of the Stalin district’s department of education, February 6, 1938, in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 32–32 ob., and reports by inspectors for the Group of Party-Soviet Control for the Kirov region in GASPI KO, f. 1256, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 177–182 (filed in early September 1936) and d. 5, ll. 71–74 (filed in late June or early July 1937). Figures on the number of pupils provided by Chudakova and the reports conflict; in such cases I have relied on the report filed in mid-1937 and accompanying lists of pupils on ll. 112–125. 42. GAKO, f. R-2019, op. 19, d. 26, ll. 1–4. 43. See the report filed by the Group’s inspector in mid-1937 in GASPI KO, f. 1256, op. 1, d. 5, l. 73. The Group had been organized in 1936 to check on the implementation of the most important decisions of the party and state. 44. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 10. 45. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, l. 9. 46. Marchukov’s memoranda to the committee in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 581, l. 100, and d. 32, l. 25.
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47. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 95–96. 48. GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 60, l. 5 ob. 49. See, for example, such signals in 1937 from Kiknur district, located at the region’s western edge, 210 km. from Kirov, and from Bogorodskoe district, 105 km. south of Kirov, in GASPI KO, f. 677, op. 1, d. 171, l. 29, and f. 1679, op. 9, d. 4, l. 42. 50. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 18, ll. 16–18, and R-2333, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 82, 84. 51. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 18, l. 43. 52. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 18, ll. 36, 38. Marchukov asked security organs to “take measures.” 53. The Group’s investigation in mid-1936 recommended consideration of a reprimand; a subsequent version of the report issued a reprimand. Compare items in GASPI KO, f. 1256, op. 1, d. 4, l. 74, and f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 270. The regional party committee drafted a resolution reprimanding Marchukov, although it never officially approved and released it. See the draft in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 202–203. 54. See Liusov’s comments in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, ll. 136, 141. 55. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 206, l. 144. 56. The report had been prepared earlier by Komsomol’s Pioneers Department. See GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 25, ll. 1–17. 57. Kirovskaia pravda, November 29, 1937, 3, and Komsomol’skoe plemia, November 29, 1937, 4. 58. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 210, l. 248. 59. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 37, ll. 36–36 ob. 60. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 37, l. 30. 61. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 23, l. 353. 62. On Suvorov’s appointment, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 45, l. 89 ob.; for Suvorov’s explanation, see his autobiographical sketch written in 1935 in GASPI KO, f. 86, op. 1, d. 11, l. 28. 63. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 2, d. 29, l. 160. 64. See a summary of Suvorov’s letter in Narkompros’s response: GAKO, f. R1864, op. l/s, d. 146, ll. 37–37 ob. 65. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 111. 66. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 179, l. 89. 67. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 401, ll. 28–30 ob. 68. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 401, ll. 32–32 ob. 69. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 2, d. 53, l. 109. 70. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 45. On March 29 the Regional Department of Education confirmed the firings: l. 45. 71. GASPI KO, f. 1445, op. 1, d. 71, l. 18 ob. 72. Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2001), 4:66, 146. They were charged with violation of paragraph 10 of Article 58 of the Russian Republic’s Criminal Code. 73. Testimony provided at a subsequent meeting on November 29 of the Komsomol’s unit, GASPI KO, f. 2765, op. 2, d. 10, ll. 319 ob.–321. 74. For the reprimand on October 15, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 2765, op. 2, d. 10, l. 317. Kalinina was probably the daughter of Nikolai Vasil’evich Kalinin, recently
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purged from the party and on November 30, 1937, removed by the regional party committee’s Bureau as head of the State Bank’s Regional Office: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 37, l. 40. 75. GASPI KO, f. 2765, op. 2, d. 10, ll. 319 ob.–321, Luchinin’s outburst on ll. 320–320 ob. 76. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 1, d. 219, ll. 90–92. The report is undated. 77. GASPI KO, f. 1289, op. 1, d. 4, l. 49. As a number of articles in Kirovskaia pravda that month made clear, Kornev’s district was not the only one experiencing the problem. 78. GASPI KO, f. 1289, op. 1, d. 4, l. 61 ob. 79. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 125, l. 5. Neither Zefirov’s nor Chepurnykh’s criticism was printed in Kirovskaia pravda. 80. This information is from the session of the Bureau of the Zhdanov district’s party committee, January 19, 1938: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 126, ll. 21–22. 81. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 4, l. 51. Chepurnykh was also criticized for compelling a teacher, Novoselov, to paint a building. Following the German invasion, Chepurnykh was mobilized into a special detachment of the NKVD and disappeared without a trace during the war in May 1942: Kniga pamiati. Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, Kirovskaia oblast’, comp. V. A. Nikonov (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 1995), 15:752. 82. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 33, l. 191. 83. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 456, ll. 166–180, and GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 63, l. 2. 84. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 174, l. 137. 85. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 31, l. 178. 86. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 236, l. 66. 87. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 238, l. 110 ob., and d. 241, l. 272. By 1944, if not earlier, Kornev had become a candidate member of the party: see information on Kornev in GAKO, f. R-2169, op. 1, d. 930, l. 1. 88. Kniga pamiati zhertv, 276. Vladimir Iulevich Mundigo, a teacher of German at Kirov’s Pedagogical Institute, was also shot. 89. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, l. 23 ob. 90. Kniga pamiati zhertv, 137. 91. GAKO, f. 1864, op. l/s, d. 184, l. 4 ob. The school was located in the city’s Molotov district. 92. On appointment in 1939: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 175, l. 114. On appointment as director in 1941, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 237, l. 65. On candidate status, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 258, l. 42. On appointment to Womens School No. 28, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 280, ll. 67–68 ob. 93. GASPI KO, f. 1257, op. 1, d. 85, l. 100. 94. For the promise: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 58, l. 520. For the appointment, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, ll. 43, 78 ob., 79, 122, and d. 217, l. 107. On November 20, Ognev as the school’s director reported to the plenary session of the Zhdanov party district committee: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 57, l. 78. 95. For the Bureau’s decision: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 6, d. 30, l. 128; for the Party Collegium’s, GASPI KO, f. 1257, op. 1, d. 85, l. 40.
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96. On arrest, release, and subsequent career in the Gorky region: Iu. G. Karacharov, Vse ravno budu zhit’. Dokumental’nyi rasskaz o zhertvakh stalinskikh repressii v Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Volgo-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1990), 153. On readmission: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 21, d. 33, l. 41. 97. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 435, ll. 1–2, and f. 1290, op. 2, d. 254, l. 34. 98. On Takhteev’s health, see his autobiographical account of October 5, 1937: GASPI KO, f. 1299, op. 17, d. 4785, l. 8. He was incarcerated in May 1938 in a prison in Kirov: GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 10, d. 1736, l. 1 ob. 99. GAKO, f. R-1290, op. 2, d. 259, l. 4, and GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 126, l. 193. 100. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, ll. 22–22 ob. 101. In the meantime, on January 13, 1940, charges were dropped against her husband, Lozovskii. At Stoliar’s hearing before the Bureau of the Regional Department of education’s party organization, February 5, 1940, Stoliar denied any contact with her cousin, who probably unbeknownst to her had been shot on July 28, 1938. Her husband was not an issue. See GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 95, l. 3. 102. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii, f. 89, op. 73, d. 75, l. 98 and d. 107, l. 136; The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939, ed. J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 475–478; Mark Iunge and Rol’f Binner, Kak Terror Stal “Bol’shim”: Sekretnyi prikaz No. 00447 i tekhnologiia ego ispolneniia (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003), 129. 103. See a collection of biographies of clergy in Aleksii Sukhikh, Vspomnim poimennoi, vol. 4 and 5 (Kirov: OAO “Kirovskii zavod” “Maiak”, 2005). For a recent but not particularly useful treatment of the terror in Kirov province, see V. I. Bakulin, “Kadrovye chistki 1933–1938 godov v Kirovskoi oblasti,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (January–February 2006), 148–153. 104. Viktor Berdinskii, Viatlag (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 1998), 11, 25. In 1938 about half of the camp’s inmates had been convicted for counterrevolutionary crimes (violation of paragraph 10 of Article 58 of the Russian Republic’s 1934 Criminal Code) (Berdinskii, 14). Oleg Khlevniuk has found that in 1939 the Viatka camp had one of the higher death rates (4.82 percent) among all such camps: Oleg Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, trans. Vadim A. Staklo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 212. In 1941, 77 percent of the heads of district departments of education in the Kirov region had been appointed in 1938 or thereafter. However, such a high turnover was not abnormal. Such officials had rarely served for long periods of time in the years preceding the terror. In March 1935, 89 percent of the heads of these departments had a tenure in the post of three years or less, 70 percent with two or less. On 1935, GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 582, ll. 26–29; on 1941, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, ll. 24–27 ob. 105. Kirov’s educational officials were most fortunate. According to Hiroaki Kuromiya, nationally death sentences accounted for 44.66 and 59.29 percent respectively of all those convicted of political crimes in 1937 and 1938: Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror,” 88. Michael Ellman has noted that Stalin initiated
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most if not all thirty-five provincial show trials in 1937 and dictated the sentences usually of death: Michael Ellman, “The Soviet 1937 Provincial Show Trials: Carnival or Terror?” Europe-Asia Studies 53, no. 8 (2001): 1221–1233. However, I know of no such show trial in Kirov. Kang-Bohr found that in the Voronezh region the Department of Agriculture of the regional party committee was decimated in 1937 and about one-third of the secretaries of district party committees were arrested, most of whom were shot or died in confinement: Youngok Kang-Bohr, Stalinismus im der ländlichen Provinz: Das Gebiet Voronež, 1934–1941 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006), 135, 268–281.
8 Degeneration of the Symbiosis of Errors, 1938–1941
In 1938 Bolshevik officials came to regard the personal, professional, and political as existing free of any symbiotic relationship. No single moment marked the origin or end of the symbiosis’s decline. To be sure, on January 19, 1938, the Central Committee condemned excessive purging and a “formalbureaucratic attitude” toward the appeals of those purged. It also sharply criticized the wanton dismissal from work of many nonparty people including teachers.1 Yet the symbiosis’s degeneration had already begun in a process, much like that of any biological organism, occurring over time and not without attempts at recovery.
UPON FURTHER REVIEW While attempts to punish teachers and school administrators for a symbiosis of errors continued throughout 1938, their number and impact diminished significantly. Teachers previously fired successfully sought their reinstatement by denying wrongdoing in at least one of the realms heretofore symbiotically linked. Suvorov who in early 1937 perceptively distinguished between his personal and professional errors on the one hand and alleged political apostasy on the other, landed safely enough that fall teaching history at Kirov’s Senior Secondary School No. 12.2 His good fortune following his dismissal at School No. 3 was admittedly due less to any early degeneration of the symbiosis of errors with which he had been charged than, as mentioned earlier, to his wife’s position at the helm of the local department of education where his new school was located.
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The symbiosis’s degeneration, however, permitted Suvorov’s subsequent success. Never officially declared innocent of any of the charges brought against him, but their symbiotic relationship now rendered irrelevant, in January 1939 the Municipal Department of Education honored Suvorov as one of the city’s twenty-six best teachers.3 Suvorov’s colleague, Shustova, fired in 1937 as deputy director of School No. 3 and demoted to teaching mathematics in the junior grades at another school in Kirov, was also among that select group.4 Suvorov and Shustova were not alone in benefiting from the symbiosis’s decline, a process well under way before their recognition as outstanding instructors. In January and February 1938, Marchukov’s successor at the Regiona Department of Education, Liusov, reviewed numerous appeals of teachers recently dismissed from their positions.5 Liusov had just helped hand Marchukov over to the security organs for an alleged symbiosis of errors. Now only months later, he refused to presume an organic relationship among personal, professional, and political errors and sought the fundamental reason, as best he could determine, for a teacher’s dismissal and then made his ruling. Innocence or guilt was not at issue. Liusov assumed every teacher fired was guilty of some offense, but he was now disposed to replace dismissal with a reprimand if he judged the teacher culpable chiefly of personal or professional as opposed to political misconduct. When he determined that teachers were primarily guilty of drunkenness, Liusov restored them to their former post or appointed them to another school with a reprimand and a warning to avoid such conduct in the future.6 He ruled in similar fashion in cases where teachers had been removed chiefly, in his opinion, for inadequate preparation and instruction or for harsh treatment of pupils short of the use of corporal punishment.7 On the other hand, Liusov rejected most appeals from teachers who had been fired as politically untrustworthy elements.8 The symbiosis’s degeneration contributed to the readmission of teachers and non-teachers alike who had previously been expelled from the Young Communist League. From January 1 to July 15, 1938, the League’s regional committee reviewed 151 appeals. Like Liusov when dealing with teachers, the committee did not seek to exculpate anyone but rather restored to full Komsomol membership those individuals who it determined had not committed grievous political errors. The committee approved thirty-two of fifty-eight appeals of former members purged for morally dissolute (moral’no-razlozhivshiesia) behavior and fifty-five of sixty-three for mere contact with class enemies. It endorsed only eleven of thirty requests from people it judged to have been purged primarily as hostile or untrustworthy political elements.9
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SUICIDE RECONSIDERED In 1938 interest and discourse about pupils’ suicide changed. Administrative organs responsible for schools in Kirov continued to monitor the phenomenon and, as before, blamed poor instruction and lack of political vigilance in school as well as drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, smoking, card playing, and hooliganism in school and community.10 Yet the subject now elicited far less interest and certainly not the obsessive concern of prior years. What remained of the discourse on suicide now focused not on the previous symbiosis of errors but rather on personal factors. Previously in 1935, as we have seen, regional then district authorities overrode an initial emphasis on poor conduct and grades when explaining Mart’ianov’s suicide. From 1938 to 1941 the Schools Department, the regional prosecutor’s office, and local party organs acknowledged the importance of emotional distress produced by such poor, even average, academic performance.11 Rather than dismiss the evidence, authorities now referred to reports by teachers and fellow pupils of a suicide’s depression over grades, a suicide note mentioning academic difficulties, and parents’ testimony that their child had been distraught over a requirement to retake the spring promotion examinations in the fall.12
STRICTLY PERSONAL The degeneration of the symbiosis also meant that sex was no longer politics. As we have seen, well in advance of the Central Committee’s decree in midJanuary 1938, Kizei, Kniazheva, and Chudakova had refused to play along and to read the script handed to them. Kizei insisted that her relationship with Reshetov had been a brief one and had not involved political or professional wrongdoing; Kniazheva argued that a kiss was just a kiss and nothing more. Chudakova flatly denied any intimate relationship with either Reshetov or Marchukov and angrily condemned the accusations as an affront to her personal dignity. In so doing, they separated professional from personal life and political from sexual activity. In early 1938 their detractors began to do so as well. While still rejecting denials of improper personal behavior, the party, although not without resistance within its ranks, now recognized sin, real or imagined, as a personal and nonpolitical matter. In this new scenario, whether Kizei, Kniazheva, Chudakova, and others had slept with Marchukov or with Reshetov or with anyone else was largely irrelevant in an official assessment of their political character and professional worth.13 In Chudakova’s case, an altered appraisal of her behavior began at the pedagogical conference where colleagues and representatives of the local
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party committee had so harshly criticized her. There Konchevskaia, the head of the Stalin district department of education, awaited her turn. When she spoke, she ignored the charges of sexual misconduct hurled at Chudakova and instead criticized the school’s teachers for their poor instruction.14 A sympathetic Konchevskaia then sought to help Chudakova. Twice in early 1938 on Konchevskaia’s suggestion, Chudakova requested relief from her onerous administrative duties at School No. 11 and an assignment somewhere in her specialty working with special children or a post teaching Russian language and literature.15 On April 15, Konchevskaia obliged by reassigning Chudakova to teach language and literature at School No. 11 where Chudakova returned that fall. Soon thereafter she became director of a restored school for special children.16 Although Kizei and Kniazheva were purged from the party, neither was arrested in 1938 and both successfully sought readmission into the party’s ranks. When on March 28, Kizei appealed in writing her purge to the party’s municipal committee, she asked it to distinguish between political and moral wrongdoing. She had had a brief affair with Reshetov, but it was, she hastened to add, a personal not a political relationship. “My [sexual] contact,” she insisted, “was only personal and not political” (no sviaz’ byla tol’ko bytovaia).17 Not everyone yet was prepared to agree. The party’s municipal committee commissioned an investigation. The report that followed was uncompromising. It repeated by rote the familiar charges and the presumed association of the personal and moral with the professional and political. Kizei had refused to follow the party’s guidance at work and assigned class-alien elements to schools. As a natural corollary, she had maintained a “sexual relationship” (bytovoe otnoshenie) with Reshetov, an enemy of the people.18 However, on April 5, 1938, the Bureau of the party’s municipal party committee accepted the report’s facts regarding Kizei’s conduct but not its conclusions. It acknowledged Kizei’s “sexual contact” (bytovaia sviaz’) with Reshetov but denied the symbiosis of which the charge had been a part. It refused to equate personal indiscretions with political error and therefore was free to dismiss charges of her alleged professional incompetence and counterrevolutionary activity. The Bureau restored her status as a candidate party member by reducing her purge to a reprimand for lack of party vigilance.19 Despite the vote to purge Kniazheva and her dismissal from the Regional Department of Education, she returned to the department on January 31 as a consultant for Russian language.20 Kniazheva appealed her purge to the Zhdanov district’s party committee, which responded on February 13, 1938. While it continued to believe that Kniazheva had maintained “sexual contact” (bytovaia sviaz’) with Marchukov, the affair had now lost its political significance. The committee recommended a reduction of her purge to a repri-
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mand.21 At the session of the department of education’s party organization of April 17, 1938, Balalaev arrived with the Bureau’s report admitting its error in purging Kizei and Kniazheva.22 There Mikhail Grigor’evich Chekalkin, head of the regional department’s Schools Sector, while making no effort to deny Kniazheva’s relationship with Marchukov, lambasted the Bureau for its improper treatment of her and others at the department.23 Mariia Terent’evna Kulakova, head of the department’s Elementary Schools Sector, put it bluntly: “Sexual contact (bytovaia sviaz’) is not political.” She censured Balalaev for his past belief to the contrary.24 Subsequently, both Kniazheva and Kizei enjoyed successful careers. By October 1938, Kniazheva had been promoted first to deputy head then to the head of the regional department’s Schools Sector.25 In 1939 Kniazheva was transferred to the faculty at the Institute for Teachers In-Service Training and in June 1941 appointed as head of the Molotov district department of education.26 Kizei continued to teach geography at School No. 7 and in January 1939 the city honored her as one of its twenty-six best teachers. 27 A few months later, on April 16, 1939, the Regional Department of Education’s party organization annulled its reprimand of Kniazheva,28 and on March 16, 1940, the party’s municipal party committee similarly cleared Kizei’s record.29 By 1941, Kizei had become a full member of the Communist Party. In 1943, she served as her school’s deputy director and the following year director of Womens School No. 10.30 The rediscovery of personal sin free of any association with professional or political wrongdoing contributed as well to Reshetov’s good fortune. Cleared of charges of counterrevolutionary activity in late 1939 and the accusations of sexual misconduct rendered irrelevant, Reshetov returned to Kirov early the following year. That fall he became a teacher of history and director of Kirov’s Secondary School No. 7 where once again Kizei became his subordinate but now without fanfare.31 On June 17, 1941, the Regional Department of Education appointed Reshetov as head of its Schools Sector. Marchukov benefited as well. On January 11, 1940, the Military Collegium of the USSR’s Supreme Court annulled his sentence of ten years’ imprisonment and freed him.32 Fifteen days later, Marchukov petitioned an open meeting of the Regional Department of Education’s party organization to restore his party membership. He felt he had a good case: the Supreme Court had cleared him of anti-Soviet activity, he could no longer be considered as an enemy of the people, his past sexual exploits, real or imagined, were no longer at issue. He was right but not on all counts. At the meeting, no one bothered to raise the charge of womanizing. Nevertheless, Marchukov had too many personal liabilities to succeed at first. In addition to fourteen full and two candidate party members, nine others attended this session. Former colleagues, they
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were angry and unforgiving and refused his request because of his past rude behavior toward them.33 However, two weeks later, the party’s regional committee annulled Marchukov’s earlier purge and restored him to the party’s ranks.34 Marchukov then departed for Moscow where he served as the deputy head of Narkompros’s Administration for Higher Educational Institutions. He returned to Kirov in mid-1941 with Narkompros’s evacuation from Moscow and remained in the city until the commissariat’s return to the capital in mid1942.35
INDULGING BAD BEHAVIOR Two other cases involving leading officials at the Regional Department of Education illustrate well the symbiosis’s degeneration. In the fall of 1939, the department’s head, Nikolai Alekseevich Rodionov, withstood charges of sexual misconduct with his personal secretary, A. A. Odegova. Born in 1906 into a family of peasants, Rodionov graduated from Leningrad’s Herzen Pedagogical Institute in 1931 and remained in that city as a teacher, school director, and educational administrator until dispatched in September 1938 to his new position in Kirov. The assignment was regarded as a temporary one to bring stability to a department that had undergone four heads in less than a year.36 Rodionov kept his apartment in Leningrad and left his wife there. On September 1, 1939, the Bureau of the regional department’s party organization took up the allegedly improper relationship between Rodionov and Odegova. At work, she addressed him with the familiar form in Russian for “you” (ty) and for good reason, it was said. On several, if not more, occasions, Rodionov had ordered the department’s chauffeur to drive her to the train station and to pick her up on her return. At least once Rodionov had accompanied her to the station and in another instance came to take her home where he stayed several hours. She had visited his place more than once for heavy drinking and, implicitly, sex. Moreover, Rodionov had maintained a sexual relationship with unspecified other women.37 Rodionov refused to respond to the charges in writing, insisting instead on his personal appearance before the Bureau. He had never gotten drunk with Odegova, never visited her apartment or had sex with her or anyone else in Kirov. The Bureau accepted his explanation and in a misogynistic twist targeted Odegova instead. As Rodionov’s subordinate, implicitly his female junior, she should never have addressed him with the familiar “you” (ty). Moreover, when Rodionov had recently denied her permission to travel to Moscow, she had thrown a hysterical fit in full view of coworkers.38 The Bureau instructed Rodionov, the boss and implicitly the rational male, to create
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conditions at work that would preclude any such outburst by a subordinate, the emotional female.39 One month later, Rodionov returned to Leningrad presumably pleased to leave the provinces and his critics behind. The second case involved Mikhail Vasil’evich Sidorov, fired on June 17, 1941, by Rodionov’s successor, Dmitrii Vasil’evich Vaneev. Sidorov had lasted longer in the post than might have been expected given the multiple charges brought against him over the past year. A disconnect of real or alleged “personal sin” from professional and political worth had kept him on the job. Sidorov was another one of those educational administrators with impeccable credentials. Born into a peasant family, he had worked for a time on a plot of land in the 1920s before gaining entry to Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute. Following his graduation in 1935, he taught physics and served as director of a secondary school in Svecha, 130 km. west of Kirov. Rapid promotion into higher administrative posts followed, one on the heels of the other. In March 1938 Sidorov became head of Svecha’s department of education, then that summer director of the Iaransk Pedagogical College, and in August 1939 head of the Regional Department of Education’s Schools Sector.40 Sidorov was not long on the job when on February 5, 1940, members of the department’s party organization accused him of a violation of communist morality (kommunisticheskaia moral’). Sidorov and eight others, most of whom worked at the department, had attended a party at a coworker’s apartment where Sidorov got drunk and passed out. One of his subordinates at the Schools Sector, the inspector of non-Russian schools, Stepan Nikitich Topaev, recipient of the Red Banner of Labor in April 1939, reported that Sidorov had remained for the night along with one of the department’s female inspectors, Zubareva, conduct that “has given grounds for talk.” Sidorov acknowledged that he had gotten drunk and slept over but denied any physical intimacy with Zubareva. He agreed to improve his behavior.41 No one equated Sidorov’s personal misconduct with professional incompetence or political apostasy. Upon Vaneev’s recommendation, the meeting stopped short even of reprimanding Sidorov while condemning group drinking. It suggested that the department and the union local preempt such parties by arranging cultural events for employees.42 During the remainder of the year Sidorov experienced problems on the job but criticism of his performance remained isolated from consideration of his misconduct after work. He was so conspicuously behind in the obligatory home study of the Short Course that he was told in April 1940 that he would have to spend three nights a week at the department catching up.43 Moreover, his Schools Sector failed in the performance of its two chief tasks: the inspection of the region’s schools and the handling of letters of complaint.
