Sei sulla pagina 1di 29

Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s Sheila Fitzpatrick Slavic Review, Vol.

55, No. 1. (Spring, 1996), pp. 78-105.


Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-6779%28199621%2955%3A1%3C78%3ASACPLI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X Slavic Review is currently published by The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/aaass.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org Thu Mar 29 14:45:46 2007

Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s


Sheila Fitzpatrick

"Which one of us had never written letters to the supreme powers . . . If they are preserved, these mountains of letters will be a veritable treasure trove for historians." So wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam, always a sharp-eyed anthropologist of Soviet everyday life.' Historians who have encountered this treasure trove in Soviet archives newly opened over the past few years are likely to agree. The great volume of public letter-writing-the "mountains" of complaints, denunciations, statements of opinion, appeals, threats and confessional outpourings that ordinary ~ u s s i a n s sent to Soviet political leaders, party and govern:~ ment agencies, public figures, and newspapers-constitutes one of the major discoveries associated with the opening of the archives."his

'

My thanks to Jeffrey Brooks, David Fitzpatrick, Catriona Kelly, Gary Saul Morson, Steven Pincus, Richard Saller a n d Lewis Siegelbaum for their conlments o n this article in various versions, a n d to those at Berkeley, Harvard, University of Texas a t Austin, University of Wisconsin a t Madison a n d Sydney University, as well as members of the Russian Studies workshop a t the University of Chicago, who offered helpful comments o n the paper version. 1. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1970), 93. Thanks to Golfo Alexopoulos for calling this passage to my attention. 2. My use of this term does n o t follow that of recent German scholarship o n Alltagsgeschichte, e.g. Alf Liidtke, ed., The History of Everyday Life, trans. William Templer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), which tends to conflate the subject of "everyday life" with that of resistance to authority. 3. By "ordinary Russians," I mean the people without official power o r position s o m e t i ~ n e s eferred to as subalterns. I have not asked Gayatri Spivak's question, "Can r the Subaltern Speak?" (Larry Grossberg and Cary Nelson, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988]), since in the present context, helshe obviously can. 4. Though the archives have opened u p a new dimension to the topic, earlier work o n different aspects of Russian a n d Soviet public letter-writing should be mentioned. O n petitions in the imperial period: Gregory L. Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) a n d Andrew Verner, "Discursive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasa n t Petitions from Vladimir Province," Russian Review 54, no. 1 (1995); o n Soviet petitions: Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (London: MacMillan & Co., 1958) (esp. chap. 20: "The Right to Petition") a n d Margareta Momtnsen, Hilfmir, mein Recht zu jnden: Russische Bittschriften von Iwan dem Schrecklichen his Gorbatschow (Frankfurt: Propylaen Verlag, 1987); o n Soviet complaints: Nicholas Lampert, Whistleblowing i n the Soviet Union: A Study of Complaints and Abuses under State Socialism (New York: Schocken Books, 1985); o n Soviet letters to newspapers: A. Inkeles a n d K. Geiger, "Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Press: Areas a n d Modes of Complaint," American Sociological Review 17 (1952) a n d idern., "Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Press: Social Characteristics a n d Interrelations of Critics a n d the Criticized," ibid. 18 (1953); C. Revuz, Ivan Zvanovitch Ecrit a la Pravda (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1980); Ste-

Slavic Review 55, no. 1 (Spring 1996)

