The Role of Rural Activists in Realization of Organizational and Mass Work on Grain Procurement during the Famine-Genocide (Based on Archival Materials)

• Main Author: Olesia Stasiuk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: RIUS 2020-07-01
• Series: Українознавство
• Subjects: голодомор-геноцид; сільський актив; комсомольці; хлібозаготівлі; архівні матеріали
• Online Access: http://journal.ndiu.org.ua/article/view/205223

The article analyzes the role and significance of rural activists in carrying out organizational and mass work on grain procurement during the Great Famine of 1932–1933 on the basis of materials of Collection No 1 “Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CC CPU), Kyiv (1918–1991)” of the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine. These archival materials contain information about the quantitative and qualitative composition of rural activists’ groups, their selection, formation, and practical actions. Also, they disclose the ways used by the Soviet government to mobilize human resources for its own maximal benefit to implement grain procurement plans by creating the necessary resource base with centralized special supply for its leading district staff to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the designated local authorities. Working with the collective farms’ activists, the party organization kept a wary eye on the implementation of the grain procurement plan, the involvement of villagers in outreach activities conducted by the party and the Soviet government, and ensuring the measures on implementation of the “correct” Bolshevist policy, their main task being the struggle with “kulaks” (higher-income farmers), “petliurivshchyna” (Petliura movement), and other counterrevolutionary elements that undermined the implementation of grain procurement plans. It is claimed that the appearance of rural activists – the army of executors and designated local authorities, carefully controlled by the prompt grain procurement management represented by the district party committees – led to terrible consequences. In fact, it was the terror that struck the “kulaks” who stood in the way of the “revolutionary expediency”. Archival materials show that the top party leadership made much effort and spent a lot of resources to form the groups of active subordinates, carrying out constant purges of local “saboteurs” due to the awareness of the activists’ role in the Famine-genocide.