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In March 1940 Narkompros chastised the Regional Department of Education because Sidorov had provided Moscow with preciously little information about the region’s schools.44 When confronted with similar criticism from his colleagues, Sidorov pointed out that his Sector had few inspectors to examine schools or even to correspond properly with their colleagues employed by district departments of education. He had asked teachers to volunteer. A number had agreed to do so, but few of them had submitted their reports (if they had bothered to visit schools in the first place).45 Nor did Sidorov’s Schools Sector possess the staff to handle the volume of complaints from teachers. Yet it seems to have been especially negligent in performing this task for on October 4, 1940, the Bureau of the department’s party organization put Sidorov on notice for the Sector’s loss of many complaints before they could be registered.46 At year’s end Sidorov’s personal conduct became more scandalous. A party at his apartment on December 15 deteriorated into a raucous drunken brawl. Awakened by shouting and the breaking of dishes, doors, and windows, Sidorov’s colleagues, his neighbors, vented their anger on the very next day, December 16, at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Bureau of the department’s party organization. According to Topaev, Sidorov had physically abused his, Sidorov’s, wife who fled next door to seek Topaev’s help. It was not the first time, Topaev added, that she had sought his help after a beating at the hands of her husband.47 Sidorov’s behavior also dominated discussion two weeks later at a session of the entire membership of the department’s party organization.48 Yet no one linked Sidorov’s personal misbehavior with his performance at work or with any political error including his tardy reading of the Short Course. Sidorov had only therefore to account for his conduct on the 15th. Much like his response in February, he admitted that he had gotten drunk and accepted responsibility for the brawl that followed. His behavior resulted from frustrations at work and from his wife’s frequent absence at home (although she was conspicuously present the night of December 15). He denied that he was an alcoholic and that he had ever physically abused his wife.49 Vaneev and his deputy, Chekalkin, recommended, and on December 16 the Bureau agreed, to issue Sidorov a stern reprimand and called for his removal from his post at the department and exile to a teaching position in a rural school. On December 31, the party organization approved.50 However, a higher organ, the Zhdanov district party committee, rejected the recommendation. Sidorov remained at the regional department and participated in deliberations of its party cell’s Bureau. Violations of communist morality, even if they involved drunken and rowdy behavior and possible wifebeating, no longer necessarily imperiled an official’s career. Personal sin was
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not political heresy; one did not directly lead to or involve the other. Even disturbing the sleep of one’s colleagues was now more of a “private” than a “public” affair.51 Sidorov even staged a recovery of sorts by a display of toughness. In February, he traveled to his old school in Svecha and upon his return to Kirov reported to the party cell’s Bureau that he had found there uncaring teachers, incompetent administrators, and ignorant pupils.52 In April Sidorov sallied forth to a school in Arbazh district where he officiously informed the director of the local secondary school that heretofore the director had been only and inappropriately “philosophical” about getting all eligible children enrolled in school. Sidorov expected nothing less than perfection.53 Not Sidorov’s personal life but egregious errors on the job proved his undoing. Since their introduction throughout the Russian Republic in 1933, year-end promotion examinations had never gone smoothly. Sometimes questions failed to correspond with syllabi and textbooks; others proved too hard or too easy. Out of fright knowledgeable children performed poorly. According to a nasty expose, “Three Questions for the Regional Department of Education,” published in Kirovskaia pravda, June 1, 1941, the examinations had gone particularly badly in Kirov that spring.54 Some schools did not conduct the examination at all because the regional department had failed to send the tests out and at others the envelopes arrived unsealed. More than the usual number of teachers found questions too difficult for the best of their pupils. Some of them stumped even the teachers. Moreover, because the regional department had kept the tests on an open shelf and not in a safe, someone released their content and pupils in the region learned of the subject of fourth-grade dictation; the themes for composition in grades seven and ten, and exercises on the written exam for tenth grade algebra. Kirovskaia pravda wanted to know who was guilty (1) for allowing the exams’ contents to be known beforehand; (2) for preparing unfair questions; and (3) for the disruption of the entire process. The newspaper had written the script; it now needed a name. Two days later, on June 3, the Bureau of the department’s party organization obliged with Sidorov. Unlike Sidorov’s personal or political problems, this particular professional failure brought his downfall. Improper implementation of spring promotion examinations concerned too many people—pupils, parents, teachers, and administrators—to go unpunished. The Bureau’s resolutions confirmed the newspaper’s findings and charged Sidorov and his sector with negligence and carelessness (nebrezhnost’ i khalatnost’).55 Two weeks later, on June 17, citing the recent debacle with promotion examinations but without reference to any personal or political faults, Vaneev fired Sidorov, replacing him with the former enemy of the people, Reshetov.56
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CONCLUSION Chudakova, Kizei, and Kniazheva astutely recognized the symbiosis of errors with which they were charged and responded by isolating accusations of personal misconduct, whatever the truth of their behavior, from what they insisted were false denunciations of professional and political wrongdoing. Thanks in part to their efforts, the symbiosis began to degenerate in 1938 and little of it remained by 1941. To be sure, the personal life of teachers and officials remained, as before, proper items for review by party organs and was therefore no less “public.” However, improper behavior lost much of its former significance in assessing a person’s professional and political reliability. The everyday became less dangerous and the accusatory language shifted accordingly. The “everyday,” bytovoe, was no longer used when charging officials with personal, including sexual, misconduct. Rather Sidorov was guilty of potentially less damaging “violation of communist morality” or conduct “giving grounds for talk.” Personal factors emerged as acceptable explanations for pupils’ suicides. Kirov’s officials now acknowledged that the New Soviet Person, whether sitting behind a school desk, standing in front of the classroom, or occupying an office in the educational bureaucracy, was less than perfect in his or her personal life and would remain so for the foreseeable future. The symbiosis’s degeneration emboldened officials, as we will see in chapter 10, to demand more so than ever before jurisdictional integrity for the institutions they represented. It also prompted teachers to insist as professionals on an adherence to the laws governing them and the schools they served. Many of my Russian friends respond skeptically to these conclusions. Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev they experienced a linkage of alleged personal misconduct with questions about their performance on the job and political loyalty. They understandably believe that an unbroken continuum united the Stalinist period with their own recent past. They are wrong. Change did occur in the late 1930s at least in Kirov. NOTES 1. For the decree, Pravda, January 19, 1938, 1–2. 2. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 179, l. 89. 3. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 324, l. 499 ob. 4. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 324, l. 499 ob. In May 1939 Shustova’s husband was released and that fall appointed director and teacher of history and geography at Kirov’s Senior Secondary School No. 6. See the handwritten response to Shustov’s
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request: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 175, l. 91. In the fall of 1940, Shustova became the deputy director of Senior Secondary School No. 16 and in the fall of 1943 its director when it became Womens Junior Secondary School No. 8: see appointments in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 237, l. 50, and GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 250, l. 42. 5. See an entire folder of such appeals: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, ll. 4–129. 6. For example: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, ll. 14, 28, 71, 129. 7. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, ll. 24, 31, 73, 83, 86, 87. 8. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, ll. 19, 87. 9. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1682, op. 1, d. 65, l. 21. I recognize that these figures are only for those individuals who appealed their cases. Many others may have felt it pointless to do so or could not do so because of their continuing confinement or death. 10. See explanations in August 1938 by the head of the Pupils and Students Departments of the Regional Komsomol Committee in GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 68, l. 72; in July 1939 in a report to the party’s Slobodskoi committee, GASPI KO, f. 988, op. 1, d. 305, l. 10; the conclusions reached by the Bureau of the party’s Omutninsk committee in April 1941 in GASPI KO, f. 1454, op. 2, d. 4, ll. 37–38, 50–51; and a report submitted in January 1940 by an investigator of Komsomol’s Regional Committee on a suicide in Kyrchany district in GASPI KO, f. 1682, op.1, d. 165, ll. 4–5. 11. By the Schools Department: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, l. 15; by the regional prosecutor, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, ll. 20–20 ob.; by the Urzhum district party committee, GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, l. 11; and by the Lal’sk district department of education’s party cell in 1940 in GASPI KO, f. 3069, op. 1, d. 2, l. 84 ob. 12. On average grades and a suicide note: GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 2, d. 260, ll. 20-20 ob.; on parents’ testimony, GASPI KO, f. 988, op. 1, d. 305, l. 10. 13. Cynthia Hooper has recently argued that women in particular contributed to an emphasis on the importance of the family and thereby to an increasing acceptance at the end of the 1930s of distinctions between private and political life and to a “depoliticization of everyday life.” Cynthia Hooper, “Terror of Intimacy: Family Politics in the 1930s Soviet Union,” in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, ed. Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 82. 14. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, l. 53. 15. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 31, 38 ob. 16. For Konchevskaia’s order: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 2, d. 2, l. 25 ob. See assignments for the 1938–1939 academic year in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 186, ll. 7, 39. For Chudakova as head of a school for challenged children in Kirov, see a list of teachers in mid-1941 in GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 128, l. 113a. 17. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, l. 6. 18. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, l. 3. 19. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, ll. 1–1 ob. 20. Appointment of Kniazheva in GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 71, l. 89. 21. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 126, l. 53.
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22. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 31. 23. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 18 ob. 24. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 23 ob. 25. She was signing documents as head in late 1938: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 74, ll. 167, 209, 237–238. 26. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 10, d. 737, l. 6, and op. 17, d. 1859, l. 12. 27. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 324, l. 499. 28. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 33, l. 10. 29. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 9, d. 171, l. 24, and for the district committee’s action, l. 21. 30. On party membership: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 237, l. 32. On 1943: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 238, l. 103 ob.; for 1944, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 248, l. 38a. 31. On Reshetov: Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2001), 4: 201–202. Teacher assignments for 1940–1941 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, l. 23. 32. Kniga pamiati zhertv, 153. 33. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 94, ll. 1 ob. –2. To be sure, someone mentioned Marchukov’s detention of Kizei at work after hours. Marchukov’s effort was regarded as inappropriate not because it represented womanizing but because it prevented Kizei from attending class at a local teachers college. The session refused to set aside a nasty official description of Marchukov’s personality and behavior. Several of my colleagues at GASPI KO believe Marchukov’s Jewish origins accounted for some of his past difficulties and for the problems he encountered in 1940. The archival record is, of course, silent regarding this issue. 34. See the announcement in Kirovskaia pravda, February 16, 1940, 4. 35. See a list of Narkompros’s party members working in Kirov in August 1941 in GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 3, d. 53, ll. 1–2. In June Narkompros appointed Marchukov to head a new agency commissioned to collect from individuals and institutions important literary and political works threatened with permanent loss by war or neglect: GAKO, f. R-1148, op. 2, d. 78, l. 138. I am indebted to Vladimir Sergeevich Zharavin for calling my attention to much of Marchukov’s later career. 36. They were: Marchukov and Liusov and two subsequent acting heads, Ivan Nikitich Balalaev and Zakhar Vasil’evich Agalakov. 37. Information provided by Rodionov’s accusers at a session of the Bureau of the Regional Department of Education’s party organization, September 1, 1939: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 33, ll. 37–39. The information on some of the charges is gleaned from Rodionov’s own response at this session. 38. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 33, l. 39. 39. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 33, l. 39. Later Odegova became an inspector of cadres at the Regional Department of Education. See a list of the department’s personnel in 1944 in GAKO, f. R-2169, op. 1, d. 928, l. 257. 40. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 381, l. 161 ob. 41. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 95, l. 4. 42. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 95, l. 5.
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43. See testimony at the session of the Bureau of the department’s party organization, April 27, 1940: GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, l. 54. 44. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 135, ll. 132–133. 45. See the session of the Bureau of the department’s party organization, April 13, 1940, GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, l. 51. 46. GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 64–64 ob. 47. GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, l. 82. 48. GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 42 ob. –43. 49. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 95, ll. 21–21 ob., and on December 31 in GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 42 ob. –43. 50. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 2, d. 94, ll. 21–21 ob., 29 ob. 51. Sidorov attended Bureau sessions on February 4 and 28, 1941: GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 3a, 8. Sidorov benefited from an attitude reflected in recent changes in Soviet law. In July 1935 the Soviet state defined hooliganism in part as noisy drinking bouts and arguments. However, in 1939 and 1940 the USSR Supreme Soviet explicitly excluded living quarters as a locus for hooliganism and stipulated that it could occur only among strangers: see Brian LaPierre, “Private Matters or Public Crimes: The Emergence of Domestic Hooliganism in the Soviet Union, 1939–1966,” in Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia, ed. Lewis Siegelbaum (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 192–193. 52. GAKO, f. 2342, op. 1, d. 238, l. 62. At a session of the Bureau of the department’s party organization, February 28, 1941, Sidorov indicated that he had inspected the school: GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 7, l. 8. 53. See the report in the local newspaper, Kolkhoznaia stroika, a publication of the local party committee and soviet, April 9, 1941, 2. 54. “Tri voprosa Oblastnomu otdelu narodnogo obrazovaniia,” Kirovskaia pravda, June 1, 1941, 2. For problems with promotion examinations generally, see Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 68–71. 55. GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 7, l. 39d. 56. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 238, l. 192. Vaneev indicated that he would appoint Sidorov as the director of a secondary school. Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR changed the plan. On July 2, 1941, Sidorov asked his colleagues not to worry about him for he was entering the army and would fulfill his duties honorably: GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 3, d. 54, l. 47. Like so many other soldiers, Sidorov disappeared without a trace during the war. A volume listing individuals from the city of Kirov who died in combat lists a Mikhail Vasil’evich Sidorov twice, one who was born in 1905, the other without a birth date provided. See Kniga pamiati. Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, Kirovskaia oblast’, comp. V. A. Nikonov (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 1995), 15:631. The Sidorov discussed in this chapter is probably the one born in 1905 who disappeared in 1945.
9 “Stop This Petty Tyranny”: Letters and The Administration of Schools in Falenki, 1940–1941
I wish to make it clear that an administrator, provided he is an administrator, ought never to act other than by means of decrees. . . . The citizen is always in the wrong and for that reason his depraved will must always be kept in check. —M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, The Pompadours: A Satire on the Art of Government
As we have seen in previous chapters, during the early and mid-1930s teachers submitted many letters to regional and national authorities, some instructors such as Chernykh and Bulygina making a habit of it. At the end of the decade, Chernykh and other teachers continued to write complaints and pleas typical of the earlier period. They could no longer expect, however, the same response. While such letters earlier had often provoked something more than the appearance of an investigation, now they failed to elicit even that. Several cases from Kirov’s Falenki district illustrate well this altered attitude toward the “little people.” A SPECIAL LETTER (JUNE 1940) On June 14, 1940, three teachers at the Falenki Senior Secondary School sent a handwritten four-page letter to Kirovskaia pravda.1 Writing as if they were one person, they began with a title and paragraph invoking the memory of the nineteenth-century Russian satirist, Mikhail Evgrafovich SaltykovShchedrin.
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Restrain that Petty Tyrant Several days ago I was by chance the unwilling witness to an interesting scene that right away carried me back to the time of Saltykov-Shchedrin. It so happens that in our age one still runs into pompadours and pompadouresses celebrated in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin who arrange everything according to their whim. We have here a specimen of a pompadouress’s treatment of her “subordinates,” even in the presence of bystanders, in the person of the director of Falenki’s Senior Secondary School of the Kirov region, Elena M. Baibarza.
Most letters sent to Moscow or to Kirov were without such an elaborate introduction. One teacher might refer to Stalin as “Father of His Peoples” and proceed to a problem surely unacceptable to such a wise and merciful “Great Leader.” But this letter’s authors eschewed such language to set their complaint squarely in the context of a pre-revolutionary literary assault on bureaucracy. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s name struck a special chord with them and others in Kirov. In 1848 Saltykov’s published attack on the rich as “ravenous wolves” had led to more than seven years of exile in Viatka. Service there first as a junior then as a senior civil servant disillusioned him further with tsarist life and the bureaucracy.2 Shortly after his return to St. Petersburg, Saltykov published Provincial Sketches, a biting satire on the venality and moral corruption of tsarist administrators from the petty office clerk to the governor. His Pompadours and Pompadouresses, published in serial form from 1863 to 1874, continued the assault beginning with its title that identified Russia’s bureaucrats with the pomposity and manipulative politics of the Marquise de Pompadour, mistress to France’s Louis XV. Their literary flight over, the three teachers then adopted the standard format for letters of complaint. They targeted the director of Falenki’s Senior Secondary School, Elena Mikhailovna Baibarza, for allegedly changing the dates when teachers could begin their summer vacation at great personal sacrifice to the teachers involved. She had done so, they insisted, to accommodate the needs of her husband, E. I. Komarov, also a teacher at the school. Moreover, they excoriated Baibarza for her rudeness and insolence. Instead of providing effective leadership, she had ruled by dictate and by shouting. When informed that half of the school’s teachers requested a transfer to other schools, Baibarza responded imperiously: “Do as you please, go, your place will not remain unoccupied. Some leave, others are sent.”3 It was not the first nor would it be the last complaint about Baibarza’s conduct at the school and about educational administration in the district.