Supplicants and Citizens


phenomenon deserves close attention from political scientists and specialists in cultural studies as well as social historians. In this essay I will explore the topic through an examination of the different genres of public letter-writing in the 1930s, as revealed in the declassified files of Soviet archives," through analysis of the characteristic tropes, rhetorical styles and modes of self-representation employed in these letters." I use the term "public" to distinguish letters written to public figures and institutions from the private letters that individuals wrote to friends and family. But the "publicness" of such letters was only partial; and this incomplete publicness is one of the letters' most problematic and interesting aspects. Though sent to public addressees,' a majority of the letters deal with personal questions, ranging from housing problems and grievances against spouses to loneliness and loss of faith. True, a substantial minority of the letters deal with public matters, whether in the form of complaints about bureaucratic abuses of power
phen White, "Political Communications in the USSR: Letters to the Party, State a n d Press," Political Studies 31 (1983); Small Fires: Letters from the Soviet People to 'Ogonyok' .\.lagazine 1987-1990, selected a n d ed. by Christopher Cerf and Marina Albee with Lev Gushchin (Sew York: Summit Rooks, 1990); and Dear Comrade Editor: Kraders' Letters to the Soviet Press under Perestroika, trans. and ed. Jim Riordan and Sue Bridger (Rloolnington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 5. 'I'he data base for this essay are some hundreds of c i t i ~ e n sletters (usually filed ' as "Pis'ma trudiashchikhsia" o r "Pis'ma rabochikh i krest'ian") culled from a variety of state and party archives, both central a n d regional. T h e most valuable collections of citizen' letters were found in Gosudarctvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Frderatsii (GARF, formerly TsGAOR), particularly f. 5446, op. 81a (Vyshinskii) and o p . 82 (Moloto\); Ro~siiskii gosudarstuennyi arkhiu ekonomiki (RGAE, formerly TsCANKh), particularly f. 396 (Krest'ianskaia gazeta); Ro.rsiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izl~rheniiadokumentou noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI, formerly TsPA ILI-L, particularly f. 78 (Kalinin) and f. 475 (Glavsevtnorput'); 7'sentra11nyi go.rudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'rkoi reuolil~tsii i sot.riali~ticheskogo .rtroiteltstva goroda Mo.rkvy (TsGAOR g. Moskvy), particular f. 1474 (Kabkrin); Trentral'nyi gr)sudar.rtvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskoi dokumentsatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsCA IPD, foru merly LPA, the Leningrad party archive), particularly the secret files o f the obkon~ n d e r Zhdanov, f. 24, op. 2v and 2g; Trentral'nyi gosudar.rtvennyi arkhiu goroda Sankt-Peterbl~rga (TsGA S-P, formerly LGA, the Leningrad state archive); Partiinyi arkhiu ~\'ovosibirskoi oblasti (PANO); a n d Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ~l'ovo.ribir.rkoi b l a ~ t i o (GANO). Because of tnv topical interests when I was doing this research, tny sample may be biased in favor of letters from peasants, letters from women a n d denunciations. Because the largest number of denunciations fall in 1937 a n d 1938, a n d because the only year fbr which letters to Krest'ianskaiagazeta are preserved is 1938, the last years of the 1930s are also likely to be overrepresented. 6. A recent work that has influenced my analysis of letters is David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of C,'onsolation: Personal account.^ of Irish Migration to Al~stralicc (Ithaca: (;ornell University Press, 1995). 7. Usually, but not always, these were officials. But note that public figures like writers, scientists a n d Polar explorers also received tnany letters of similar type. O n letters to O t t o Schtnidt a n d other Polar explorers, see ~o1;nMcCannon, " ~ a c k s i a ~ e at the S o r t h Pole: Realities behind the Arctic Myth in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939," paper presented at 27th National Convention of AAASS, Washington, DC, October 1995; for Academician Pavlov's urgent appeal to c i t i ~ e n s stop writing to him about to their health problems, see his letter to the editor, Izvestiia, 22 January 1936, 6.

80

Slavic Review

or statements of opinion about public policy. But these letters were rarely published, even when sent to newspapers in the hope of publication. While many "opinion" letters did achieve a restricted kind of publicity by their incorporation into summaries on the state of public opinion sent to the Politburo by Pravda, President Kalinin and other major recipients of citizens' letters, this happened without the knowledge of authors. In some cases, those who wrote letters on public matters either left them unsigned (if the opinions were sufficiently antiSoviet) or requested that their names be withheld in any subsequent investigation (if the letter was a denunciation of local officials who might retaliate). Most "public" letters of the 1930s, particularly after the early years of the decade, were written by single authors, not by groups, collectives or associations. Thus, 'yublic" letter-writing was essentially a form of individual, private communication8 with the authorities on topics both private and public. This paradox suggests two very important lines of enquiry. First, this activity must be taken very seriously by anyone seeking insight into the private lives of Soviet citizens, their articulation of identity as individuals and their sense of themselves as social beings. Second, for all the qualifications that have to be attached to the term "public" in this context, the writing and reading of these letters to the authorities is as close to a public sphere9 as one is likely to get during the Stalirl period. In a period when information flow was sharply restricted, citizens' letters (along with the NKVD's reports on "the mood of the population") constituted one of the few modes of transmission of public opinion that continued to function. There are many distinct genres of letters in the archives: complaints, denunciations, petitions, requests for assistance, confessional letters, letters of opinion, threatening letters. Patriotic citizens wrote letters of advice on public policy and signed their names. Angry citizens sent letters of abuse and invective anonymously. Abandoned wives, widows and orphans wrote plaintive pleas for help; lonely people poured out their hearts and asked for understanding. Prisoners and their relatives appealed for amnesty; disenfranchised persons petitioned for reinstatement of civil rights and passports; recent migrants from villages asked for urban residence permits; poor people asked for all kinds of "material help," including shelter, old clothes and money; parents sought to have their children admitted to universities and sometimes orphanages. People wrote letters to the authorities for many different purposes: to get housing, to get justice, to get a job, to
8. Although the communication in public letter-writing went two ways, it would be prudent to avoid the Bakhtinian concept of "dialogism" (M.M.Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist [Austin: University of Texas Press, 19811). 9. I do not use the term "public sphere" in the special sense associated with Jiirgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: A n Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

