C. J. Storella - The Voice of the People: Letters from the Soviet Village, 1918-1932

ANNALS OF COMMUNISM

Each volume in the series Annals of Communism will publish selected and previously inaccessible documents from former Soviet state and party archives in a narrative that develops a particular topic in the history of Soviet and international communism. Separate English and Russian editions will be prepared. Russian and Western scholars work together to prepare the documents for each volume. Documents are chosen not for their support of any single interpretation but for their particular historical importance or their general value in deepening understanding and facilitating discussion. The volumes are designed to be useful to students, scholars, and interested general readers.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE ANNALS OF COMMUNISM SERIES

Jonathan Brent, Yale University Press

PROJECT MANAGER
Vadim A. Staklo

AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Ivo Banac, Yale University

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies

William Chase, University of Pittsburgh

Friedrich I. Firsov, former head of the Comintern research group at RGASPI

Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago

Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University

John L. Gaddis, Yale University

J. Arch Getty, University of California, Los Angeles

Jonathan Haslam, Cambridge University

Robert L. Jackson, Yale University

Norman Naimark, Stanford University

Gen. William Odom (deceased), Hudson Institute and Yale University

Daniel Orlovsky, Southern Methodist University

Timothy Snyder, Yale University

Mark Steinberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution

Mark Von Hagen, Arizona State University

Piotr Wandycz, Yale University

RUSSIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

K. M. Anderson, Moscow State University

N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Russian Academy of Sciences

A. O. Chubaryan, Russian Academy of Sciences

V. P. Danilov, Russian Academy of Sciences

A. A. Fursenko, secretary, Department of History, Russian Academy of Sciences (head of the Russian Editorial Committee)

V. P. Kozlov

N. S. Lebedeva, Russian Academy of Sciences

S. V. Mironenko, director, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF)

O. V. Naumov, director, Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI)

E. O. Pivovar, Moscow State University

V. V. Shelokhaev, president, Association ROSSPEN

Ye. A. Tyurina, director, Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE)

Letters from the Soviet Village 19181932

C. J. Storella and A. K. Sokolov

Documents Compiled by S. V. Zhuravlev, V. V. Kabanov, T. P. Mironova, T. V. Sorokina, A. K. Sokolov, and E. V. Khandurina

Text Preparation and Commentary by C. J. Storella, A. K. Sokolov, S. V. Zhuravlev, and V. V. Kabanov

Documents translated by C. J. Storella

Copyright 2013 by Yale University.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Storella, C. J. (Carmine John)

The voice of the people : letters from the Soviet village, 19181932 / C. J. Storella and
A. K. Sokolov ; documents compiled by S. V. Zhuravlev [et al.]; text preparation and commentary by C. J. Storella [et al.]; documents translated by C. J. Storella.

p. cm. (Annals of communism)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-300-11233-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Land reformSoviet UnionHistorySources. 2. PeasantsSoviet Union Correspondence. 3. Krestianskaia gazeta. 4. PeasantsSoviet UnionSocial conditionsSources. 5. VillagesSoviet UnionHistorySources.

6. Collectivization of agricultureSocial aspectsSoviet UnionHistory Sources. 7. CommunismSocial aspectsSoviet UnionHistorySources.

8. Soviet UnionRural conditionsSources. 9. Soviet UnionEconomic policy19171928Sources. 10. Soviet UnionEconomic policy 19281932Sources. I. Sokolov, A. K. II. Title.

HD1333.S65S76 2012

333.3'14709042dc23

2012022661

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Yale University Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support given for this publication by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Historical Research Foundation, Roger Milliken, the Rosentiel Foundation, Lloyd H. Smith, Keith Young, the William H. Donner Foundation, Joseph W. Donner, Jeremiah Milbank, and the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation.

This book proved a difficult undertaking and would not have come to fruition without the help of a number of friends and colleagues.

Jonathan Harris, William Chase, and Wendy Z. Goldman read all or parts of various versions of the manuscript, providing, as always, insightful and helpful comments and, when necessary, the occasional kick in the pants.

Thanks are also due to Lynne Viola, Orysia Karapinka, Gregory Freeze, and ChaeRan Freeze for their availability, advice, and encouragement.

Both editors wish to acknowledge the significant contributions of Jeffrey Burds, who, with Andrei Sokolov, originally conceived this project and did much early and important work on it.

S. V. Zhuravlev, V. V. Kabanov, T. P. Mironova, T. V. Sorokina, and E. V. Khandurina ably assisted Dr. Sokolov in selecting and compiling the letters and documents that make up this volume. Professors Kabanov and Zhuravlev also contributed to the text that accompanied the publication of these documents in Russia. Selected parts of that text have been incorporated in the present volume.

Jonathan Brent and Vadim Staklo of Yale University Press deserve high praise for their patience and commitment to this project. Heartfelt thanks as well to Mary Pasti for her attention to detail and her engagement with the many historical issues raised in this document collection. The book is much the better for her editorial labors.

In the course of translating these documents, Yury Starostine, L. R. Vaintraub, Natalia Basovskaia, and Aleksei Kilichenkov provided very helpful advice and answers to all my questions. I am particularly grateful to Naum Kats, my friend and colleague at Carnegie-Mellon University, for generously and enthusiastically giving of his time to wrestle with especially opaque and troublesome passages, and for always supplying the espresso.

Thanks are also due to Robert Hayden, Eileen OMalley, and the staff at the University of Pittsburghs Center for Russian and East European Studies for their many considerations over the course of this project.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Irene Kugler, for her loving support and unlimited forbearance.

C. J. STORELLA

The Library of Congress transliteration system is used in citations, but a modified version is employed in the text. Hard () and soft signs () are omitted, but in certain combinations soft signs may appear as