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FALENKI Located in a poor and heavily agricultural area, the town and district of Falenki lacked the resources that might have made their schools (and other institutions) shining examples of progressive socialism. In 1926 the town could claim a population of only 523 (239 males, 284 females) and in 1934 the district of 32,625, a slight decrease from the 33,417 in the same area in 1926.4 Such a place could hardly attract well-educated and ambitious persons. In the space of eight years from 1933 to 1940, seven different individuals served as head of the district’s department of education. Five of the seven had no education beyond the secondary school except for a few courses in the party’s own educational institutions (a Soviet Party School or Communist University). The other two had enrolled in but not completed post-secondary institutions. All were young, in their late twenties or early thirties, and only two had any experience in teaching or educational administration prior to their appointment. Perhaps the best of the lot, Derzhurin, an administrator discussed at length in chapter 2, had previously served as head of the Department for Culture and Propaganda of the district’s party committee. After two years’ tenure as Falenki’s chief educational administrator, Derzhurin left in August 1936 to take an identical position in a more favorable location, the Urzhum district.5 All schools in the province of Kirov experienced severe shortages of teachers and of materials from textbooks and syllabi to pens and paper. Falenki’s twenty-five to thirty schools suffered more than most. Its flagship Senior Secondary School lacked the basic essentials: firewood to keep the school warm during the cold academic year; nails, paint, and glass to fix a building badly in need of repair inside and out; and lamps and kerosene to light classrooms dim enough during the second shift to arouse anxiety about permanently damaging children’s eyesight. The school remained cold even when school officials engaged in “creative bookkeeping” by moving what few funds they had at their disposal from other, academic, matters to the purchase of what little firewood such savings would allow. The effort, though necessary, did nothing to fix the stove and exacerbated shortages of academic materials. These horrible conditions contributed to an alarming turnover of teachers from year to year, considerable pupil absenteeism and dropouts, and poor academic performance by those children who attended and stayed.6 At the end of the 1938–1939 school year, the school had 722 pupils of whom 7.8 percent had failed and another 21.3 percent had been required to retake promotion examinations in the fall, high figures even for a rural school.7 Matters quickly worsened. In the first quarter of 1939, the school managed only a 54.3 percent pass rate, a notoriously poor score whatever the circumstances.8
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Such conditions made it nearly impossible for anyone, Baibarza included, to effectively govern and for teachers to feel appreciated even by the best of administrators. Thus a complaint from teachers at Falenki’s Senior Secondary School was hardly surprising irrespective of Baibarza’s real or imagined performance on the job. The letter must also be considered with care for, as we have seen repeatedly, public life and governance in Stalin’s Russia required damning criticism regardless of the facts of the matter. As critics, Falenki’s teachers enjoyed plenty of company. Their district and its senior secondary school in particular had been chosen as examples for an indictment by local and regional authorities of everything that could go wrong. In May 1936, the local party committee demanded the dismissal of the school’s director, Beliaev, for undue criticism of his teachers, excessive drinking, and sexual relations with multiple women.9 Beliaev’s removal helped neither the school nor its reputation. That fall, Zakharov, the inspector for the regional party committee’s Schools Department and discussed in previous chapters, reported, among other negative developments in the region, of a nasty confrontation at the school between carpenters repairing the school and the school’s personnel. The workers had temporarily taken up lodging in the school and to make room removed its desks into the street. When the academic year began on September 1, the school’s administrators and teachers tossed out the carpenters’ tools and personal belongings and put the desks back. So challenged, the workers hauled once again the desks out to the street.10 The matter was presumably settled in a way that allowed lessons to begin, if late. That December a report on schooling in the region by the deputy head, D. Strel’nikov, of the Komsomol Regional Committee’s Pioneers Department, focused on depraved behavior by pupils and adults associated with the school. Students purportedly caroused and drank heavily throughout the night. An adult, a chauffeur by trade, raped a fifteen-yearold pupil; since 1935 a father had habitually sexually abused his daughter, a sixteen-year-old sixth grader. Recently the same girl had given birth to a baby fathered by her seventeen-year-old brother.11 The following month, on January 13, 1937, Ivan Petrovich Barinov, deputy head of the Regional Department of Education’s Schools Sector, when informing the department’s party organization of the deplorable state of education in the region, highlighted Falenki’s main school where a fifteen-year-old, presumably the sixteen-yearold in Strel’nikov’s story, had given birth to her brother’s child and another fifteen-year-old had infected multiple boys with gonorrhea.12 On February 17, 1937, the Regional Department of Education singled out school directors at this and other schools in the district for inflating the percentage of the attendance of the age-cohort of children eight to eleven required to enroll in elementary school. They had done so by including in their count pupils in the
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first four grades who were older than eleven years of age, still in elementary school because of grade repetition or initial attendance in the first grade when older than eight.13 In the district since 1931, Baibarza was no stranger to difficulties. Shortly after her birth in 1906, both of her parents died and Baibarza was raised in an orphanage. She received no more than seven years of formal schooling before entering in 1923 a Soviet Party School in Nolinsk, a town located 137 km. south of Viatka. After graduating the following year, Baibarza worked successively in a rural orphanage, a kindergarten, and in 1931 as a schools inspector for the Falenki district’s department of education. Three years later, she combined that job with teaching at Falenki’s Senior Secondary School. By 1937, Baibarza was the school’s deputy director and a correspondent student in history at Kirov’s Pedagogical Institute from which she graduated in 1940. The year before she had joined the Communist Party as a candidate member.14 In early 1940, months before the teachers’ letter to Kirovskaia pravda, an especially nasty controversy erupted at the school over its current director, Zlobin. Even in this era of rank embellishment, the charges against him were remarkable for their severity. Other district departments of education had fired him for repeated instances of drunkenness. His appointment to Falenki’s Senior Secondary School was probably a harsh demotion.15 In Falenki, he continued his excessive drinking, once showing up drunk at a Pioneer Club, and aggravated divisions among teachers by organizing drinking bouts for his supporters. Zlobin’s real sin, however, in this murky world of Soviet politics, might well have been his refusal to cooperate with those teachers who dominated the school’s organization of the Young Communist League and those who had considerable influence, Baibarza among them, in the department of education’s party cell.16 Baibarza spearheaded the effort against Zlobin.17 In a most unusual move because it came in the middle of the academic year, the Bureau of the district’s party committee fired Zlobin, replacing him on February 20, 1940, with his chief critic, Baibarza.18 Eight days later, on February 28, 1940, the Bureau made another dramatic move when it appointed Pavel Mikhailovich Duvakin as head of the local department of education. Baibarza had the proper credentials. As already mentioned, she had joined the party as a candidate member in October 1939. That year she garnered unusual praise from the local department of education’s head for her daily study of the Short Course on party history.19 By political and professional criteria, Duvakin seemed far less deserving of his new post. Although he had taught history and constitution at a junior secondary school, he was only twenty-six years of age and had no more than a secondary education. A candidate party
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member for no more than a year, the Bureau of the district’s party committee had recommended him for full party membership only two weeks prior to his appointment as the chief educational officer in the district.20
THE POMPADOURESS Neither Duvakin nor Baibarza could correct in short order conditions at Falenki’s Senior Secondary School. They may have made matters worse. Shortly after Baibarza’s appointment, and prior to the submission of the letter cited at the beginning of this chapter, V. M. Kaigorodtsev, a teacher of literature, and E. G. Kuvarzina, a mathematics instructor (and perhaps a third teacher, Kovalev) wrote a letter to Narkompros complaining of her rudeness and bad temper. Unfortunately for them, Narkompros sent its response, never made public and the content of which was soon rendered irrelevant, to the school where, upon its arrival, Baibarza promptly opened it. At the next session of the department of education’s party cell, April 29, 1940, Baibarza made the complaint itself and not its accusations the issue. She had reprimanded Kaigorodtsev for the poor preparation of a special review lesson; now, she said, he sought revenge. When questioned by some discussants for opening a letter not addressed to her, Baibarza claimed that as director she had the right to open any correspondence sent to the school. Though mildly critical of her rude manner toward teachers, a majority supported Baibarza and criticized the complainants for questioning her leadership.21 The affair neither improved Baibarza’s attitude toward her subordinates nor suppressed their criticism of it. Even her supporters admitted that she assigned tasks without regard for an individual’s preference and for the feasibility of the project. They acknowledged that she shouted and had a fit of temper when things did not go her way.22 Thus, it was hardly surprising that on June 14, 1940, three teachers, Aleksandr Pavlovich Klenovitskii, a teacher with eighteen years’ experience, Mikhail Ivanovich Akimov, with fifteen years’ tenure, and K. N. Mil’chakov, who had just begun his career, sent their letter to Kirovskaia pravda invoking at its outset a scene from Saltykov-Shchedrin. In a separate one-page letter of introduction, the three mentioned that they could provide, if needed, more examples of Baibarza’s “flagrant horrors” (vopiiushchie bezobraziia). They asked the newspaper to publish their complaint, challenged it to provide reasons for any refusal to do so, and provided Akimov’s home address for any subsequent correspondence.23 On June 16, Kirovskaia pravda received the letter and immediately sent copies of it, without signatures, to both the regional and Falenki departments of education for an investigation and it informed Akimov that it had done
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so.24 On June 18, Duvakin wrote to the newspaper that the letter’s facts were correct but a full examination would occur only with Baibarza’s return from her vacation. Something far short of an investigation followed on August 19 when the district department of education’s party cell met. Baibarza admitted that she had changed vacation periods but only as a legitimate exercise of her authority. By this time, she knew full well the identities of the letter’s authors and dismissed their complaint as an attempt by them and the group at the school they allegedly represented to remove her for their own invalid reasons. The session duly accepted her explanation while acknowledging her rudeness and hot temper.25 On September 4, Duvakin informed Kirovskaia pravda that Baibarza had shouted at her teachers but that an investigation had not confirmed the letter’s charges. The department’s party cell and, he added disingenuously, the district’s party committee had mildly reprimanded Baibarza for rude behavior.26 Patrusheva, head of Kirovskaia pravda’s Letters Department, drafted a note to Akimov in effect dismissing the charges brought against Baibarza but embellishing on what Duvakin had just said in order to placate the complainants. The party had, Patrusheva wrote, “strongly put Baibarza on notice (krepko ukazano) and had warned her not to make similar mistakes in the future.” Then Patrusheva thought better of the language toning it down for the typed copy that was sent to Akimov. The party had “put Baibarza on notice to correct her mistakes.” 27 Baibarza’s own supporters acknowledged that with the opening of the new academic year she continued her harsh treatment of subordinates.28 On September 6, 1940, Kaigorodtsev and Kuvarzina, who had written earlier to Narkompros, this time, if not earlier, joined by Kovalev, a sixth grade teacher, wrote to Kirovskaia pravda.29 They signed it and provided Kaigorodtsev’s home address for a response. In so doing, the three demonstrated once again a faith that higher authorities might intervene on their behalf despite the fiasco of their initial effort a few months earlier and the more recent rejection of their colleagues’ complaint to Kirovskaia pravda. In three handwritten pages they made the issue not so much Baibarza’s character as her alleged professional misconduct. In the most important matter of promotion of pupils from one grade to the next, they argued, Baibarza ignored decisions of teachers. They provided many specific examples. In the fall of 1939 Baibarza promoted two pupils, one named Kuliabina, to the eighth grade despite their poor marks in promotion exams for several subjects, algebra, Kuvarzina’s subject, among them. When criticized for so doing at a session of the pedagogical council, Baibarza refused to alter her decisions. Adding insult to injury, the following spring, Baibarza promoted two pupils to the tenth grade despite their poor performance in algebra. That fall, when Kuliabina took repeat promotion examinations in algebra and literature, Baibarza allegedly rigged
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a commission, appointing to it her husband among others, that decided to promote Kuliabina over Kuvarzina’s vigorous objection. The three ended on a rhetorical note: “Will this mockery (izdevatel’stvo) of teachers soon end? Does such behavior by the school’s administration raise the authority of the teacher? Help us get justice!” On September 11, the Letters Department of Kirovskaia pravda sent a copy of the letter to the Regional Department of Education requiring an investigation and informed Kaigorodtsev that it had done so.30 One month later, on October 14, the department’s Schools Sector responded. It abruptly dismissed the charges because Duvakin had reportedly examined the written work for the fall examinations. Any such examination, however, if it occurred at all, hardly dealt with the specific accusations in the original letter of complaint. The regional department had only begun its act of dissimulation. One month later, on November 13, 1940, its head, Chekalkin, belatedly responded to the first letter sent to it by Kirovskaia pravda. Unimpressed by the letter’s literary beginning and by its content, Chekalkin summarily dismissed the charges. Moreover, he concluded that Baibarza should have fired one of the complainants, Klenovitskii, for his failure to come to school a few days prior to the start of his vacation. Chekalkin introduced the fiction that Baibarza had been reprimanded for a failure to do so. In a stroke that even Baibarza’s supporters must have found appropriate for Saltykov-Shchedrin’s theater of the absurd, Chekalkin rejected out of hand all accusations of Baibarza’s rudeness and tactlessness.31
BAIBARZA’S REVENGE Unchecked, an unrepentant Baibarza continued her harsh criticism of teachers, accusing many of a lackadaisical attitude toward their work. While claiming to have adopted a more civil tone toward her subordinates, she chastised her deputy director, Shuklina, for insufficient toughness.32 Baibarza demonstrated how to do it by launching a vigorous attack on one of the earlier complainants, Kovalev, for his alleged inability to control the behavior of pupils in his classes. By her own account, during the academic year she repeatedly had asked the district and regional departments of education to fire him.33 For the time being, Kovalev survived, but a fellow complainant, Kuvarzina, was not so fortunate, when Baibarza moved precipitously at the beginning of the 1940–1941 academic year to invoke the full punitive powers of a new law adopted that summer. On December 28, 1938, the USSR’s Council of Peoples Commissars, the Communist Party’s Central Committee, and the All-Union Central Council
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of Trade Unions imposed on the nation’s workforce new stiff regulations. They required the dismissal of anyone guilty of absenteeism without a valid excuse. A clarification the following January stipulated that showing up for work more than fifteen minutes late without a valid excuse amounted to absenteeism and anyone more than twenty minutes late should be fired on the spot. The clarification threatened prosecution of administrators who failed to apply the law to the letter. The law was one thing, enforcement of it in a labor-short economy another. Lax application goaded the central government to adopt even more punitive measures. On July 26, 1940, the Presidium of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet required that absenteeism and arrival at work more than twenty minutes late without a valid excuse be punished with up to six months of corrective labor at the violator’s place of employment and with up to a 25 percent reduction in pay. The law also threatened employers with prosecution if they failed to turn in offenders. As Peter Solomon has pointed out, Stalin personally launched a public campaign to enforce the new law to its fullest extent until, as all campaigns are wont to do, it petered out in late September.34 In the meantime, many local educational officials turned a blind eye toward teachers who violated the law or, aware of a shortage of instructors and the insensitivity of the new regulations, issued a mild reprimand. Yet when in September 1940, Baibarza determined that Kuvarzina had missed a day or, perhaps, merely came to work twenty minutes late without, allegedly, just cause, Baibarza invoked the full measure of the law. A local court sentenced Kuvarzina to six months labor at the school with significant loss of pay.35
ORDER AND ADMINISTRATIVE AUTHORITY In sum, neither Narkompros nor the district and regional departments of education attempted to investigate the specific charges made in letters submitted to them about Baibarza or to protect the authors against retribution. Narkompros egregiously violated common decency by sending its response to the school. While making some effort to protect the identities of the complainants, Kirovskaia pravda hardly flinched upon receipt of shoddy appraisals of the charges and expected the complainants to react in a similar way.36 Satisfied with only a mild reproach of Baibarza for her rude manners, the district department of education’s party cell reinforced her right to open letters not addressed to her even from such a high authority as Narkompros. Thus agencies involved from Moscow to Falenki mocked the very right of complaint. Such behavior stood in contrast to earlier efforts, albeit theatrical, discussed in chapters 4 and 5, to legitimate the complaints process.
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Teachers at Falenki’s Senior Secondary School remembered that effort and had responded to it. They were not alone. Teachers elsewhere continued to complain of abusive behavior by their superiors. From January 1 through September 15, 1940, the Regional Department of Education received 282 letters of complaint from teachers, sixty-eight of which, almost one-fourth, focused on an administrator’s rude conduct.37 Once such complaints invoked a flurry of activity and multiple investigations. Now, as teachers at Falenki’s school discovered, the script for the response to such letters, indeed the very play itself, had dramatically changed. Why the change? Baibarza benefited from Moscow’s concerted effort following the terror to restore authority to administrators and the agencies they represented. It was the Kremlin’s own attempt, halting and incomplete to be sure, to create a bureaucracy that functioned in an orderly and rational way. As I will discuss in detail in the following chapter, the project required not only assigning precise functions to administrators but also granting to them some autonomy to act free of petty interference by lower party organs and teachers dissatisfied with rude conduct. They were pleased to do so for the best and worst of reasons—as an expression of their professional identity, as an effort to establish for themselves and their agencies a measure of jurisdictional integrity, and as an extension of their own tough and dictatorial personalities. In such a revised “system,” teachers could no longer expect an investigation of bad behavior by an official. Such items would no longer involve the bureaucracy from top to bottom and to and fro in multiple investigations making, in effect, its primary function the response to such complaints. Appeals from below to party and other organs to “do the right thing,” to “do the moral thing,” to “do the just thing” now hardly provoked the appearance of an investigation. Abusive conduct by officials was no longer a “political” sin requiring correction. Klenovitskii, Akimov, Mil’chakov, Kaigorodtsev, Kovalev, and Kuvarzina all discovered that charges of shouting and bad temper and the arbitrary but strictly legal exercise of Baibarza’s authority could not provoke even the pretense of a legitimate appraisal of their grievances. For education’s governing organs, the issue was not Baibarza’s personal behavior. Detractors and champions alike acknowledged, as we have seen, her improper conduct at school. But such behavior and teachers’ complaints about it now carried little weight in this new world of a vastly altered relationship between administrators and “little people” in which the latter no longer occupied the place of honor. As we have seen, Chernykh learned the same lesson in mid-1941. Conflict between Duvakin and Baibarza in 1940 and 1941 clarifies this new context. They did not like each other, but their disagreements transcended
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personalities: Duvakin, as head of the department of education, collided with Baibarza as the dominant figure in the department’s party cell. In his comments at sessions of that organization and in his reports to the Bureau of the party’s district committee, Duvakin chastised Baibarza’s behavior, repeating in so doing the very charges made previously in teachers’ complaints, which he had just helped deny. Duvakin also blamed Baibarza, somewhat unfairly to be sure, for continued squabbling among her teachers and for shortages of academic and other items at the school. After one such report, the Bureau adopted an unusually detailed and harsh evaluation. Baibarza’s teachers reportedly assigned quarterly grades after asking pupils only one question during the entire quarter.38 Sure of her authority in the cell, Baibarza countered that Duvakin was young, inexperienced, and ignorant of conditions at a school he never visited. His petty criticism and scolding hindered her ability to govern. Moreover, Duvakin and the Regional Department of Education refused to abide by her recommendations to dismiss incompetent teachers, Kovalev among them.39 At the district department cell’s session of December 3, 1940, one discussant observed that Baibarza should obey her superior, Duvakin. Another discussant responded with the organization’s prevailing point of view that Duvakin, on the contrary, should obey Baibarza because she represented the party’s superior authority as expressed by the cell. “The party,” he concluded, “was the leader of all organizations. The decision of the primary party organization [cell] is the law for all party members.” As a communist and member of that organization, Duvakin therefore should cease his criticism of the school and of Baibarza.40 Duvakin need not have worried. The very reasons that party and state officials, Duvakin included, upheld Baibarza’s authority before her disaffected teachers now reinforced his own as a state administrator against an aggressive party cell and his subordinate, Baibarza.41 Both he and Baibarza finished the 1940–1941 academic year with their authority as district head and as school director intact. Like many young and middle-aged men, in October 1941 Duvakin was drafted into the army shortly after the Nazi invasion of the USSR. He died in combat on January 21, 1942.42 On September 15, 1941, the local party committee approved Baibarza’s application for full party membership.43 She continued as director of Falenki’s Senior Secondary School until her promotion in the fall of 1944 to head the district’s department of education. Baibarza continued in this capacity until an illness forced her to step down in October 1947 and once again take on the onerous but less demanding task as director of Falenki’s secondary school where she also taught history. In the fall of 1952, Baibarza resigned as director but remained at the school to teach
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history and shortly thereafter became its deputy director, a position she held until her death on July 25, 1962.44
CONCLUSION Educational administration had long been in need of a delineation of authority that protected its agents from petty interference. The development of a more rational structure in the late 1930s, one that provided jurisdictional integrity to administrators and the agencies they represented, effectively denied teachers the right to complain of the moral wrongs and abusive behavior by the officials who governed them.45 To be sure, the complaints process had never worked well. But now, as the teachers at Falenki’s Senior Secondary School discovered, it did not work at all. Lacking any institution or agency designed to represent them in this more rational structure of government but which still featured, often rewarded, rude comportment by administrators, teachers had even more reason to complain. And they would do so, when successful, not by focusing on the abusive conduct of their superiors but, as we will see in the following chapter, on their own rights as professionals. This shift in the content of complaints was already discernible in the second letter from Kaigorodtsev, Kuvarzina, and Kovalev. There they demonstrated less concern for Baibarza’s rude behavior and more for her unprofessional promotion of undeserving pupils. Their protest failed because Baibarza, while behaving arbitrarily, acted within the limits of her authority. As the next chapter demonstrates, other teachers found grounds to articulate a much more effective and, often enough, convincing case against their administrators.
NOTES 1. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 244–245 ob. 2. On Saltykov-Shchedrin’s life in Viatka, see E. D. Petriaev, M. E. SaltykovShchedrin v Viatke (Kirov: Volga-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1975). 3. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, l. 245. 4. For 1926: Perepis’ naseleniia 1926 g. Vypusk 9. Spisok naselennykh mest Viatskoi gubernii. Slobodskoi uezd (Viatka: Izdanie Viatskogo Gubstatotdela, 1928), 64. For 1934: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 181, ll. 10–11. 5. For information on the department’s heads: GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 66, ll. 9, 56; d. 141, ll. 138, 177 ob.; d. 215, ll. 19 ob. –20; d. 252, l. 171 ob. On Derzhurin in particular: GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 66, l. 126, and d. 90, ll. 3 ob. –4 ob. For a time, he had been the director of Falenki’s School of Peasant Youth.