Supplicants and Citizens

81

collect child support, to defend an arrested relative, to find a missing one, to hurt a neighbor, to get rid of their boss, to warn about plots and conspiracies, to complain about high prices. Letters were written to solve problems, resolve disputes and settle scores. People wrote in a spirit of duty, malice, ambition, loneliness, despair. Most letters were signed, though a minority were anonymous. These latter (anonimki) usually contain abuse of the regime, threats o r denunciations. Most letters manifest a paternalistic construction of authority: justice is invoked, as well as compassion and charity; many writers portray themselves as supplicants and victims, emphasizing their powerlessness. Most writers tailored their self-presentation to a conventional social stereotype (simple peasant, widow and the like); still, some took pains to emphasize their individuality, relating vivid personal histories. All sorts of people wrote letters, and they wrote to many different addressees. Political leaders such as Stalin, Molotov and Kalinin received many letters, as did all central party and state agencies, especially the procuracy and the secret police. At the regional level, party secretaries were recipients of many letters. Newspapers were another major destination. Hardly any of these letters were published, though a lucky few were boiled down to a short paragraph each for the "Signals from the Localities" o r "Readers' Letters" column that some newspapers ran. What the newspapers did-and it was one of their most important functions-was to process citizens' complaints, forward them to the appropriate authorities for action and in some cases conduct their own investigations. It is impossible to know either how many letters were sent to the authorities in the 1930s or how representative the surviving letters are of the total number of letters that were sent. The only quantitative data available are incomplete and relate only to particular institutions in specific years.'0 Had I chosen to base this essay on a single "population" of letters (for example, those in the Krest'ianskaia gazeta archive for 1938), I could have made more or less meaningful statements about their statistical distribution. But I took a different approach, less like that of a census-taker than that of a botanist exploring the variety of plant life in an unfamiliar terrain. When I encountered a type of letter that was new to me, I noted it; once I had encountered the same type of letter repeatedly, I classified it as a species and gave it a name. The distinctive properties and markings of these species (genres), as well as
10. For example, Leningrad party and state institutions (probably excluding the NKVD) reportedly received about a thousand letters per day in 1936 (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 13), and the newspaper Krest'ianskaiagazeta reported a figure almost as high a year earlier (Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 10, 22 and 24 July 1935). As Leningrad obkom secretary, Zhdanov was receiving 150-200 citizens' letters a day in 1936 (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 13), while Molotov was getting about 30 a day at Sovnarkom at the same period (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 1. 259). In mid-1939 the Soviet state prosecutor's'office was receiving 1,500 complaints a day (GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, 1. 17).