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6. Reports in 1940 and 1941 to the Falenki department of education’s party cell in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 23, l. 73; f. 1281, op. 3, d. 71, l. 30; f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 53 ob. –54 ob. 7. See information presented on this and many other schools in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 111, l. 199. The school had twenty-one teachers and 722 pupils. 8. GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 48–50 ob. 9. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 382, l. 28. 10. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d, 383, l. 53. 11. GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, ll. 188–190. 12. GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 5–5 ob. 13. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 2, l. 72. 14. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, l. 2, and d. 281, l. 47. I am grateful to the archivists of GASPI KO for discovering on their own some of this information on Baibarza. 15. Information at a session of the Bureau of Falenki’s party committee, February 20, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. d. 7, l. 51 ob. 16. Testimony at meetings of the primary party organization of the district department of education, February 15, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 2171, op.1, d. 14, ll. 7 ob.–8, 21, and at a session of the Bureau of the district’s party committee, February 20, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 7, l. 51 ob. 17. See Baibarza’s reflections on the matter at a session of the district department of education’s party cell on April 21, 1941, in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 71, l. 11. 18. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 7, l. 51 ob. 19. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 252, l. 171 ob. 20. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 7, ll. 43–43 ob., 57. 21. GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 41 ob. –43. 22. See comments by Anastasiia Ivanovna Vel’kova, head of the district department of education’s party cell at its sessions in 1940: GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d.14, ll. 43, 53. See also comments about Baibarza at these same sessions in GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, l. 53 ob.; d. 23, ll. 44, 61. 23. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, l. 246. 24. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 248–249. 25. GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 64–65. 26. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 251–251 ob. Duvakin even insisted that one of the letter’s authors, Akimov, had no legitimate complaint because Akimov had agreed to change his vacation period. 27. See the handwritten note in GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, l. 52, then a revised copy, l. 53. 28. Comments by Vel’kova at a session of the district department of education’s party cell, September 19, 1940, in GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, l. 64. 29. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 235–236. 30. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 232–233. 31. GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 254–254 ob. 32. Comments at sessions of the district department of education’s party cell, December 13, 1940, and March 22, 1941, in GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d.14, 1.84
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ob., and d. 19, l. 18 ob. See also the cell’s report of April 1941, in GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 24 ob. –25. 33. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 71, ll. 4 ob. –5, and f. 2171, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 9 ob. – 10. Kovalev apparently survived the academic year but was probably fired at its close. 34. Peter Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 307–322. 35. See mention of Baibarza’s use of the decree against one or more of her teachers (without naming Kuvarzina) at a session of the district department of education’s party cell, September 19, 1940: GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, l. 70 ob. A report on the cell’s activity from February 1940 to April 1941 referred to Kuvarzina’s recent completion of a six-month term: GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 19, l. 24. 36. In 1940 Kirovskaia pravda emasculated the process even more so when responding to complaints from other teachers in the Falenki district. One complaint pointed out that teachers in the village (selo) of Nikolaevo lacked access to bread and manufactured goods; in another, that no firewood existed for the Medvezhensk Elementary School and for apartments of its teachers. In both cases, the newspaper took local authorities at their word that the complaints were either totally without merit or no longer valid. See GASPI KO, f. 6777, op. 4, d. 80, ll. 43–44, 257–261. 37. GASPI KO, f. 4861, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 67–68. The regional department probably underreported the number of complaints it actually received. 38. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 51, l. 3. 39. GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 9 ob. –10, 24, and f. 1281, op. 3, d.71, ll. 4 ob. –5, 11. 40. GASPI KO, f. 2171, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 78–79 ob. 41. On June 26, 1940, the Bureau of the district’s party committee reprimanded the district department of education’s party cell for rendering an official evaluation of Duvakin’s performance. Such an accounting, it insisted, was the prerogative of the district’s party committee. 42. On the draft, GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 51, l. 204 ob.; on Duvakin’s death, Kniga pamiati. Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, Kirovskaia oblast’, comp. V. A. Nikonov (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 1995), 13:63. 43. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 3, d. 51, l. 175 ob. 44. GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 5, d. 6, l. 29, and the obituary in Falenki’s newspaper, Zavety Ilichia, July 17, 1962, 4. 45. My conclusions are similar to those reached by Valerie Kivelson in her Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). There Kivelson notes that early in the seventeenth century the Russian nobility (dvoriane) appealed to the tsar not to enforce law in any formal legal sense but to fulfill his “Orthodox” obligation to guarantee that his servitors treat his people, above all the nobility, in a decent and moral fashion. Although such a perception of the tsar and such appeals never ceased, after 1650 the tsar and state became more concerned with enforcing the law and less with correcting alleged moral transgressions. See Nancy S. Kollman, “The Quality of Mercy in Early Modern Legal Practice,” Kritika 7, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 5–22, for a discussion of the tension in prePetrine Russia between codified criminal law and the tsar’s mercy.
10 Proprietary Professionalism: Mine by Right, 1938–1941
Beginning in 1938, teachers demanded the enforcement of the regulations governing their profession and administrators insisted on their jurisdictional authority over schools and schooling. Their behavior in so doing exemplified a growing sense of proprietary professionalism on the part of both groups demanding what they believed to be appropriately theirs.1 This new sense of professionalism, however, developed within the limits set by the ruling party-state and by what educators themselves thought possible if not desirable. Administrators and teachers alike could only insist on the enforcement of specific rules and provisions articulated by Moscow. They understood well that they could not appeal to the more comprehensive civil rights and due process supposedly guaranteed by the new Soviet constitution adopted in late 1936. That document, as everyone understood, had not protected anyone during the Great Terror.2 Moreover, after 1938, school officials operated in an environment in which the party maintained its preeminent position over education and its right to exercise power arbitrarily. When in October 1938 the party’s regional committee created annual awards for both the best elementary and secondary school in the region, it required the Regional Department of Education, already strapped for funds, to come up with a total prize money of 20,000 rubles.3 And teachers continued to function in a system in which neither they nor their union had a guaranteed role in determining policy or practice. Nor could they effectively protest many of the problems plaguing them and their schools. With no greater chance of success than previously, instructors complained of arrears in the payment of salaries, poor conditions at work and at home, and a flood of unhelpful orders and circulars.4 As we have seen in the
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preceding chapter, they could no longer count on the appearance of an investigation into charges of abusive treatment by local officials. Educators who dominate the pages to follow were, like many of their colleagues by the end of the 1930s, veteran teachers and administrators with some training in a higher educational institution. By January 1939, 78 percent of the teachers in the city of Kirov and 58 percent in the province had been on the job for five or more years. While only 9 percent of the region’s teachers possessed some form of a post-secondary degree, 36 percent in its capital did so. At the same time 66 percent of all directors of senior secondary schools in the province boasted of a higher degree and 77 percent had served five or more years in some capacity as an educator. However, this level of training and tenure contributed little if anything to proprietary professionalism.5 It may have helped them to articulate their concerns, but it alone did not enable them to take action. In 1935, even an elite group, the 20 percent of the capital’s teachers and directors of all secondary schools throughout the region who held a higher degree and of which 60 percent had been educators for six or more years, did not claim professional rights.6 Proprietary professionalism, therefore, did not derive from the constitution or from any advances in the training and tenure of educators. Rather three other factors helped make it possible. First, an end to the terror’s worst features allowed departments of education some autonomy in governing schools. It had not been so from 1937 to 1938, when party organs had, while devouring themselves, attacked and assumed the responsibilities of state agencies. Failure to abide by every suggestion of the party had been a serious charge brought against Marchukov, Reshetov, and other administrators. Beginning in 1938, however, the party permitted educational officials space, albeit limited, to maneuver. In March 1939, the Eighteenth Party Congress legitimated the new attitude already under way. A statute adopted by that congress criticized party cells for “taking on administrative functions not properly their own [thereby] eviscerating and replacing bureaucratic [state] organs.”7 Not all party locals embraced these new guidelines, but when they failed to do so they now faced challenges by the regional party organization and departments of education. Second, the declining importance of a symbiosis of errors meant that teachers and administrators could make their case as professionals with less threat of exposing their personal lives and political views to damning scrutiny. Third, after 1938 teachers had new avenues for presenting their agenda. By 1941 some urban schools in the city of Kirov and in major towns in the region had enough communists on their faculty to form party cells and about half of the region’s departments of education had them as well. There communist teachers and at open meetings their nonparty colleagues spoke of their
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professional mission and the laws meant to advance it. Teachers also turned to their school’s pedagogical councils. Narkompros encouraged the effort when on May 9, 1939, it demanded that school directors hold monthly sessions for which teachers as well as directors should set the agenda to discuss academic as well budgetary and housekeeping matters. A decision required a two-thirds majority, which the director could only suspend while appealing it to the district department of education for a final word within five to ten days.8 It was all easier said than done when trying to modify by decree school culture. Narkompros’s follow-up directive issued on December 16, 1939, and one from Kirov’s Regional Department of Education on February 5, 1940, acknowledged that many directors and their deputies continued to dominate allowing little or no discussion of academic issues.9 Yet, as we will see, some teachers had begun, even before official urging if only on an inconsistent basis, to use these councils to present and defend their rights. The behavior of officials and teachers, therefore, remained highly scripted. The party’s power over schools and the educational bureaucracy remained beyond challenge and teachers and administrators could put to their advantage only what Moscow for its own reasons gave them. Nevertheless, that script now contained important scenes that allowed educators to play as never before an important role in the governance of schools and schooling. They were quick to do so, as discussed immediately below, in a variety of ways.
IT’S THE LAW Payback
Teachers insisted on compensation for salary lost during a period of unjust imprisonment. In April 1937, the Municipal Department of Education fired Ivan Nesterovich Bastrakov, a history instructor at Kirov’s Secondary School No. 8 and Adult School No. 2, for heavy drinking and poor political instruction. Several months later, on August 29, the security police arrested him for counterrevolutionary activity. His release for lack of evidence followed on December 13, 1938. On February 16, 1939, Bastrakov demanded that the municipal department pay him for the period of his confinement.10 Bastrakov employed the familiar litany: because of his imprisonment his health had deteriorated and his family had been forced to sell personal items to get by. Even now his children could not attend school for lack of decent shoes and clothes. But Bastrakov went well beyond the poor victim begging, as it were, for justice. He spelled out just how much he thought the department owed him, by his calculations, an average of 619.80 rubles per month from August
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29, 1937, the date of his arrest, for a total exceeding the handsome sum of 10,000 rubles. He subsequently received much if not all of it.11 At the same time, Kushova, a German instructor who, as discussed earlier, had been arrested and imprisoned for counterrevolutionary activity and then released, demanded and received restitution for income lost.12 The Right of Refusal
Teachers now actively invoked their rights to demand or reject a transfer or promotion. At the end of the 1938–1939 academic year, the Regional Department of Education assigned a new director to Vozhgaly Secondary School, located about 60 km. southeast of Kirov, who also happened to teach history in the senior grades (eight to ten). The new director reassigned the school’s current history instructor in those grades, Vasilii Ogorodnikov, to teach history in grades five through seven in another school in the district. As someone with a higher degree and thus the right to insist on teaching his subject in the senior grades, Ogorodnikov protested and asked for a transfer to still another school where he could do so. The Regional Department of Education agreed and appointed him to teach advanced history and serve as a director in a school in Bogorodskoe district, 60 km. removed to the southeast. However, the local department of education resisted and appealed through the Komsomol local to the League’s regional committee, which refused transfer of Ogorodnikov’s League membership to Bogorodskoe and thereby blocked his new appointment. On June 8, 1939, an incensed Ogorodnikov wrote the regional committee: “I consider your refusal incorrect.”13 He got positive results. On June 14, the committee changed its decision and instructed the district local to release Ogorodnikov.14 Other teachers refused unwanted promotions to deputy director or director of a school. Requests from teachers to annul such an appointment had been common because whatever the increased pay the position might entail it hardly compensated for the work involved. However, until now outright refusals were rare. On August 19, 1939, the Regional Department of Education appointed a teacher of mathematics at School No. 3, Sergei Mikhailovich Lobastov, the school’s director. It seemed a logical choice. Lobastov had previously headed Viatka’s Municipal Department of Education in the early 1930s and later the Regional Department of Education’s Elementary Schools Sector and in 1937 its Secondary Schools Sector. His removal from the latter post and purge from the party followed that year, but he avoided arrest and took a teaching position that fall.15 Nevertheless, Lobastov had had his fill of administrative duties and managed a meeting with the regional department’s head, Rodionov, to voice his objection. Rodionov refused to annul the order.
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Lobastov immediately wrote the municipal and regional departments of education that he would not serve as deputy director and if the appointment was not rescinded, he would resign from the school altogether and seek a teaching position elsewhere. On August 22, Lobastov repeated his refusal and threat in a letter to the Municipal Department of Education. “Therefore, if the Municipal Department wants to keep me on as a teacher,” Lobastov declared, “I ask it to place before the Regional Department the matter of an annulment of its order.”16 Lobastov got his way. He remained at the school as an instructor of mathematics but without any administrative duties.17 At the same time other teachers defied the authority of Kirov’s regional and municipal departments of education, although they had to wait before succeeding. On August 21, 1939, Natal’ia Aleksandrovna Pliusnina informed the Municipal Department of Education of her refusal of an appointment as deputy director at School No. 11 claiming that her responsibilities as a mother and teacher required her full attention.18 Beyond these personal reasons, Pliusnina had good reason to object for School No. 11 had just been removed from its own facility, its faculty and pupils now squeezed into the buildings of four other schools. Exactly one year later, Vera Mikhailovna Koshcheeva, a veteran teacher of Russian language and literature at Kirov’s Secondary School No. 12, told the Municipal Department of Education of her refusal of an appointment as the school’s deputy director. She provided a number reasons: family obligations, her own poor health, and a lack of proper credentials because she lacked a higher educational degree. “I have not taken up fulfillment of my responsibilities,” she wrote, “and again declare my refusal in writing.”19 Initially the municipal department refused the demands of Pliusnina and Koshcheeva but within months in Pliusnina’s case and a year in Koshcheeva’s they had been relieved of their unwelcome administrative duties.20 In the fall of 1940, a candidate member of the party invoked his right to refuse a promotion and in so doing openly defied the party’s authority. On August 20, 1940, the Bureau of the Kyrchany district party committee appointed the director of a local secondary school, Gennadii Mikhailovich Ermolin, as head of the local department of education. He refused. On September 13, the district committee reprimanded him and ordered him to take up his new duties. Once again, Ermolin refused, declaring to the committee’s Bureau on the sixteenth: “Do what you want including purging me from the party, but I won’t serve as head of the district department of education.”21 On September 16, the committee’s Bureau purged him for “scandalous (vozmutitel’naia) indiscipline.”22 Ermolin promptly appealed his expulsion to the regional party committee whose Bureau on October 23 ordered his readmission into the party.23 While the Bureau admonished Ermolin for “manifestly undisciplined
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behavior,” it made no demands of him and Kyrchany’s party committee appointed another school administrator to head the department of education. Ermolin remained director of his school and in that capacity attended meetings of his school’s party cell and reported to the party’s district Bureau.24 In September 1941 he joined the party as a full member.25
DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH Teachers also objected to what they regarded as illegal application of new laws regarding labor discipline discussed in the previous chapter. In early 1939 at Zuevka Secondary School, pupils misbehaved in a German language class forcing the instructor, M. E. Kosach, to terminate the lesson fifteen minutes early. The school’s director reprimanded Kosach and when she appealed to the local conflict commission, it equated the class’s early dismissal with unexcused absenteeism and fired her. Kosach appealed to Narkompros where on May 11 the Secondary Schools Administration ordered Kirov’s Regional Department of Education to restore Kosach to her position and to appoint her to another school the following fall.26 On April 17, 1939, Mariia Fedorovna Bocharova, a veteran instructor of geography for twenty-five years, now teaching at Kirov’s famous Secondary School No. 3, arrived for class thirty-five minutes late because, she said, of a migraine headache. The director, Aleksandra Andreevna Zonova, who had replaced Suvorov at the school in 1937, ordered Bocharova to go to the local medical clinic for confirmation. When Bocharova arrived, the doctor, inundated with patients, refused to examine her. Even though Bocharova had been recently recognized as one of the three best teachers in the district and of eleven in the entire city, Zonova proceeded to fire her, a dismissal confirmed by the district and regional departments of education and the local conflict commission.27 Bocharova challenged the ruling in a complaint to the party’s Central Committee in Moscow accompanied by letters of support from her pupils. The Central Committee forwarded the complaint to Kirov for an investigation. The Regional Department confirmed that in fact Bocharova had visited the clinic on April 17 and Zonova admitted that the doctor had behaved poorly. On May 25, the regional department ordered Bocharova’s reinstatement. Three days later local authorities defied Kirov. On May 28, the presidium of the teachers union’s regional organization arranged a meeting of its five members with the heads of the district department of education, district’s union committee, and school’s union local as well as with Zonova and a representative from the school’s conflict commission. As one they requested an
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annulment of the reinstatement. They also moved to punish Bocharova asking the district’s union committee to investigate her alleged exploitation of pupils to advance her case, an effort that had allegedly contributed to a breakdown in pupils’ discipline at school.28 It is not clear what followed, although apparently Bocharova’s return to the school was suspended as her case remained under review by regional authorities. Months later, she emerged victorious when on November 15, 1939, the regional department once again ordered Bocharova’s reinstatement. Because her position at School No. 3 had been filled by someone else by this late date, well after the beginning of the academic year, the department placed her at the city’s Krasin Secondary School No. 6.29 Bocharova continued teaching at the school until the fall of 1943 when she became the deputy director of a womens senior secondary school and two years later director of a mens junior secondary school.30
IT’S OUR RIGHT Teachers also questioned administrative decisions based on what might and might not be legally expected of them as professional educators. They could not point to any particular regulation that had been violated but they insisted on policies that were in accordance with the spirit of the law and their own sense of its fair application. Bocharova had not long been back on the job at Krasin School No. 6 before she complained of undue influence on her and her fellow teachers in the matter of grading. In January 1941 at the school’s pedagogical conference, Bocharova rejected efforts by the school’s deputy director, K. P. Semakova, to compel all teachers, regardless of subject matter, to lower a pupil’s grade for grammatical errors. She encouraged proper writing, Bocharova declared, but she taught geography, not the Russian language, and would grade her pupils’ work accordingly. Her objection was shared by colleagues. The council’s resolutions encouraged all teachers to check their students’ use of language but made no mention of a lowering of marks for poor grammar or style.31 Teachers understood that they had little practical influence over transfers from one school to the next before the beginning of the academic year, or over their workload, or over how funds for education were disbursed by the local department of education and school director. Thus like other Soviet citizens from 1939 to 1941, Kirov’s teachers experienced a more demanding workload and severe shortages of foodstuffs and manufactured items, the result of conscription introduced in September 1939 and preparation for war. Although teachers complained about their increased burdens at school, few of them dared (or wished) to question the draft.32 When they objected to long
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lines in which shoving, pushing, and fights, even a murder, occurred, they refrained from challenging official policy that was opposed to the return of rationing.33 But teachers insisted that party authorities at least acknowledge, if they could not alleviate, these difficult conditions. On April 26, 1940, the Bureau of the party committee in Prosnitsa district discussed the recent suicide of Galkin, an instructor in military affairs at its Chepetsk school.34 The school’s director, Petr Fedorovich Posazhennikov, insisted that shortages of everyday items had prompted the suicide. Each day Galkin had worn the same shirt and jacket and often went about without outer garments to preserve what few he possessed. His children were poorly clothed. After his death, coworkers could not find among his things decent underwear in which to bury him. It was not a question of money, Galkin had sufficient funds to properly outfit himself and his family, but the local cooperative offered few clothes at any price. Posazhennikov added that the district department of education had shown no interest in these and other problems that contributed to deplorable living conditions for almost everyone. However, others in attendance attributed the suicide to more personal reasons. Galkin had been an alcoholic for some time; his frequent drunkenness had led to numerous dismissals from previous jobs and purge from the party. He had squandered his life to such an extent that, thoroughly demoralized, he had killed himself. In its resolutions the Bureau reached something of a compromise between the competing versions. Galkin’s death was the result of his excessive drinking and shortages of goods and apartments experienced by him and other teachers. However, less than a month later, on May 20, the Bureau amended its resolutions by removing all references to shortages.35 Teachers at Galkin’s school acquiesced in the face of the Bureau’s machinations but their counterparts at the district’s Volodarskii Junior Secondary School did not. On May 31 its cell met with five full and three candidate party members attending. Although they agreed that Galkin’s death was a logical end to his own depraved life, they nevertheless objected to the Bureau’s withdrawal of a recognition of difficulties faced by teachers. They declared it as another indication of the local party committee’s lack of interest in teachers’ living conditions. The Bureau chose not to alter its latest ruling, but it also refrained from punishing its critics.36
NOT OUR BUSINESS Teachers also now insisted that they should not be required to perform tasks not in keeping with their own sense of professional identity. Heretofore throughout the decade they had complained to little effect about a failure
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by Narkompros to produce texts in the quantity and quality desired and to distribute efficiently books that were on hand. Although publication and distribution of new texts still remained beyond their control, after 1938 they understood that they could resist demands placed on them by Narkompros to participate in the purchase and resale of used texts. In 1935 the USSR’s Council of Peoples Commissars and the party’s Central Committee took away the responsibility for the trade in old and new textbooks from Narkompros and its departments of education and assigned it to bookstores and kiosks in urban areas and to cooperatives in the countryside.37 The decree did nothing to improve production and exacerbated preexisting problems of distribution. Some bookstores received far more texts than they ordered, others significantly less. Regardless of the quantity on hand, managers and salespeople failed to display the books or even to acknowledge that they were available.38 Most pupils refused to return used items. Tenth graders retained their copies in order to study for entrance examinations to higher educational institutions and as sources of information after successful entry. Other pupils decided to swap or sell their books amongst themselves. Throughout the Russian Republic generally and specifically in the Kirov region bookstores received only about 25 percent of the used copies in circulation.39 The return and purchase of used texts were tense moments in the academic year. Officials responsible for the trade in books and departments of education dragooned teachers as agents to enforce the unpopular law, insisting that they deny a promotion examination or withhold a final grade for pupils who refused to return used texts. Even in urban areas where bookstores existed, teachers were recruited to supervise at school the buying and selling of books. In these instances, teachers could point to no clearcut violation of the law, but they objected to a system that made them enforcers of a flawed policy. On June 10, 1938, Kirovskaia pravda published a nasty piece, “On the Trade in Textbooks,” by V. G. Glazyrin, head of Kirov’s Department of State Publishers.40 With the collusion of teachers, school administrators, and departments of education in the city’s three districts, pupils had at year’s end continued the “hostile practice” of trading and selling used books to each other. The effort left his agency without books for distribution in the fall and, Glazyrin added, encouraged children to acquire “speculative habits.” In particular, he accused the directors and teachers of Senior Secondary Schools No. 3 and No. 7 of aiding and abetting their pupils in the practice. On the day after the appearance of Glazyrin’s article, teachers at Senior School No. 3 responded angrily at a session of the school’s pedagogical conference with Glazyrin in attendance. Whether he came to chastise in person the school’s faculty or whether they invited him to hear their complaints, Glazyrin
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got more than he probably expected.41 The publication industry, teachers pointed out, left pupils (and schools) holding the bag when it refused to buy back books that were obsolete almost immediately after their appearance because of an absence of maps, or the presence of outdated maps, or sudden changes in the political climate necessitating the removal of the names and photographs of the latest batch of enemies of the people. If Glazyrin really wanted to monopolize the trade in textbooks then his agency should buy back what it sold. Nor did Glazryin manage to send his representatives to schools on the designated dates to purchase texts. Teachers resented demands on them to enforce a practice that defied common sense and alienated them from their students. A year and a half later, the school’s teachers used a session of their school’s pedagogical council to turn on their own administrators much as they had on Glazyrin. They objected to the assignment of supervisory duties in the cloakroom and cafeteria and at extracurricular events irrespective of their class schedules.42 Then in the spring of 1941 teachers at the school again objected to requirements that they participate in the book trade. They opposed an order from the Municipal Department of Education that they monitor the buying and selling of textbooks in the classroom at the end of the school year. In this instance, teachers turned to party organs for assistance. At an open meeting of the school’s cell, party and nonparty instructors alike called upon the municipal party committee to compel the municipal department to withdraw its order as an unacceptable imposition during spring promotion examinations when everyone associated with the school was quite busy.43 The faculty at School No. 3 was not alone in making such protests. At the same time, teachers at Kirov’s Elementary School No. 15 used their pedagogical council and conference to object to the same practice and other irresponsible, in their view, demands on their time. They had tired, they said, of purchasing then selling textbooks and notebooks to their pupils, managing the school buffet, and compelling students to get haircuts.44 They and their counterparts elsewhere, as will be discussed immediately below, had also tired of what they believed to be highly improper assessments of their performance.
NOT FAIR GAME An awareness of the law and their rights meant that teachers and school administrators as well developed a keen sense of how they should be judged. In so doing, they usually could point to no illegal act nor could they directly challenge a bureaucracy still practicing, as we have seen, escalating negativity. They did protest egregiously unfair, in their opinion, reports on their performance.
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In contrast to his upbeat annual reports to the local and municipal departments of education, Kornev, director of School No. 9, criticized his teachers for poor instruction at sessions of the school’s pedagogical council. His faculty responded with criticism of their own. They repeatedly told Kornev of the difficulties created by boring textbooks, shortages of pupils’ notebooks, overburdened syllabi, poor lighting, and the absence of supporting literature in the school’s library. In turn, Kornev admitted that shortages and poor syllabi and textbooks had indeed created serious problems.45 The school’s instructors also deflected blame for problems in the classroom toward lazy students and inattentive parents. On December 3, 1940, fifth-grade teachers met with parents to excoriate by name pupils and then require of their elders something of a mass confessional ending with promises to improve their and their children’s behavior.46 Parents responded by avoiding as much as possible any such meetings. Despite threats to inform their workplace of their deviant behavior, little more than half of the parents managed to attend any such gatherings (a figure the envy, no doubt, of contemporary administrators and teachers in the United States).47 On two occasions in the spring of 1939, April 13 and June 9, Avgusta Petrovna Lobovikova, director of Kirov’s Elementary School No. 12, wrote the Municipal Department of Education objecting to unprofessional evaluations by the Regional Department of Education and Stalin district’s Department of Education.48 In the course of the previous year, a number of her fourth graders had been transferred to another school, Junior Secondary School No. 21, a new school recently created in the fall of 1937 and still in the process of enrolling a full complement of pupils. Either by calculation or grievous error, Lobovikova’s pupils were placed in the fifth grade where they performed poorly. Rather than blame the new school for its mistake, the head of the Regional Department, Rodionov, reprimanded Lobovikova for preparing allegedly illiterate children. Even though Rodionov subsequently annulled the reprimand, the head of the district’s department of education, Anastasiia Gavrilovna Savinykh, and her inspector, Cherepanova, renewed the charge. In both letters, Lobovikova relied on the familiar litany of complaint. She loved her children, had served loyally as the school’s director for twelve years, and had taught since before the revolution despite cold conditions at school and at home. As the weak and victimized female, Lobovikova had “cried and cried” upon hearing of Rodionov’s reprimand and suffered emotionally the persecution that followed. She had a doctor’s statement to prove it. Yet Lobovikova departed from the norm with her angry insistence on her dignity as a professional. In her first letter, she demanded her release as the school’s director. In the second, she threatened to quit: “I can’t take such
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horrors any longer! I am accustomed to living and working freely. I can’t take continuing revenge. I will find [another] place.”49 She probably received some satisfaction, although precisely what is not clear, as she remained director of the school for many years thereafter.50 At the end of March 1941, Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education convened teachers’ conferences in each of the city’s three districts to cover the usual list of problems and launch standard accusations at school administrators and faculty. Not everyone was disposed to sit quietly and take the usual abuse. At the conference for the Molotov district, the director of Junior Secondary School No. 14, Mikhail Sergeevich Toropov, complained of frequent criticism by the department’s inspectors and instructional experts. Teachers have begun to fear, he observed, anyone seen around the school carrying a briefcase on the assumption that the person might be an investigator.51 At School No. 3, administrators and teachers of the Stalin district were even more disdainful of the department’s behavior. The director of the school, Zonova, who two years earlier had treated Bocharova so harshly, declared: “We are bored with these conferences, they aren’t needed.” Teachers responded with applause. She repeated her objections on several more occasions that day. Tired of exposes and a recent critical evaluation of his own instruction, A. I. Vylegzhanin, a history instructor at Secondary School No. 11, proclaimed: “I don’t need these investigators.” His remarks too elicited applause.52 Less than three weeks later, more fireworks erupted at School No. 3. On April 18 the school’s pedagogical council discussed a recent investigation of their school conducted by the Municipal Department of Education, with the department’s chief inspector and at the moment acting head, Suvorova, and another inspector, Valentina Pavlovna Rezvaia, attending. The report had harshly criticized teachers by invoking the slogans of the day: inadequate preparation, poor instruction, an unwillingness to work individually with pupils having difficulties, and an absence of self-criticism. In addition, it accused the director and her deputy of poor leadership, rudeness toward students, and an inability to cooperate with each other. Zonova denied the legitimacy of the report, calling it a hasty and sloppy investigation. Teachers agreed. The investigative commission had ignored their dedication and had limited its efforts to attending only a few lessons and a superficial examination of pupils’ notebooks. Obviously stung by the criticism of her report, Rezvaia repeated its charges. Suvorova, however, promised to take into consideration teachers’ objections.53 Zonova was not the only director to come to the defense of her school when under attack. Aleksandr Ivanovich Selivanovskikh, director of Arbazh Secondary School, used his school’s cell as a forum to condemn criticism in an
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article published by the local party newspaper, Kolkhoznaia stroika. On April 9, 1941, the paper ran a piece condemning the school for the usual amalgam of poor instruction by teachers and lack of discipline among pupils. The following day, a representative, Berezin, of the party’s district committee came to the school’s cell to place most of the blame squarely on the director. Selivanovskikh would have none of it. The article and now Berezin ignored the school’s achievements and harped on the negative without considering difficult conditions facing faculty and pupils. “Whatever nonsense they can cook up,” Selivanovskikh bitterly observed, “they pour into the press. And they call this criticism. I’ve had it as school director, I’m finished.”54 Four days later, the newspaper ran another expose of the poor performance of teachers and pupils at the school holding Selivanovskikh personally responsible. At meetings of the school’s party cell, he had allegedly attributed pupils’ poor grades to the absence of textbooks and other academic materials, an assessment mocked by the paper as something likely to come from a chief custodian rather than from a school director.55 Selivanovskikh repeated his objections, now joined by many of his teachers, at the cell’s meeting of April 17.56 Still the director at the school cell’s session on May 8, he demanded a retraction from the newspaper. The cell agreed and asked the district’s party committee to require the editorial board to do so.57 While Kolkhoznaia stroika refrained from printing a formal apology, it did manage once in May and again in June to break with its past berating of the school and Selivanovskikh by congratulating tenth graders for superior performance on promotion examinations for literature and the history of the USSR.58 On May 6, 1941, teachers at a pedagogical conference of Korolenko Junior Secondary School No. 4 objected to a negative report issued by the Molotov district’s department of education.59 The district’s school inspector, Preobrazhenskaia, came to defend her report which predictably, by the prevailing script of the day, criticized teachers, two in particular for poor instruction. It also accused the Parents Committee of failing to organize good pupils to help their less able peers. Understanding that criticism of the two in their midst was directed at the entire faculty, teachers responded that everyone at the school performed ably. They also questioned the very legitimacy of the report, which was based, they pointed out, on the attendance of only a single lesson of each teacher mentioned. With a keen sense of jurisdictional responsibility, the chair of the Parents Committee, Malyshev, declared that it was not his committee’s responsibility to organize pupils to help each other, rather such a task properly belonged to the school’s Pioneer organization and its paid leader. Caught between the report’s conclusions and protests from her teachers, the school’s director, Ekaterina Sergeevna Vakhrusheva, sought something of a compromise. She agreed that the investigation of her school
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had uncovered problems, but that the report had not concluded, despite its criticism, that anyone was a poor teacher. A chastened Preobrazhenskaia agreed and reassured the assembled teachers that she thought well of them. Like teachers and directors, heads of local departments rejected what they regarded as unfair accusations. Since the mid-1930s, Kirov’s Regional Department of Education had gathered information from its subordinate departments on the eligibility for and previous military service of all individuals involved in education in the region. Overburdened with multiple responsibilities and understaffed especially after the introduction of conscription, district departments provided Kirov with incomplete data. On January 26, 1939, the Regional Department of Education issued a memorandum under the signatures of its head, Rodionov, and the chief of its Special Sector responsible for gathering such material, Filipp Demidovich Korshunov, to all district departments threatening court action if such information was not forthcoming. It referred to Kolchanov, head of the Svecha district department of education, as a prime example of a derelict official. No doubt Kolchanov understood that he had been designated the “chosen one,” the victim selected to give threats a human face and poignancy. In the past, such an individual had no choice but to suffer and, one hoped, survive the ordeal. Kolchanov now thought otherwise. Within days, on February 3, he angrily wrote the Regional Department to complain of Rodionov’s and Korshunov’s “bureaucratic attitude” and “love of orders” (administrirovanie). The three had met on January 25 when Kolchanov promised to provide the material and he had only returned home when on the following day they had so precipitously moved against him. If the reprimand was not rescinded, Kolchanov declared, he would appeal to the party’s regional committee. In the meantime, he provided some of the information that Kirov demanded. While asking even more of Kolchanov, the Regional Department nevertheless obliged him and on May 10 withdrew its reprimand.60
JURISDICTIONAL INTEGRITY If Kolchanov had appealed to the party’s regional committee, he might well have received a sympathetic hearing. While maintaining ultimate power over educational administrators from 1938 to 1941, party organs reined in their own and other agencies that aggressively inhibited the work of school officials. In late 1940 a dispute arose at Kruglizhsk Secondary School in Svecha district between the director, Ivan Vasil’evich Rybalov, and his deputy, O. A. Beliaeva. Conflict between occupants of the two administrative posts was a frequent occurrence in schools, but in this instance it took on special
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poignancy because the deputy, Beliaeva, happened to head the school’s party cell. Using that position, Beliaeva harshly criticized Rybalov for his alleged rudeness toward fellow teachers and a lack of concern for their harsh living conditions. Under her prodding on November 1, 1940, the cell reprimanded Rybalov.61 Several months later, the district’s party committee intervened to check Beliaeva’s behavior and reinforce Rybalov’s authority. When the cell met on the following April, a representative from the district’s party committee attended and compelled the cell to adopt resolutions annulling its reprimand and criticizing Beliaeva for a failure to cooperate with her boss.62 At Kirov’s School No. 18, Ognev, only recently returned from prison, survived a challenge by the school’s party cell of his authority as director. On December 3, the school’s five candidate and full party members met to demand that he report to the pedagogical council on the extent to which he and his deputy attended lessons. Three weeks later, an inspector for the party’s municipal committee condemned the cell for taking on an inappropriate function and for violating the director’s jurisdictional authority.63 At Khalturin district’s Secondary School No. 2, the director, Mikhail Semenovich Ustiuzhanin, and his deputy, Tat’iana Iakovlevna Zakharova, both party members, clashed repeatedly at school and at sessions of the school’s party cell for over two years. In this case, the director successfully defended his authority until found guilty of a serious crime. Trouble began on January 16, 1939, when Ustiuzhanin reprimanded Zakharova for coming to class seventeen minutes late. Zakharova claimed that she had been sick and had not had time on January 16 to get a doctor’s excuse. Getting nowhere with Ustiuzhanin, Zakharova took the issue to the school’s party cell on January 24 which upheld Ustiuzhanin’s penalty.64 A stubborn Zakharova pursued her case and at the cell’s session of March 20 forced an annulment of the reprimand and an apology from Ustiuzhanin for insensitivity.65 Almost a year later, more trouble erupted when at the cell’s meeting of February 29, 1940, Zakharova blamed Ustiuzhanin for poor instruction and pupils’ bad behavior. He had also, she charged, refused to find and punish the person responsible for criticism of her that had appeared in the school’s wall newspaper. She had approached him not as the director but as a fellow communist with the request to investigate. His refusal was a failure to fulfill his obligations as a party member. “I believed,” Zakharova declared, “that a communist must turn in the first instance to his or her primary party organization and there find an answer to all compelling questions.”66 An unrepentant Ustiuzhanin responded that Zakharova’s comments were “non-Bolshevik,” the result of personal spite stemming from his earlier reprimand.67 Zakharova retreated temporarily but only to bring even more serious charges against Ustiuzhanin in the spring of 1941. At the school cell’s session
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of April 3, Zakharova and others accused Ustiuzhanin of improper relations with two female pupils, one of whom he allegedly raped. Ustiuzhanin dismissed the allegations as the machinations largely of Zakharova who, when the scandal first broke, purportedly declared: “Well, he [Ustiuzhanin] won’t wriggle out of this one.”68 Ustiuzhanin in fact did not “wriggle out” of this predicament, purged from the party and indicted for rape in April. At the cell’s session of May 15, Zakharova demonstrably gloated at her rival’s ill fortune, now boasting that she had earlier criticized Ustiuzhanin when others had feared to do so.69 Zakharova prevailed because she was able to successfully charge Ustiuzhanin with a heinous crime. Less serious charges would not have the same effect whether brought against a school director, as we have seen in Rybalov’s and Ognev’s cases, or against a head of a local department of education. In early 1941, Turova, the director of Starozavodsk school, complained to the Kyrchany party committee about the rude behavior of Vershinin, the head of the department of education. On May 9, 1941, the party’s Bureau chastised Vershinin for rudeness but hardly in a way that pleased Turova. It upheld his right to deal authoritatively with Turova whom the Bureau considered a troublemaker and poor teacher who needed to infuse her instruction in history and constitution with lessons in Soviet patriotism.70 While teachers could no longer count on a careful investigation into charges of abusive conduct by their administrators, by the same token, they could expect that departments of education would not pursue aggressively, if at all, similar complaints from parents and pupils of a teacher’s improper but legal behavior. The Municipal Department of Education defended its teachers (and its own jurisdictional turf) in response to complaints forwarded to it by Patrusheva, head of the Letters Department of Kirovskaia pravda, and by the Regional Department of Education.71 In early 1939 without any apparent inquiry, the department repeatedly informed Patrusheva that charges of mistreatment of pupils, staff, and teachers by school administrators at School No. 17 had no basis in fact.72 Its response was much the same the next year in response to a complaint lodged by the father of Aleksandr Lozhkin, a fifth grader at Kirov’s Krasin School No. 6. The parent had written to Kirovskaia pravda charging three individuals, a teacher, the homeroom teacher, and the deputy director, with dereliction of duty. They had not monitored the boy’s notes taken during lessons nor his homework and thus were to blame for his poor academic performance.73 On March 8, Patrusheva forwarded the letter to Ivan Nikitich Balalaev, now the head of Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, requiring an investigation. One month later, the department had not responded and on April 11 Patrusheva sent it a postcard reminder.74 Balalaev asked his inspector of secondary schools, Viktor Vasil’evich Gorbunov,
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to look into the matter.75 An investigation of sorts followed limited largely if not exclusively to a letter on April 16 from the school’s director denying all the allegations.76 Perhaps because such charges were no longer so menacing, the municipal department neglected to send the director’s explanation to Patrusheva. On May 15 and again on July 9, Patrusheva sent another postcard reminder.77 One year later, the case was revisited but in altered form. On May 19, 1941, the same parent wrote to a higher authority, Sidorov, the head of the Regional Department’s Schools Sector, about his boy’s mistreatment, this time at another school in Kirov, School No. 22. Teachers had failed to monitor the boy’s work and for a few inconsequential errors had flunked him.78 On June 12, Sidorov forwarded the letter to Serafima Ivanovna Likhacheva, head of Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, who, in turn, asked her inspector, Rezvaia, for a report. Five days later, Rezvaia exonerated the school’s teachers and administrators. She blamed the boy for poor study and the father for failing to cooperate with teachers when they tried to improve his son’s behavior.79 In a similar case, a father complained in late February 1939 to Kirovskaia pravda protesting his boy’s expulsion from Kirov’s School No. 12. The father admitted that his son, Volodia Mikhailov, had behaved badly at school and at home and had flunked. Nevertheless, expulsion seemed to him extreme.80 Patrusheva forwarded the letter to the Municipal Department of Education where Balalaev and his inspector, Suvorova, the former head of the Molotov district department of education, responded on April 10. The school and local and municipal departments of education had done everything possible to help the boy, a poor student with behavioral problems, and, in fact, they had not formally expelled him. Rather the father had withdrawn his son from the school. If the school’s director was at fault, it was for acceding to the father’s wish to remove his son.81 In another case, the Zhdanov Department of Education was even more dismissive. On April 9, 1941, Patrusheva forwarded a pupil’s complaint about the rudeness of Ol’ga Pavlovna Sivkova, a teacher of geography at Kirov’s School No. 9, to the city’s Zhdanov district department of education. The department’s head, Likhacheva, who would soon lead the municipal department, ignored the matter. On May 23, the dogged Patrusheva once again asked for a reply. More than two weeks later, on June 11, Likhacheva threw out the charges without an apparent investigation by responding that her department had received no negative information regarding the teacher’s behavior.82 Letters forwarded to the municipal department by the regional department had no more resonance than those from Patrusheva. At the end of the
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1939–1940 academic year, the municipal department defended its teachers at School No. 6 in response to a letter sent by the regional department’s Schools Sector. Claiming to speak for many of her peers, a disgruntled parent had complained that teachers lacked sufficient knowledge of their subject and graded pupils unfairly. Her daughter received a “good” instead of an “excellent.” On July 10, the department submitted its investigation.83 It admitted to problems at the school, but it hastened to add that they were the result of extenuating circumstances. During the third quarter the physics teacher had not been especially effective because of sickness. A shortage of textbooks for the course, “History of the USSR,” had forced reliance on the party history, Short Course, with the result that pupils fared poorly on promotion examinations. In general, the school’s faculty, including a new physics teacher, was dedicated and capable. In two additional cases forwarded by the regional to the municipal department, a father, in one instance, and an aunt in the other, insisted that a child’s poor academic performance and bad behavior resulted from mistreatment by teachers and school administrators. Likhacheva responded that the blame lay elsewhere. In the first case, the boy had refused to retake promotion examinations in the fall and thus was repeating the second grade where he was doing no better paying scant attention to his teacher.84 In the second case, Likhacheva responded that a teacher had appropriately refused to allow the boy, Nikolai Nevskii, to enter the classroom when showing up late for class after a smoke in the school’s toilet.85 In late 1940, Lidiia Motovilova, a ninth grader at Kirov’s Secondary School No. 22 wrote to the Regional Department of Education complaining of poor treatment by teachers.86 The Regional Department forwarded the complaint to Kirov’s Municipal Department where, on January 11, Likhacheva ordered an investigation. Two reports followed from her inspectors, one submitted on January 20 by Rezvaia and another on January 28 by Gorbunov.87 Both reports exonerated teachers and administrators at the school. Gorbunov found that Motovilova had insulted a number of teachers and the school’s director, chatted with nearby pupils during lessons, and after failing to solve a math problem on the board sat down without the teacher’s permission. Motovilova filed her complaint because the director had reprimanded her and because her homeroom teacher had lowered her conduct grade from “excellent” to “good.” Later that year, Likhacheva commissioned yet another investigation of School No. 22 in response to charges of poor instruction forwarded by the regional department. Her inspector, Suvorova, exonerated the school: its teachers had adhered to the curriculum, provided able instruction, conducted well that spring’s promotion examinations, and observed revolutionary holidays.
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On the very day Suvorova submitted her report, June 9, 1941, Likhacheva sent a summary of it to the regional department.88
CONCLUSION In her splendid book, In Stalin’s Time, Vera Dunham used second-rate fiction to demonstrate how many Soviet citizens during the late 1930s and after the war hoped for luxuries from white tablecloths to pink lampshades for their own enjoyment and comfort.89 After 1938, educators demonstrated an analogous desire for the satisfaction of their particular professional needs. Teachers did so when demanding backpay for a period of unjust confinement, rejecting an unwanted promotion, objecting to duties inconsistent with their professional mission, and questioning grossly unfair evaluations of their work. In so doing, they overturned decisions by local Komsomol and party units and by departments of education from the remote corners of the region to municipal and regional offices in Kirov. In face-to-face meetings instructors boldly challenged powerful figures from the local party boss and school inspectors to the heads of the regional publication industry and municipal and regional departments of education. In a remarkable display of tenacious self-worth, the director and teachers at Kirov’s School No. 3 used a district conference and their school’s own council, pedagogical conference, and party cell to object to assignments that insulted them as teaching professionals. Those very educational administrators who were so successfully defied by their teaching subordinates nevertheless found much to their liking in new administrative procedures in place after 1938. They now enjoyed and vigorously defended their own authority relatively free of petty interference by party organs and by pupils and parents. Moreover, they no longer had to investigate thoroughly, if at all, each and every letter from teachers about rude but strictly legal behavior by local officials. Yet it was teachers more so than any other group that benefited from the changing rules of governance. While they had lost a great deal when, in effect, stripped of the right to complain about the abusive conduct of their superiors, they could now require what they rightly believed to be theirs as professionals. At the same time they became practically immune to criticism from the very people they directly served. When educational organs, in particular Kirov’s Municipal Department of Education, defended their jurisdictional turf, they did so in part by rejecting complaints about teachers lodged by parents and pupils. Teachers and administrators continued to act according to a script that preserved intact a highly authoritarian system lacking due process. They did not
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ask for that system’s change. Yet teachers expected an adherence to the spirit and letter of the laws governing them and a reasonably fair evaluation of their work. Administrators in school offices and in departments of education insisted on the integrity of their jurisdiction over schools. In this scheme of things, parents and pupils (and their champion, on cue, Patrusheva at Kirovskaia pravda) were the actors with a highly visible but inconsequential role to play in the governance of schools.
NOTES 1. For a discussion of literature on a developing sense of professionalism among teachers and its relevance to late Imperial Russia, see Christine Ruane, Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Russian City Teachers, 1860–1914 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 3–11. 2. To be sure, Nérard found four examples of letters submitted in 1937 and 1938 whose authors insisted on such rights supposedly guaranteed by the constitution as gender and racial equality and freedom of conscience and religion (FrancoisXavier Nérard, Cinq pour cent de vérité: La dénonciation dans l’URSS de Staline (1928–1941) [Paris: Tallandier, 2004], 347–349). Nérard hastens to add that such declarations illustrated the disparity between reality and the constitution’s promises. Golfo Alexopoulos has pointed out that throughout much of the 1930s people insisted on social or material not constitutional or political rights: Golfo Alexopoulos, “Soviet Citizenship, More or Less: Rights, Emotions, and States of Civic Belonging,” Kritika 7, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 514. 3. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GASPI KO], f. 1290, op. 2, d. 33, l. 191. 4. Comments at meetings of party cells that combined teachers of several of Sovetsk’s schools on March 10 and April 29, 1941, in GASPI KO, f. 2499, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 19, 32. 5. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti [henceforth GAKO], f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 119, ll. 145, 151. The teaching cadre remained on the whole poorly trained. In early 1941, 65 percent of the region’s teachers and 38 percent of its capital’s instructors lacked a post-secondary degree of any kind. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 7, d. 17, ll. 297–305, and d. 128, l. 30. 6. On teachers: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 2, d. 188, l. 2 ob. For directors: GAKO, f. R-2333, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 80–81. 7. Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s”ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, 9th ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1985), 7:87. For a discussion of the more cooperative trend in the late 1930s and its continuation into the war years, see Cynthia S. Kaplan, “The Impact of World War II on the Party,” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, ed. Susan J. Linz (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1985), 157–187. According to Jonathan Harris, within Stalin’s inner circle Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov sup-
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ported considerable autonomy for state agencies while Georgii Maksimilianovich Malenkov favored expanded party control: Jonathan Harris, The Split in Stalin’s Secretariat, 1939–1948 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). The growing importance of the military and of military authority in the late 1930s may have enhanced a respect for the professional responsibilities of educational officials and teachers. 8. “On Improving the Work of Pedagogical Councils in Schools of the RSFSR,” in Sbornik prikazov i rasporiazhenii po Narkomprosu RSFSR, no. 9, 1939, 3–5. 9. See Narkompros’s “On the Fulfillment of the Narkompros Directive on Improving the Work of Pedagogical Councils in Schools of the RSFSR,” in Sbornik prikazov i rasporiazhenii po Narkomprosu RSFSR, no. 1, 1940, 12–13. For the regional department’s piggyback directive: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 178, l. 13. 10. On Bastrakov’s arrest and subsequent release: Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti (Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2001), 4:32. Bastrakov’s letter to the municipal department, February 16, 1939, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 175, l. 13. 11. A handwritten notation on Bastrakov’s letter to the municipal department indicated his request had been approved: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 175, l. 13. 12. Instructions of the region’s prosecutor of May 27, 1940, to the Municipal Department of Education to honor Kushova’s request: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 200, l. 116. 13. GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 130, ll. 30–30 ob. 14. Kolupaeva, secretary of the Regional Committee’s Department for School Youth and Pioneers, wrote the district committee and Ogorodnikov: GASPI KO, f. 1682, op. 1, d. 130, ll. 31–32. Letter to Ogorodnikov on l. 32. 15. For biographical information, Lobastov’s questionnaire for the party census of 1926–1927 in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, op. 17, op. 587, ll. 5–5 ob. Also GAKO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 46, l. 78; GAKO, f. 2342, op. 1, d. 2, l. 524; GAKO, f. 1864, op. 2, d. 402, l. 127; GASPI KO, f. 591, op. 1, d. 158, l. 1. 16. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 190, ll. 175–176. Quote on l. 176. 17. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, ll. 72 ob. –73, and d. 237, l. 23. 18. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 190, l. 177. 19. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 217, l. 49. 20. Pliusnina was listed as one of School No. 11’s two deputy directors in the fall of the 1940–1941 academic year: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, l. 28. On December 4, 1940, the municipal department relieved Pliusnina of her administrative duties: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 213, l. 14 ob. Balalaev, head of the municipal department, rejected Koshcheeva’s initial request as “groundless”: see his marginal notation on her letter in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 217, l. 49. One year later, she was not listed as one of the school’s administrators: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 237, l. 40. 21. GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 13, d. 3, ll. 179, 188. The quote is on l. 188. 22. GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 13, d. 3, l. 188. 23. GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 6, d. 43, l. 63. 24. GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 14, d. 3, ll. 71 ob.–72 ob., and ll. 100–101.
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25. GASPI KO, f. 730, f. 27, d. 42, ll. 11–13. 26. GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 1, d. 70, ll. 60–60 ob. 27. Information on the case comes from Zonova’s explanation in May 1939 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 175, ll. 40–41. For recognition of Bocharova’s teaching excellence, February 1939, see GASPI KO, f. 1290, op. 4, d. 175, l. 114. 28. On the meeting: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 197, ll. 15–15 ob. 29. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 190, l. 111. 30. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, ll. 50 ob. –51, and d. 237, l. 31. In September 1943, Bocharova became deputy director of Womens Senior Secondary School No. 1 in the Stalin district and in January 1945 director of Mens Junior Secondary School No. 6 in the Molotov district: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 238, l. 120 ob., and d. 267, l. 3 ob. 31. GAKO, f. R-2921, op. 1, d. 42, l. 25 ob. 32. See a session on March 17, 1940, of Kiknur Secondary School’s party cell in GASPI KO, f. 700, op. 1, d. 6, l. 11 ob. 33. Comments at sessions of school cells in Khalturin, Urzhum, and Sovetsk districts: GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 30, 33; f. 1603, op. 1, d. 2, l. 66; and f. 2499, op. 1, d. 2, l. 19. They also called for a crackdown on speculators whom they blamed for exacerbating the problem by hoarding scarce goods. 34. GASPI KO, f. 1391, op. 3, d. 2, ll. 77–79 ob. It also discussed the suicide of a teacher at another of the district’s schools. 35. GASPI KO, f. 1391, op. 3, d. 2, l. 93 ob. The Bureau also decided to drop previous reference to school buildings in a state of disrepair. 36. GASPI KO, f. 1413, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 41 ob. –44a ob. 37. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: Obshcheobrazovatel’naia shkola. Sbornik dokumentov, 1917–1973 g.g. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), 169. 38. Complaints from Narkompros in Za Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, September 18, 1935, 1. 39. For the Russian Republic see figures provided by Narkompros for 1938 and 1941 in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2642, l. 69, and d. 2666, l. 87. In mid-1939 Kirov’s Department of State Publishers indicated that only 14 percent (3,759 of 26,100) of used texts for grades one through three had been turned over by a number of schools listed: GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 272, l. 137. 40. Kirovskaia pravda, June 10, 1938, 4. On May 28, 1941, Kirov’s Department of State Publishers reported that at this late date in the academic year the plan for the purchase of used textbooks by schools in the city of Kirov had been fulfilled by only 37.5 percent and by School No. 3, discussed below, by only 25.6 percent: GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 20, ll. 162–163. 41. GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 1, d. 165, ll. 2–6 ob. 42. GAKO, f. R-1178, op. 1, d. 29, ll. 11 ob. –16 ob. 43. GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 252, l. 35. 44. Comments at the school’s pedagogical council on February 14, 1941, and pedagogical conference on April 11, 1941, in GAKO, f. R-1969, op. 12, d. 22, ll. 34, 51. 45. Sessions in August 1938, January 1940, and March 1941, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 26, ll. 2 ob. –3, and d. 30, ll. 26–27, 93. See especially Kornev’s remarks
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at the Council’s session of January 15, 1940, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 30, ll. 26–27. 46. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 39, ll. 15–16. 47. Information in the school’s annual report, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 41, l. 87. The report admitted that attendance ranged from 50 to 90 percent. All indications are that the lower figure was more the norm. Even members of the presidium of the school’s Parents Committee dropped out, including the editor of the committee’s wall newspaper: see the protocol of the meeting of the Parents Committee for February 28, 1941, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 11, d. 39, l. 18. 48. For both letters: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 174, ll. 105–107 ob. 49. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 174, ll. 107–107 ob. 50. See teachers lists for the academic years beginning in 1940, 1941, and 1944 in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. l/s, d. 214, l. 123, d. 237, l. 10, and d. 258, l. 2. 51. Toropov’s remarks were repeated in a report by the head of the municipal department, Serafima Ivanovna Likhacheva, written on April 4 and sent to the party’s municipal committee. Likhacheva called Toropov’s remarks “unprincipled, worthless, and unhealthy.” GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 20, l. 141 ob. 52. See Likhacheva’s report: GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 20, l. 141. Likhacheva asserted that these remarks by Zonova and Vylegzhanin were incorrect: GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 20, l. 141. Likhacheva criticized Zonova indirectly by noting how dirty and unprepared the school was for the conference. 53. GAKO, f. R-1178, op. 1, d. 29, ll. 93 ob., 97 ob., 109, 110 ob. Her harsh criticism did not preclude a subsequent successful career. In September 1942 she was appointed head of the Stalin district’s department of education, a post she combined with her work as school director and teacher: GAKO, f. R-1985, op. 4, d. 6, l. 112. In January 1945, the Presidium of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet acknowledged Zonova as one of the nation’s leading teachers: GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 156, l. 16. 54. GASPI KO, f. 1309, op. 1, d. 2, l. 9 ob. In Russian: Chto tol’ko vydumaiut, to i sypliut v pechat’. Eto i nazyvaiut kritikoi. Direktorom khvatit, narabotalsia. For the article, see Kolkhoznaia stroika, April 9, 1941, 2. 55. Kolkhoznaia stroika, April 13, 1941, 2. 56. GASPI KO, f. 1309, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 13–14. 57. GASPI KO, f. 1309, op. 1, d. 2, l. 21. 58. Kolkhoznaia stroika, May 25, 1941, 2, and June 15, 1941, 2. 59. GAKO, f. R-2019, op. 19, d. 83, ll. 29–33 ob. 60. The regional department’s order: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 23, l. 9. The annulment: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 23, ll. 10–11. Kolchanov’s letter: GAKO, f. R-2342, op. 2, d. 23, l. 12. 61. GASPI KO, f. 3488, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 28 ob.–29, 33–35. 62. GASPI KO, f. 3488, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 23–28. That same day cell members rejected Beliaeva’s candidacy in elections for both secretary and for deputy secretary: l. 30. 63. GASPI KO, f. 1293, op. 3, d. 20, l. 59. 64. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 13 ob.–14. 65. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 1, l. 17. 66. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 5, l. 29 ob.
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67. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 5, l. 34. 68. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 10, l. 18 ob. In Russian: Nu teper’-to uzhe on ne vykrutitsia. 69. GASPI KO, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 10, l. 34. On Ustiuzhanin’s indictment and purge: GASPI KO, f. 1295, op. 3, d. 5, l. 114 ob. 70. GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 14, d. 3, ll. 89–ob. 90. 71. For many cases submitted by Patrusheva, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 69, ll. 3–4 ob., 8–9, 11–12, 14. 72. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 69, l. 2. 73. GAKO, f. R-1862, op. 3, d. 129, ll. 19–19 ob. 74. GAKO, f. R-1862, op. 3, d. 129, ll. 20–21. 75. Balalaev’s handwritten note on Patrusheva’s reminder: GAKO, f. R-1862, op. 3, d. 129, l. 21. 76. The letter in GAKO, f. R-1862, op. 3, d. 129, ll. 24–24 ob. 77. GAKO, f. R-1862, op. 3, d. 129, ll. 22–23. 78. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, l. 52. 79. Rezvaia’s report: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, l. 49. Rezvaia said she was attaching the results of the boy’s test in Russian language, but the document is not in the archive with her report. 80. GAKO, f. 1864, op. 3, d. 69, ll. 11–12. 81. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 69, ll. 8–9. 82. For all materials in this case: GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 181, ll. 15–16. The Municipal Department of Education did not feel threatened by inquiries from Komsomol’skoe plemia and Pionerskaia pravda from 1939 to 1941. The Municipal Department of Education either denied there was a problem or insisted that it had corrected it some time ago. When an investigation found inadequate PE equipment or poor preparation of pupils for repeat fall examinations, the department did not respond with reprimands or punishment. On responses to Komsomol’skoe plemia, see GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 86, ll. 1–3, and d. 129, ll. 42–43, 45, and to Pionerskaia pravda, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 181, ll. 17–18. 83. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 117, ll. 54–55. 84. The original complaint of December 27, 1940, and the response on February 5, 1941, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, ll. 12–13, 18. This incident occurred at Junior Secondary School No. 1. 85. See the undated complaint and response of April 8, 1941, in GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, ll. 27, 31. This incident occurred at School No. 11. 86. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, l. 2. 87. GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, ll. 3–4, 22. 88. Suvorova’s report, GAKO, f. R-1864, op. 3, d. 182, ll. 38–39, and Likhacheva’s summary, ll. 41–43. 89. Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
Conclusion
There is a sort of primitive religious consecration about everything theatrical in Russia, and it would almost seem as if they still felt all artistic creation as a sacred process, and the actor as a social hierophant. Russian audiences, too, do not adopt a passive attitude to the theatre; they are almost physically connected with all the dramatic events; they stand, riveted by a play, within the magic circle of the stage action, as if they were gazing at the ceremonies of a deeply affecting religious cult. —René Fülöp-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia
Writing in the mid-1920s after a visit to the Soviet Union, the journalist René Fülöp-Miller, as quoted above, appreciated well the Russians’ passion for theater and the theatrical in their own lives. Many provincial Russian capitals, including Kirov, support one or more live theaters each with their designated “prima” handsomely rewarded to prevent their flight to Moscow or St. Petersburg. But Russians do not have to go to the theater to enjoy it. On special occasions at work, home, or country cottage (dacha), Russians perform their own skits complete with script and homemade costumes. The theatrical is important enough in people’s lives that some Russian Orthodox priests begin confession by reminding their faithful that “life is not theater,” that they should put aside at least for the moment role-playing and take personal responsibility for their behavior.1 The administrators and teachers in this story experienced governance, if not life, as theater. That theater became the system within which they functioned. The research and writing of this book, therefore, has been an adventure in learning how to read the documents as script and the system as 229
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theater. Over and again, whatever the facts of the matter, school inspectors recited their lines about shoddy facilities, poor instruction, and improper pupils’ conduct. With the exception of school directors who had their own tale to tell, administrators compiled gloomy reports for state and party organs following the omnipresent story line of escalating negativity. Authors of letters of plea and complaint knew what their audience preferred and wrote accordingly, many of them revising their lines after 1938 in keeping with changing tastes from Kirov to Moscow. Governing organs in both capitals prompted other actors with postcard reminders requiring investigations in response to such letters. Whatever else they may have been when not on the job, in their offices administrators played the role of the distant and tough bureaucrat who could occasionally be moved to acts of mercy as an expression of their considerable power.
THEATER OF FAILURE Especially before 1938, the quest for a New Person and perfect society required condemnation in the severest of terms of any institutional or personal failure, whether real or imagined, however minor or inconsequential. In this scheme of things, it made little difference that a secondary school in Falenki or School No. 3 in Kirov lacked the material resources and the motivated pupils necessary to enact a uniform world of rules and regulations in the “presence of every possibility.” When reality defied grand ambition, the theater performed a script exposing failures and the people responsible for them. Although they did not speak of “the art of complaint,” “escalating negativity,” “a symbiosis of errors,” or “proprietary professionalism,” Kirov’s educators comprehended and skillfully articulated these concepts. In 1933 the head of Gorky’s Regional Department of Education, Tsekher, regarded Viatka’s refusal to submit a negative report on the state of schools and schooling as an act of insubordination. Suvorov, Kizei, and Kniazheva understood the symbiosis of errors with which they were charged and mounted a counterattack designed not so much to prove their innocence as to decouple personal misconduct from alleged professional incompetence and political treason. Teachers mastered the prescribed script of “victimization and suffering” and, after 1938, adapted to a new story line by claiming proprietary ownership to the rights which the laws and regulations permitted them. In this grand theater, things as well as people had assigned roles to play. Dirt, smoking, alcohol, suicide, and sex took on supernatural powers making schools and bureaucratic offices, as it were, dens of multiple iniquities. For
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inspectors of schools sights, sounds, and smells, no less than for the Orthodox faithful with their cupolas, bells, and incense, took on special meaning. Whatever the facts, the inspector was sure to comment extensively on the decaying and ill-equipped physical plant, the din of noisy undisciplined children, dirt in school corridors and teachers’ apartments, and the smell of toilets. Sexual activity signified social and political crime and before 1938 “everyday connections” stood for the evil temptations of the common in comparison with the grand social and political experiment under way. In the celebration of the death of the suicides, Essen and Trapeznikov, they become more alive than the living. Teachers of German language throughout the region but especially at School No. 3 discovered from 1936 to 1939 that all things “German” signified political wrongdoing and even treason. Expectations merged with reality. Women played their roles whether figuratively or literally by throwing fits when suffering emotional distress, often in response to an insensitive and physically violent male. The male complainant claimed that he could not care for his family. Male officials and the female, Baibarza, performed with élan their parts as the tough and ruthless bureaucrat. Not without a few mistakes, Reshetov and Ognev learned their lines when enrolled at Viatka’s Pedagogical Institute from 1928 to 1931. When later threatened by purge and dismissal, they and their colleagues, most notably Marchukov, embraced the persona of the domineering, even abusive, administrator sacrificing colleagues, teachers, and even specially challenged children alike. At the same time they followed a script that required a routine denunciation of such “criminally bureaucratic behavior” (prestupno-biurokraticheskoe otnoshenie), to use the phrase of choice, and an approval of the arrest and imprisonment of the people responsible for it. The “little people,” glorified by Stalin as the party’s mother, were in fact often assigned a role as the “dark masses” requiring highly authoritarian, presumably male, leadership.
IRRELEVANCE OF GUILT AND INNOCENCE In this make-believe but very real world, teachers, school administrators, and higher educational officials, especially before 1938, demonstrated little interest in the innocence or guilt of people accused of various forms of misconduct from abusive behavior to counterrevolutionary activity. It was the accusation itself, the script, that was paramount. The local department of education and a local court first exonerated Chistoserdov of contributing to Mart’ianov’s suicide. Then properly prompted, the department revised its assessment and the prosecutor’s office promised to find evidence of Chistoserdov’s crime after his arrest. In 1938 at the Regional Department of Education, Liusov, before
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his own arrest as an enemy of the people, assumed the culpability of teachers who petitioned for a return of their jobs. He determined only the nature of their “real” crime apart from any symbiosis of errors before putting some of them back to work. The party never officially cleared Kizei and Kniazheva of the charges brought against them. Rather it chose to regard their personal behavior as irrelevant and to forget the accusations of professional malfeasance and political treachery. Arrested and imprisoned without proof of guilt, multiple enemies of the people, including Reshetov and Marchukov, returned to Kirov without an apology or formal declaration of their innocence, their cases dropped for lack of evidence two years after their incarceration.2 Their restoration to the party’s ranks officially wiped out the fact of their previous purge by declaring them party members in good standing since the date of their initial membership. It was as if their purge, arrest, and imprisonment somehow, magically, had never happened. The party purged Ognev three times, the last time as an enemy of the people, and on three occasions negated the fact. To be sure, after 1938 the degeneration of the symbiosis of errors meant a less imaginative portrayal of wrongdoing. Thus Sidorov retained for a time his post at the Regional Department of Education despite serious charges brought against him. At the same time with much less invention than before, teachers and school administrators wrote letters of complaint that addressed the specific nature of their grievance and the particular law or right, which they believed had been violated. Departments of education achieved an unprecedented measure of jurisdictional autonomy over schools and schooling. And yet school inspectors, teams of investigators, including teachers themselves, and internal reports all continued to find and invent negativity and render discursively schools as houses of multiple horrors. Whether individually, or as a group, educators such as those at School No. 3 or Selivanovskikh at the Arbazh Secondary School could not compel a retraction of such assessments but only an admission that their authors might have taken exaggeration to excess.
MAKING REALITY The teacher Chernykh quipped that the union’s schools inspector, Shel’piakov, needed new glasses, perhaps her spare pair, so that he might see things differently. She realized well that perception made reality. The concepts, or I am tempted to say the ideology, of suffering and victimization, escalating negativity, symbiosis of errors and its degeneration, and proprietary professionalism determined the consciousness of educators and created the discursive world of their schools and of the bureaucracy that governed them.
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Catriona Kelly has suggested that officials modeled their bureaucratic persona after the rough language and taunting manner of the public prosecutor, Andrei Vyshinsky, at Moscow’s show trials of prominent Old Bolsheviks from 1936 to 1938.3 Certainly Vyshinsky’s antics, ad nauseum shown in movie theaters, transmitted by the radio, and reproduced on the front page of newspapers, commanded duplication. It was indeed that and much more. Kirov’s men and women who dominated educational administration—Reshetov, Marchukov, Baibarza, Kizei, Kniazheva, and Zakharov, among others—had been born into humble surroundings and received little formal education in their youth. When compiling his autobiography, Reshetov for one brandished his origins as the son of a poor peasant, employment as a hired farmhand, and self-taught man before he entered a school for party propagandists in 1927. Through perseverance and calculation he and many of his colleagues had fought their way into positions of authority, and they were determined to behave in the manner that had brought them success. Kirov’s administrators were not alone in Soviet Russia in raising toughness into an art form. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Mark Von Hagen have observed that the hardened militaristic mentality of so many party members in the 1920s and 1930s resulted from their service in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921, a horrendous brutalizing conflict.4 Such service and the several wounds he received no doubt accounted for Marchukov’s aggressive behavior. Ivan Nikitich Balalaev, the severe critic of Reshetov, Marchukov, and Kniazheva, had served in the Red Army and had been imprisoned by enemy White forces led by Admiral Kolchak.5 However, most of the leading characters in this story had been too young to have seen such action, although surely the tales, true and otherwise, told by their more experienced party colleagues affected their outlook.6 It was the demands to achieve perfection without the resources to attain anything far less and the resulting preoccupation with the negative that drove bureaucrats, whatever their previous dispositions and proclivities, toward faultfinding, scapegoating, and rule by command. That same obsession for perfection and the inevitability of failure contributed to the Great Terror. They did not create or “cause” the event, but they produced an environment conducive to its eruption and provided the dynamics for its implementation. Departments of education and the regional party committee’s Schools Department provided plenty of victims, arrested and incarcerated as enemies of the people, as evidence of a failure to achieve the unachievable. Children became examples as well. At School No. 9, the teacher of history, Luchinin, callously unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse associated with the terror on the ninth grader, Nina Boriarintseva, when her performance and attitude fell short of expectations.
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BELIEF In his recent work, Thank You, Comrade Stalin, Jeffrey Brooks wrote of a “performative culture” in which the performance not belief was paramount.7 While agreeing with Brooks’s emphasis on spectacle, other historians have thought belief to be an important part of the performance. In his study of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, Stephen Kotkin found that that city’s workers mixed “an observational truth based on experience,” one that simultaneously demonstrated the regime’s failures and its ability to provide jobs, housing, and medical care, with “a higher revolutionary truth based . . . ultimately on theory,” the promise of a better life.8 In Stalin’s School, I found pupils believing in a system that “gave meaning to their present and future life and provided a sense of belonging to the grand experiment and patriotic mission that the Soviet Union represented.”9 More recently through a study of diaries, Jochen Hellbeck has found that Soviet citizens embraced Moscow and its rulers in a far more personal and subjective way. Common people as well as intellectuals unconditionally merged their very sense of self with the regime and its ideology and in so doing achieved a “simultaneous self-loss and self-realization.”10 Kirov’s educators made belief an important part of their public performance but not so much by an accommodation with prevailing circumstances or by a conscious effort to transform the “self.” Grand theater featured such real and absorbing performances that the play became a reality of its own in which fact and fiction ceased to be distinguishable. Like innocence or guilt on this stage, belief or nonbelief became irrelevant. Everyone accepted imagined reality as the objective world in which they lived.11 That this world victimized and rewarded everyone from the classroom to the party’s regional committee made it easier to accept. For each and every person the system meant the potential for great rewards and cruel penalties tripping over each other in rapid succession. Teachers lacked broad constitutional rights, due process, and a guaranteed role in decision-making; their union, as in Bulygina’s and Chernykh’s cases, prosecuted rather than defended them. Yet teachers were not without an effective voice in governance. Before 1938 they wrote letters that were read, caused a great deal of activity, sometimes brought about the downfall of abusive officials, and won, if only temporarily, their jobs back. Bulygina and Chernykh stubbornly kept on writing on the assumption that what they did was making a difference. After 1938, teachers demanded with considerable success an acknowledgment of specific rights and enforcement of specific regulations as set by the state. In pursuing their proprietary interests, teachers used creatively pedagogical councils and open meetings of party cells. Now as never before, teachers were almost immune to complaints lodged by parents and pupils.
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Like teachers, school administrators and officials experienced a system of interrelated rewards and penalties. Ognev kept coming back after three purges and died a war hero. Even as Reshetov and Marchukov mastered the art of bureaucratic toughness, they condemned colleagues and other officials for precisely such behavior and experienced, as they surely expected, such criticism (and arrest) for their own imperious conduct. Reshetov and Ognev did not question the Stalinist system when it alternately brought them rapid advancement and then made their lives miserable. In that sense, therefore, when things went quite badly for them in 1937, they got what they deserved. They might have agreed especially once they both returned to Kirov in 1940 to prestigious positions. Marchukov made Chudakova’s professional if not personal life miserable. She in turn made his life miserable. Chernykh overrode two dismissals before she finally lost her accreditation and, temporarily, her freedom when placed in an insane asylum. After 1938, officials from school director to head of the Municipal Department of Education successfully defended their jurisdictional turf against party committees and cells, parents, pupils, and the stubborn Patrusheva at Kirovskaia pravda. In Falenki, Duvakin and Baibarza despised and attacked each other, but the system protected the authority of one from the other and from the teachers who, in Baibarza’s case, complained of her abusive but strictly legal behavior.
THE INDIVIDUAL Despite all of its emphasis on the importance of the collective, the system as theater placed individuals at center-stage. In so doing, it reinforced if not a belief in the system or, as Hellbeck would have it, a merger of the self with it, then an acceptance of this theater as a necessary and worthwhile part of life. A fetching autobiographical sketch, laments of personal suffering and victimization at home as well as at work, a description of the abusive conduct of particular persons named and their personalities described, and an appeal for justice to a specific official were the stuff of which letters of complaint and denunciation were made before 1938. “My path,” the teacher, Vishvtsev, insisted in 1937, was also “Stalin’s path.” Zakharov, who had inflicted his fair share of pain on others by his negative reporting as an inspector, pleaded that the region’s Housing Department had placed him and his growing family “into this hole,” into “hell and not an apartment.” Bastrakov demanded his back pay of over 10,000 rubles so he could give his children decent clothes to wear to school. Selivanovskikh, the school director, insisted on an apology from his local newspaper for its attack on him. Teachers and administrators, Chernykh, Bulygina, Bocharova, Suvorov, Baibarza, and Sidorov, to name
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only a few, pursued their own agenda. Their stubbornness, petulance, mutual antagonisms, and friendships were an integral part of this story. Theirs was a male-dominated plot with considerable misogynistic discourse. And yet individual women best understood the prevailing story line and either challenged it or put it to their advantage. Kizei and Kniazheva denounced the symbiosis of errors and contributed to its degeneration. Choosing her words carefully, Chudakova condemned assaults on “her character (lichnost’) and dignity (dostoinstvo).” Speaking out in behalf of Kniazheva, Kulakova bluntly instructed her male superior at the Regional Department of Education, Balalaev, that contrary to his belief, “sexual contact is not political.” Bocharova grasped the possibility of using the law to overturn her dismissal and of invoking her rights to refuse to lower her pupils’ grades for bad grammar. Lobovikova, the veteran instructor, had “cried and cried” when first hearing of her reprimand, but then threatened to quit if it were not annulled because “I am accustomed to living and working freely.” Baibarza proudly acknowledged her love of power, which she openly and arbitrarily exercised. Grand theater allowed people to make a difference for better or worse. Reshetov helped his friend, Ognev, in 1930 and was reprimanded for it. In 1935 he did so again and once more suffered for it. In 1937 Suvorova found a position for her disgraced husband. As the head of a local department of education, Derzhurin challenged, although unsuccessfully, escalating negativity by protecting his teachers against a predatory party committee. Chistiakov fired so many teachers that the local party committee had to remove him. In the late 1930s, someone apparently took a personal interest in the cohort of enemies of the people provided by Kirov’s educational organs and insured the survival of all of them.
POWER Whatever the modifications in the script from 1931 to 1941, the authoritarian power of the party-state remained a constant. Teachers’ letters whether written before or after 1938, whatever their language and content, never challenged but rather demonstrated a faith in the system. Before 1938 they asked for the justice that they believed essential to the revolution’s promises. Thereafter they increasingly insisted on the proprietary rights given them by the party-state’s own regulations. In a brutal exercise of its power, the party’s Central Committee in Moscow condemned pedology without any concern for the suffering it would bring to special children and then permitted regional authorities to denounce the very people, Marchukov in particular, who had implemented the new legislation.
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The process of reporting, its discourse of escalating negativity, displayed as it reinforced the hierarchical structure of power within the state’s administration and the party’s domination over it. Any accentuation of the positive, whether by Viatka’s Department of Education in 1933 or by the occasional head of a district department, was considered as an act of insubordination. Even when administrative bodies expected, as a matter of course, their subordinate agencies to say something positive as a means of self-protection and promotion, they criticized the effort and in a ritual exercise of power demanded more negativity. To be sure, Reshetov questioned some of Narkompros’s policies, especially the lengthening of the school day, but he never challenged any decisions reached by the party’s Central Committee. When Reshetov decided to help Ognev, he asked the Regional Department of Education and the regional party committee for permission to fire Toropov. Even a remarkable array of bureaucrats in Pudem, including the postmaster, failed in the end to establish a form of self-rule.
A FLAWED SYSTEM Theatrical displays of power neither involved nor encouraged efforts by educators in and outside the classroom to build and repair schools, provide effective instruction, and teach children good manners. Nor could they inspire careful appraisal of the many problems faced by schools and a dispassionate search for workable solutions. As a dominant part of the script throughout the decade, escalating negativity impeded effective governance and teaching. Nevertheless, after 1938 hopeful signs appeared. The degeneration of the symbiosis of errors provided more opportunities for administrators and teachers to go about their business in a less threatening environment. Perhaps now Reshetov and Kniazheva in their offices and Kizei in her classroom could function in a more professional way, although the documentary record remained silent regarding the matter. Teachers and school administrators now effectively protested what they believed to be grossly exaggerated negative assessments of their work. Significantly, if only occasionally, teachers used pedagogical councils and conferences at schools and open meetings of local party cells to express their displeasure with excessive negativity and claim their rights provided by law. Administrators in departments of education acquired more space, albeit limited, in which to maneuver. From a Western perspective, one that cherishes constitutional rights, a civil society, and due process, these new administrative procedures and proprietary professionalism, whatever the very real restrictions on what teachers and administrators could and could not do, offered many possibilities for the future. But it must
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be said again that this type of professionalism and jurisdictional integrity had nothing to do with a collective role for teachers or administrators in decisionmaking nor with rights beyond those given by a party-state set on extending rather than weakening its domination over its institutions and people. They also removed any previous barriers, however inadequate, to rude behavior on the part of officials such as Baibarza. It was highly unlikely, therefore, that these new developments could soon if ever inspire on their own a larger sense of human rights and legality and create a guaranteed place for teachers and administrators (if not parents and pupils) in the making and implementation of policy in educational as well as in other spheres. Let me conclude by saying that governance in Kirov serves as an instructive window on the Soviet system generally. The archival record in other regions no doubt represented and produced a similar discursive theatrical reality that was the essence of governance there. Stalin’s grand theater was frequently spectacular and occasionally beneficial for the governed and governing. Yet precisely because of its theatricality it was fundamentally flawed when judged by the extent to which it advanced the interests of the public, the audience, which it supposedly served.
NOTES 1. On the importance of theater to Russian popular and political culture, see Richard Stites, “Trial as Theater in the Russian Revolution,” Theatre Research International 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 7–13. Stites first alerted me to Fülöp-Miller’s appreciation of Russians’ love of theater. For an especially perceptive discussion of theater, see Stites’s section, “Audience as Cast,” in his Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 152–162. 2. Since a civil court had not formally charged enemies of the people, no such court could declare their innocence. The security police simply dropped the case and a military tribunal rescinded its sentence. Neither the security police nor the military tribunal was in the business of declaring anyone’s innocence. 3. Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 239. 4. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Civil War as a Formative Experience,” in Bolshevik Culture, ed. Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 57–76; Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). These men, most notably Marchukov, Balalaev, Reshetov, and Ognev, behaved, when on the job, as the “iconic male Bolshevik” of Stalinist posters and paintings and not as the emasculated “hero,” as Kaganovsky has recently demonstrated, of many socialist realist novels and films: Lilya Kaganovsky,
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How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). Such decisive “masculine” behavior was also typical of many of the women in this story, including Baribarza, Kniazheva, and Chudakova. 5. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti, f. 1290, op. 17, d. 190, ll. 6–6 ob. As noted earlier, Balalaev’s brother, Fedor Nikitich Balalaev, a school director, had been wounded in battle with Kolchak’s forces and had lost a leg. 6. When interviewing pupils who attended Moscow’s School No. 25 in the 1930s, I was consistently struck by how glorious stories of action in the revolution and Civil War contributed to their view of the world and their place in it: Larry E. Holmes, Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 99–102, 150–151. 7. Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 68. Brooks emphasized the importance of the performance beyond the stage for “by joining official rituals and ceremonies, active citizens could demonstrate inclusion in the Soviet project” (69). 8. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 228–229. 9. Holmes, Stalin’s School, 103. 10. Jochen Hellbeck, “Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s,” in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, ed. David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 234. Sheila Fitzpatrick has contrasted the views of Kotkin and Hellbeck by observing that, while one of Hellbeck’s diarists struggled to think Soviet, Kotkin’s citizens were learning to speak it: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Happiness and Toska: A Study of Emotions in 1930s Russia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 50, no. 3 (2004): 358. Elaine MacKinnon has noted that the famed Soviet historian, I. I. Mints, could accept the necessity of denouncing others and in turn being denounced because it all conformed to the “norms of Bolshevik academic culture [and] a process that he had internalized”: Elaine MacKinnon, “Writing History for Stalin: Isaak Izrailovich Mints and the Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny,” Kritika 6, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 39. 11. On the human ability to be convinced that the impression of reality which one stages is the reality itself, see the section, “Belief in the Part One is Playing,” in Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 17–21. For an interesting discussion of several short stories by Mikhail Zoshchenko in which there is an erasure of the boundaries separating “reality” from the theatrical play and actors from audience, see Jenny Kaminer, “Theatrical Motifs and the Drama of Everyday Life in the 1920s Stories of Mikhail Zoshchenko, Russian Review 65, no. 2 (July 2006): 477–479. The “play as reality” has become an integral part of contemporary society. Many people respond to such television shows as “Judge Judy” or “Judge Brown” and to their counterparts on Russian television as real. Indeed, in many respects such shows are as much real as they are staged, and, it must be said, “real” trials in the courthouse have elements of staging. Much the same
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can be said about the reality of such “real-life” programs as “Survivors.” Such televised shows with “real” judges and “real” people challenging each other and nature are now popular fare in Russia. For more on the Soviet Russian example in the past, see Julie A. Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb: Northern University Press, 2000); James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and Alexei Kojevnikov, “Rituals of Stalinist Culture at Work: Science and the Games of Intraparty Democracy circa 1948,” Russian Review 57, no. 1 (January 1998): 25–52.
Bibliography
I. ARCHIVES Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti (GAKO) Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsional’no-Politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti (GASPI KO) Nauchnyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Obrazovaniia (NA RAO) Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (RGANI) Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI) Tsentr Dokumentatsii Noveishei Istorii Udmurtskoi Respubliki (TsDNIUR)
II. PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS Biulleten’ Narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniia (a publication of the Commissariat of Education) Kirovskaia pravda (newspaper of Kirov’s regional party committee) (Viatskaia pravda before December 1934) Komsomol’skoe plemia (newspaper of Kirov’s Regional Komsomol Committee) Sbornik prikazov i rasporiazhenii po Narkomprosu RSFSR (a publication of the Commissariat of Education) Sovetskaia Pedagogika (a monthly journal of the Commissariat of Education) Za Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie (a publication of the teachers union)
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III. COMPILATIONS OF DOCUMENTS, STATISTICS, BIOGRAPHIES Berdinskii, Viktor. Viatlag. Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 1998. Kniga pamiati. Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, Kirovskaia oblast’, compiled by V. A. Nikonov. 17 vols. Kirov: Administratsiia Kirovskoi oblasti, 1993–1997. Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii Kirovskoi oblasti. 6 vols. Kirov: Kirovskaia oblastnaia tipografiia, 2000–2004. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s”ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK. 9th edition. 15 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1983–1990. Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo v Kirovskoi oblasti, 1917–1987. Dokumenty i materialy. Kirov: Volgo-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1987. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSSR: Obshcheobrazovatel’naia shkola. Sbornik dokumentov, 1917–1973 g.g. Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974. Siegelbaum, Lewis, and Andrei Sokolov, eds. Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 200 let Viatskoi gubernii, 60 let Kirovskoi oblasti: Statisticheskii ocherk. Kirov: GIPP “Viatka,” 1996.
IV. SECONDARY WORKS Alexopoulos, Golfo. “Exposing Illegality and Oneself: Complaint and Risk in Stalin’s Russia.” Pp. 168–189 in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864–1996: Power Culture, and the Limits of Legal Order, edited by Peter H. Solomon, Jr. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. ———. “The Ritual Lament: A Narrative of Appeal in the 1920s and 1930s.” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1997): 117–129. ———. Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Baberowski, Jörg. Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus. München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2003. Beissinger, Mark. Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Brooks, Jeffrey. Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Broszat, Martin. The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, translated by John W. Hiden. New York: Longman, 1981 (Originally published in German in 1969). Brown, Howard G. War, Revolution, and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791–1799. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Cassiday, Julie A. The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.
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Index
Akimov, Mikhail Ivanovich, 196–97, 200 Alexopoulos, Golfo, 64, 93, 105n44, 224n2 Arbazh district, 30, 160, 185, 216, 232 archival record, xxviii-xx, 6, 8, 18nn25– 26, 65 Baibarza, Elena Mikhailovna: conflict with district department of education, 200–01, 235; early career of, 195; later career of, 201–02; as school director, 192, 194, 196–200, 202, 231, 235–36, 238 Balalaev, Fedor Nikitich, 138, 142 Balalaev, Ivan Nikitich: as administrator, 133, 138–39; criticism by, 78, 80, 136–37, 157, 160, 233; criticism directed at, 77, 181, 236; later career of, 220–21 Barinov, Ivan Petrovich, 73, 82, 194 Bastrakov, Ivan Nesterovich, 207, 235 Belaia Kholunitsa district, 73–74 Beliaeva, O. A., 218–19 Belozerskaia, Nina Mikhailovna, 109, 111–13, 115 Bobkov, Aleksandr Alekseevich, 79, 114
Bocharova, Mariia Fedorovna, 210–11, 216, 235–36 Bogorodskoe district, 72, 152, 208 Bolvanovich, Lidiia Aleksandrovna, 105, 140, 142 Boym, Svetlana, 1, 64 Brooks, Jeffrey, 64, 234 Bubnov, Andrei Sergeevich, 110 Bulygina, Vera Petrovna: early career of, 108; initial protests of, 109–10; letters of complaint and response to, 101, 107, 111–16, 123–24, 154, 191, 224–25 Bushuev, Mikhail Emel’ianovich, 116–17, 121 card playing, 31, 64, 72, 135, 179 Central Committee of the Communist Party: appeals to, 139, 166; decrees and decisions of, 2, 26–28, 135, 140, 142, 155, 158, 167, 177, 199, 213, 236–37; letters of complaint to and response of, 92, 94–95, 116, 118, 120, 123, 156, 210 Chekalkin, Mikhail Grigor’evich, 31, 181, 184, 198 Chernykh, Evgeniia Terent’evna: early career of, 116–18; letter of complaint
249
250
Index
to Stalin (1941) and response, 122–24, 200; letters of complaint and response to, 101, 116, 118–21, 123, 154, 191, 232, 234–35 Chistiakov, Arkhip Mironovich, 156, 236 Chistoserdov, Ivan Petrovich, 71–72, 231 Chudakova, Mariia Andreevna: criticism directed at, 80–82; defense of specially challenged children by, 158–59, 235; early career of, 78, 158; exoneration of, 166, 179–80; relationship with Marchukov, alleged, 78–79, 156; self-defense, 81–82, 179, 186, 236 Chudinovskikh, Elena Nikolaevna, 168 Civil Defense Society (Osoaviakhim), 92, 94, 114 Civil War, 76, 138, 152, 162, 233 clergy, 66, 71–72, 138, 155, 167, 229 collectivization, 5, 10, 26, 79, 117–18, 130–32, 136, 151 Commissariat of Education. See Narkompros complaints, letters of; historical literature on, 91, 93–94, 96, 104– 05nn38–39, 105n44, 204n45; by officials, 99–100, 218; by parents, 220–23, 234; postcard reminders about, 95–96, 123, 220–21, 230; by pupils, 30, 98, 221–23, 234; by school directors, 98–99, 134, 215; by teachers, 94–98, 207–10. See also Bulygina, Chernykh, Kirovskaia pravda, Municipal Department of Education, Narkompros, Regional Department of Education (Kirov) concentration camps, 167–68 Conflict Commission, 15, 210 constitution, Stalin: adoption of, 7, 99, 160; effect of, 205–06, 234; teaching of, 32–33, 44, 68–69, 166, 195, 220
Council of Peoples Commissars of the RSFSR, 92, 99 Council of Peoples Commissars of the USSR, 5, 26–27, 92, 141, 198, 213 courts, 72, 97, 115, 118, 199, 231, 238n2 criminalization of labor infractions, 199, 210 dark masses, 31, 231. See also little people Derzhurin, Aleksandr Alekseevich, 47, 56, 193, 236 dirt, 31–32, 45, 230–31 Dozorets, Mikhail Naumovich, 71–72 drinking and drunkenness, 63, 131, 230; by administrators, 32, 45, 48, 67–69, 78, 116, 131, 182–83, 194–95; by pupils, 45, 54, 71, 82, 152; by teachers, 32, 67–68, 160, 163, 207, 212 Duvakin, Pavel Mikhailovich, 195–98, 200–01, 235 El’tsin, Boris, 27, 101 Emberg, El’vira Ivanovna, 156, 165 enemy of the people, 74, 81, 162–63, 214; activity of, alleged, 78–82, 120, 160–61, 164, 180; charges against and arrest of, 75–76, 100, 129, 144–45, 152–53, 155–56, 161, 164, 166–68, 232–33; exoneration of, 181, 185, 232, 236 Essen, Georgii, 72–73, 231 Evening Communist University (Viatka), 130, 138, 143 everyday life (byt), 63–64, 75, 81–82, 186, 231 Ewing, Tom, 94, 155 Ezhova, Sofiia Ivanovna, 53, 119, 123, 154 Falenki district, 47, 67, 73, 191–202, 230, 235
Index
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 56, 93–94, 105n39, 233, 239n9 forced labor, 115, 118, 121, 199 German language: dismissal and arrest of teachers of, 42, 156, 161, 165, 208, 231; instruction in, 155, 210 Getty, J. Arch, 10, 154 Glushkova, Avgusta Aleksandrovna, 135–36, 142 Goloviznin, Ivan Il’ich, 163, 165 Golovnin, Iurii Mikhailovich, 1–2 Gorbunov, Viktor Vasil’evich, 220, 222 Gorky, city and region of, 3, 39, 50–51, 55, 137, 230 grading marks assigned to pupils, 14, 25–26, 71, 152, 197, 211 Hellbeck, Jochen, 56, 64, 234–35 history, instruction in: criticism of, 32–34, 45, 52, 68, 134, 155, 162, 220; reports by school directors on, 43–44; textbooks for, 156, 222 hooliganism, 48, 54, 68, 73, 119, 179, 189n51 Iaransk district, 52, 99, 131, 183 ideology of transformation and perfection, 13, 25, 151–52, 230 Institute for Teachers In-Service Training, 79, 166–67, 181 International Organization for the Assistance of Revolutionaries, 42, 155 Izvestiia, 92, 98 Kaigorodtsev, V. M., 196–98, 200, 202 Kang-Bohr, Youngok, 10, 94 Kartasheva, Natal’ia Alekseevna, 136–37 Kelly, Catriona, 65, 233 Khlevniuk, Oleg, 8, 10, 13 Kirov, Sergei Mironovich, 3 Kirovskaia pravda: criticism of educational administration by, 141, 161, 185, 213; on elections, 164;
251
letters of complaint to and response of, 93, 95, 98, 107–08, 111–12, 114, 191, 196–99, 220–21, 224, 235; on suicide, 73–74 Kizei, Nadezhda Pavlovna: early career of, 76; exoneration of, 82, 168, 179– 81, 232; later career of, 181; purge of, 79; self-defense, 79, 82, 179, 186, 230, 236; sexual relationships, alleged, 76–79, 156 Klenovitskii, Aleksandr Pavlovich, 196, 198, 200 Kniazheva, Mariia Ignat’evna: exoneration of, 168, 179, 180–81, 232, 236; later career of, 181; purge of, 80; self-defense, 80, 82, 179, 186, 230, 236; sexual relationships, alleged, 78–80, 156 Komsomol: appeals to, 178, 208; criticism directed at, 66, 73–74, 153; district and institutional units of, 48, 114–15, 131, 152–53, 163–64, 195; investigations by and reports on schools, 32, 72, 75, 98–99, 151, 153, 161, 164, 194; Komsomol’skoe plemia of, 67, 95, 153, 161; Municipal Committee of, 71; purge by, 67, 152; Regional Committee of, 152–53, 157; Regional Conference of (March 1936), 73; Regional Congress of (September 1937), 81–82 Konchevskaia, Evgeniia Iosifovna, 68–69, 80–81, 160, 180 Kornev, Sergei Nikolaevich, 33, 43–46, 152, 158, 164–65, 215 Kotel’nich district, 71–72, 121 Kotkin, Stephen, 10, 56, 65, 234 Krest’ianskaia gazeta, 92 Krupskaya, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, 92 Kulakova, Mariia Terent’evna, 181, 236 Kushova, Evdokiia Petrovna, 156, 165, 208 Kuvarzina, E. G., 196–200, 202 Kyrchany district, 46, 77, 209–10, 220
252
Index
Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 5, 55, 73, 91 Lewin, Moshe, 9–10, 13, 28, 151 Lezhnina, Mariia Fedorovna, 45–46, 152 Likhacheva, Serafima Ivanovna, 221–23 litany of suffering and victimization, 12, 96–100, 114, 116, 122, 207, 215 little people, 231; attitude after 1938 toward, 191, 200; letters of complaint from, 92, 98, 101, 117, 121, 123, 157, 191; praise of, xx, 91–92 Liusov, Ivan Afanas’evich, 74, 98–99, 153, 156; as administrator, 80, 166, 178, 231; arrest of, 166; criticism of Reshetov and Marchukov by, 76–77, 82, 161; exoneration of, 167; response to letters by, 119 Lobastov, Sergei Mikhailovich, 208–09 Lobovikova, Avgusta Petrovna, 49, 215, 236 Luchinin, Isidor Grigor’evich, 32–34, 44, 163–64, 233 Marchukov, David Borisovich: as administrator, 53, 71–73, 77, 95–96, 99, 153–54, 157, 233, 235; criticism directed at, 77–82, 144, 157, 160–61, 164, 206; early career of, 76; exoneration of, 166, 181–82, 232; later career of, 83, 166, 182; pedology, views on, 158–59, 236; purge and arrest of, 76, 161, 178; self-defense, 159–61, 231 Mart’ianov, Ivan, 71–72, 179, 231 Marx, Karl, 5, 31, 82 masculinity, 146n2, 182, 231, 238n4. See also Marchukov, Reshetov, womanizing Mazurov, Vladimir Dmitrievich, 50, 98, 114, 142 misogynism, xx, 82, 182, 236 model schools, 2, 53–54. See also School No. 9, secondary Molotov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich, 5, 92
Molotov district (city of Kirov), 3, 31, 49, 162–63, 181, 216–17, 221 moral degeneration, alleged, 30–31, 48, 82, 230–31, 236; by administrators, 32, 75–76, 78–81, 144, 179–83, 186, 194; historical literature on, 63–64, 70, 75, 79, 87–88nn66–68; by parents, 194; by pupils, 32, 45, 53, 55, 71–73, 179; by teachers, 32, 66, 72–73, 178 Municipal Department of Education (Kirov): awards by, 178; complaints to and response of, 215, 220–23, 235; criticism of schools by, 32, 143; defiance by teachers of, 209, 214, 216; disciplinary action taken by, 68, 80, 144, 162, 207; facilities and funds of, 30; party organization of, 7, 141–42, 160, 162–63; reports by, 40–41, 50–52, 143, 163; reports to, 41–42, 46, 49, 134 Municipal Party Committee (ViatkaKirov): appeals to, 132, 180–81; disciplinary action taken by, 76, 143, 152; reports by, 27, 71, 219 Municipal Soviet, 27, 155 Naiman, Eric, 64, 75, 79 Narkompros, 15, 40–41, 54–55, 73, 141, 165, 182, 184, 213; criticism directed at, 27, 30, 32, 44, 47, 52, 54, 140, 213, 237; letters of complaint to and response of, 92, 95, 99, 121–22, 157, 162, 196–97, 199, 210; orders and decisions of, 6, 25–28, 108, 140, 207 Nérard, Francois-Xavier, 93–94 New Soviet Person, 64, 186, 230 Nizhnii Novgorod, 3, 4, 50. See also Gorky, city and region of Ognev, Aleksandr Ivanovich, 129; as administrator, 130, 133–35, 142–43, 145, 162, 231; arrest of, 144–45; criticism directed toward, 136–37; exoneration of, 129, 132, 139,
Index
142–43, 145, 166, 232; later career of, 166, 219–20, 235; purge of, 132, 137, 143, 152, 232; self-defense, 139–40, 145 Ogneva, Lidiia Aleksandrovna, 131, 133, 136, 144, 152, 166 Omutninsk district, 46, 113–14 parents: complaints from, xix, 92, 220– 23; criticism directed toward, 45, 48–49, 215, 217; role in education of, 26, 42–43, 49, 66, 135, 159, 179, 215, 224, 234, 235 Patrusheva, 197, 220–21, 224, 235 pedagogical conference, 6, 80–81, 159, 179, 211, 213, 217, 223 pedagogical council, xix, 6, 197, 207, 214–16, 219, 234, 237 pedology, 158, 236. See also specially challenged children Pizhanka district, 118, 120–23, 156 Poskrebyshev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 5, 119. See also Secret Chancellery Potemkin, Vladimir Petrovich, 165 Pravda, 7, 79, 91–92, 94 private landholding, 117–18, 122, 126n30 promotion examinations: administration of, 14, 28, 50, 135, 185, 213–14, 217–22; decrees regarding, 26–27; failure by pupils of, 29, 179, 193, 197, 222 public and private spheres, xx, 12, 63– 66, 78, 81–82, 161, 185–86 Pudem, 107–15, 123, 154, 237 Purge Commission, Pedagogical Institute, 130–32 Purge Commission, Viatka Department of Education, 46, 135–39, 143, 152 Putin, Vladimir, 88n66, 101, 106n63 Regional Conference of Excellent Teachers (February 1939), 53, 165 Regional Department of Education (Gorky), 39, 50–51, 55, 230
253
Regional Department of Education (Kirov): appeals to, 152, 178, 208, 231–32; complaints to and response of, 93, 97, 114, 119, 122, 198, 200, 209–11, 221, 222; criticism directed at, 53–55, 141, 184–85, 201; defiance by teachers of, 215, 218; disciplinary action taken by, 68–69, 80, 118, 121, 145, 210; orders issued by, 42, 53, 71–72, 207; party organization of, 7, 157, 160, 181–85; procedures at, 14, 95; reports by, 27, 30, 32, 40, 53–55, 73, 194; reports to, 41, 52, 71–72. See also Marchukov, Rodionov, Schools Sector Regional Party Committee: appeals to, 166–67, 181–82, 209; awards by, 165, 205; complaints to and response of, 93, 98–99, 114, 118–20, 122, 159; disciplinary action taken by, 76, 160–61, 167; reports by, 76–77; reports to, 48, 53, 73, 77. See also Schools Department (Kirov) Regional Soviet, 27, 77, 79, 100, 120 relationship between state and party organs, 40–41; at the district level, 46–49, 55, 201; at the municipal level, 76, 79, 135–38, 141–42, 144, 152, 163; at the regional level, 53, 77, 153, 157–61; in the school, 44– 46, 152, 195–96, 217–20. reports regarding schools, xix, 8, 41, 232, 237; by departments of education, 40, 46–55, 71–73, 154, 216, 230; by inspectors, 14, 29–34, 39, 100, 114; by party and Komsomol organs, 71–72, 74–75, 77, 153, 161, 194; by school directors, 40–46, 215; teachers critical of, 214–18 Reshetov, Anatolii Stepanovich: as administrator, 51, 129–30, 140–43, 145, 158, 235–37; arrest of, 75, 114, 144, 156; criticism directed
254
Index
at, 76–80, 82, 132, 137–30, 142, 144, 152, 163, 179–80, 206; early career of, 75, 130–33, 151, 233, 236; exoneration of, 145, 166, 168, 181, 232; later career of, 83, 181, 185, 237; self-defense, 133, 138, 160, 163 Rezvaia, Valentina Pavlovna, 216, 221–22 right opportunism, 76, 132–33, 144, 166 Rodionov, Nikolai Alekseevich, 53, 182–83, 208, 215, 218 Rybalov, Ivan Vasil’evich, 218–20 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Evgrafovich, 4, 107, 191–92, 196, 198 Savinykh, Anastasiia Gavrilovna, 49, 215 School No. 1, secondary, 138, 162 School No. 2, secondary, 68, 140 School No. 3, secondary: arrests at, 42, 156, 231; criticism directed at, 32, 49, 67–69, 71, 134, 155–56, 161–62, 178, 213, 230; Komsomol unit at, 152; suicides of pupils at, 70, 156; teachers defiance at, 208–11, 213– 14, 216, 223, 232 School No. 4, secondary, 130, 159, 162, 217 School No. 6, secondary, 135, 140, 142, 211, 220, 222 School No. 7, secondary, 80, 165, 181, 213 School No. 8, elementary, 152, 207 School No. 9, secondary, 2, 158; awards to, 165; criticism directed at, 32–34, 45–46, 164; party and Komsomol units at, 45–46, 163–64, 233; reports of, 43–44; teachers at, 166, 215, 221. See also Kornev, Sergei Nikolaevich School No. 10, secondary, 43, 142–43, 167 School No. 11, secondary, 78, 80, 158– 59, 180, 209, 216
School No. 12, secondary, 177, 209, 221 Schools Department (Kirov): administrators at, 142, 156, 161, 166, 168; complaints to and response of, 95, 98–100, 114, 119–21, 123; inspectors at, 14, 31, 53, 99; reports of, 31, 41, 53, 69, 74–77, 144–45, 155, 179, 194, 233 Schools Department (Moscow), 116, 120–21, 123 Schools Sector, 78, 80, 181, 183–84, 194, 198, 208, 221–22 Scott, James C., 2, 101 Secret Chancellery (Osobyi Sektor), 94, 116, 119, 122–23, 151 secret police. See security police security police, 5, 93, 141; appeals to, 110, 167; arrests by, 44, 67, 75–76, 100, 144–45, 155–56, 161, 164, 167–68, 178, 207; requests for investigations by, 48, 152, 160 self-criticism, 50–51, 54, 56, 67, 77, 120, 133, 216 self, sense of, xx, 13; belief-disbelief, 234–35; historical literature on, 61n85, 64, 234, 239n10; innocenceguilt, 178, 231–32, 234; personal identity, 56, 64–65, 82, 200, 212, 234–36. See also public and private spheres Selivanovskikh, Aleksandr Ivanovich, 216–17, 232, 235 Shel’piakov, Nikolai Ivanovich, 120, 232 Shel’piakova, Mariia Nikolaevna, 143, 163 Short Course, 7, 32–34, 55, 95, 183–84, 195, 222 shortages of: academic materials, 41–44, 46, 49, 55, 93, 97, 137–38, 143, 160, 193, 201, 215; consumer items, 5, 30, 136, 211–12; firewood, 30, 45, 98, 135, 143, 193; personnel, 30, 55, 153, 193;
Index
physical facilities, 47. See also textbooks Shustov, Konstantin Andreevich, 67, 69, 162 Shustova, Faina Vasil’evna, 67–69, 144, 156, 160, 178 Sidorov, Mikhail Vasil’evich, 183–86, 221, 232, 235 smoking, 27, 31, 37n29, 44, 48, 53–55, 73–74, 135, 179, 222, 230 socialist competition, 33–34, 42 Solomon, Peter, 10, 199 Sovetsk district, 5, 48, 116–23, 154 Soviet Party School, 130–31, 136, 138, 193, 195 Sovnarkom of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). See Council of Peoples Commissars of the RSFSR Sovnarkom of the USSR. See Council of Peoples Commissars of the USSR Sozontova, Elena Kuz’minichna, 32–33, 44 specially challenged children, 78, 158–59, 231 Stalin district (city of Kirov): department of education of, 40, 49, 68, 80, 180, 215–16; party and Komsomol units at, 67, 69, 80; soviet of, 68 Stalin, Joseph, 5, 9, 31, 34, 67, 79, 99, 111, 131, 199, 235; interest in education of, xxvii; interest in letters of complaint of, 91–92; letters to, 92, 94, 101, 122–23, 151, 192; mutilation of portraits of, 31, 55, 73. See also Secret Chancellery Stalinism: historical literature on, xvii; totalitarian model for, 9; values and nature of, 19, 28 Stoliar, Abram Iakovlevich, 79, 98, 101, 114, 120, 167 Stoliar, Revekka Samuilovna, 79, 167 suicide: by adults, 212; historical literature on, 69–70; by pupils, 55, 65, 70–73, 156, 161; reporting on,
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32, 65, 70–75, 82, 179, 186, 212, 230–31 Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 164, 181, 199 Suvorov, Leonid Vasil’evich, 67–69, 162, 177–78, 230, 235 Suvorova, Fekla Ivanovna: as administrator, 49, 162, 216, 237; criticism directed toward, 50, 163; reports by, 32–34, 221–22 Svecha district, 152–53, 183, 185, 218 Takhteev, Petr Grigor’evich, 31, 69, 144, 164, 167–68 teachers: accreditation of, 55, 110, 121, 154, 235; dismissal and arrest of, 42, 66–68, 156, 165, 208, 231; numbers, tenure, and turnover of, 29, 193, 206; sense of professionalism by, 13, 205–20, 223–24, 232, 237–38; training of, 28–29, 111, 154–55, 206, 224n5; transfer of, 15, 96, 208, 211; union of, 12, 15, 32, 50, 92, 95, 108–10, 112–13, 119–20, 138, 183, 205, 210–11, 232, 234. See also complaints, letters of terror, 7, 10, 12, 56, 64, 66, 151–168, 200, 205–06, 226, 233. See also security police textbooks: decrees on, 26–27; poor quality of, 27, 43–44, 47, 52, 156, 185, 215; purchase and resale of, 213–14; shortages of, 27, 30, 33–34, 43–44, 46, 49, 53–54, 93, 97–98, 134–35, 137, 193, 217, 222 Thurston, Robert, 93–94 Tiurkin, Petr Andreevich, 95 Toropov, Ivan Alekseevich, 142–45, 237 Trapeznikov, Nikolai Ivanovich, 73–75, 231 Trotsky, Lev Davidovich, 5, 74, 98, 143, 156, 160 Trotskyism and Trotskyists, 10, 67, 144, 163
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Index
Tsekher, L. A., 51, 230 Udmurt Autonomous Region and Republic, 3, 16n3, 107, 110–11, 113–15 Urzhum district, 3, 45, 47, 193 Vaneev, Dmitrii Vasil’evich, 165, 183–85 Vasenev, Nikolai, 111, 114 Viatka Department of Education, 46, 50–52, 55, 71, 76, 129, 133–37, 139, 142–43, 208, 237 Vishvtsev, Vasilii Ivanovich, 96, 98–99, 151, 160, 235 Volkov, L. D., 109–16 Vyshinsky, Andrei, 233 wall newspaper, 45, 80, 118, 131, 219 wastage: dropouts, 29, 44, 55, 193; flunking, 29, 31, 96, 193, 221; grade repetition, 29, 195 Weber, Max, 8–9
White Army, 5, 97, 99, 152, 233 womanizing, charges of, 16, 64, 77–79, 161, 181 women: educational profession, in the, 16; rejection of criticism by, xx, 12, 81–83, 236; stereotypical behavior of, alleged, 81–82, 97, 108, 110, 182–83, 215, 231; as targets of criticism, 75, 79–82. See also misogynism, womanizing Workers and Peasants Inspectorate, 70, 91 Young Communist League. See Komsomol Zakharov, Nikolai Georgievich: arrest of, 100; complaints by, 99–100, 235; early career of, 99, 153; exoneration of, 166; reports by, 74–75, 194 Zharavin, Vladimir Sergeevich, 8, 168, 188n35
About the Author
Larry Holmes is professor emeritus of history at the University of South Alabama, where hе taught Russian history from 1968 to 2003. During the 1992–1993 academic year he lectured in Russian and Soviet history at Rostov State University in the Russian Federation. Author of the books, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), and Stalin’s School: Moscow’s Model School No. 25, 1931–1937 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), Holmes has also published articles in Slavic Review, Russian Review, History of Education Quarterly, and other scholarly forums. In addition, Holmes has written a book comparing Russian and American mentality, How Ordinary Russians Experience Their Lives and World: A Report of a Participant-Observer (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008). Professor Holmes may be reached at the Department of History, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688, and at
[email protected].
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