82

Slavic Review

their place in the natural ecology of their region, are the subject of this article. The first genre I will examine is the confessional letter (ispoved'). This is not confession in the Christian sense" o r in the broader meaning of an admission of guilt that is the first definition of the word given in Dall's dictionary. It is Dall's second definition that applies: "a sincere and complete confession (soznanie) or explanation (obfliasnenie)of one's convictions, thoughts and actions." I' I choose to begin with this genre, even though others like complaints and denunciations were employed more frequently, so that readers will get an immediate taste of the unmistakeably personal flavor of many of the "public" letters that people wrote to political leaders, and even to newspapers and government institutions. Such letters were written to Stalin, as one might expect, but he was not the only recipient and it was not purely a "Stalin cult" phenomenon. There seem to be similar letters in the archives of all Soviet political leader^,"^ including regional party bosses. An archetypal confessional letter was sent to Zhdanov in 1935 by Ekaterina Burmistrova, an upwardly-mobile worker (vydvizhenka) who was struggling in school and in trouble on this account with her local party committee. "Deeply-respected comrade Zhdanov," she wrote in a rambling and emotional letter, "I beg you not to refuse to listen to my confession (ispovedl) and help me understand my actions and the atmosphere that surrounds me . . ." In contrast to many letter-writers, Burmistrova had n o specific demands or requests, though she hoped for a personal meeting; nor was she seeking punishment for those responsible for her unhappiness. She was simply expressing her misery, her confusion and her sense of inadequacy and rejection. "I can't go on, I have n o other resort . . . They have turned my whole soul upside down, my nerves will not stand itn-the letter is full of such phrases. As with many writers, feelings of isolation and abandonment came through clearly. Written diagonally in the margin on the last page are the words: "Comrade Zhdanov, I couldn't find a common language with them" (members of her local party committee).14 A request for "a personal conversation, even if only for five minutes" is also the postscript to a plaintive letter that Anna Timoshenko, wife of a party official in the Western oblast', wrote to the first secretary of the obkom, I.P. Rumiantsev. Timoshenko's subject was her "own un11. T h u s Foucault's reflections o n confession, grounded in its meaning in Christian ritual, d o n o t have particular relevance to the discussion that follows (Michel Foucault, History o Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley [New York: Vintage Books, 19901, f vol. 1). 12. Tolkovyi slovar' zhivago velikorusskago iazyka Vladimira Dalia, 2 n d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. 2. 13. E.g. in the Kalinin a n d Lunacharskii fonds in RTsKhIDNI, the Molotov a n d Vyshinskii fonds in GARF, the Kirov a n d Zhdanov (obkom)fonds in TsGA IPD a n d the Eikhe (kraikom) fond in PANO. 14. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1522, 11. 215-18.

Supplicants and Citizens


bearably tormenting family life." She had written Rumiantsev many letters in the past but had never sent them ("they were all of a personal character"); now she could not refrain from pouring out her heart, and begged Rumiantsev to find time to read her letter and to reply.'" A wronged wife, Sedova, wrote to the west Siberian party committee to protest both against her mistreatment by her husband, a member of the district party elite, and the brusque dismissal of her complaints by the district party committee ("They said he didn't beat you he didn't d o anything particular. We can't force him to live with you . . . It is his private life"). Sedova's story was about her misery; her plea was for a sympathetic ear: "I'm not asking the kraikom and the raikom for Sedov to live with me, but I am a human being I don't want to be thrown overboard and I don't want people to make fun of m e . . . I am unhappy if [you] push me away there will be n o point to my life." A 1935 letter from a Leningrad Komsomol member made an unusual confession about religion: writing anonymously so as to avoid trouble for singing in a church choir, she asked Stalin to close down her church and thus "save youth from that infection . . . The church singing is so sad and comforting, it's a terrible temptation . . ." l 7 Some confessional letters came from men. "I am a member of your party and write to you openly what is in my heart," wrote a young communist to Stalin in 1936. He and his wife, both Petrograd workers in 1917, had fought in the revolution and later volunteered as worker "25,000-ers" during collectivization. While they were out in the countryside, his wife had been savagely attacked by kulaks. She had never regained her health, though they moved out of the city on doctors' orders, and had recently died.

"'

I miss her a great deal, comrade Stalin. And now I find myself alone
in the depths of the provinces, far from the railroad, a n d moreover

I have become very impressionable and neurotic. The wind whistling at the window of' the izba and the black quietness are destroying me.
If I were with my wife it wouldn't be so t e r r i b l e . . .IH

Appeals for help, sent in huge numbers to the authorities in the Stalin period, constitute the second genre. "Help, they are throwing me out on to the street, my mother is 76, I lost three sons ill the Civil War, [I have] a mentally-ill child, my heart is weak, my husband is in a mental hospital. Help me quickly."'" This telegram, sent in 1940 to Sovnarkom, offers a capsule version of the typical "victim" letter, whose object was to obtain some kind of help or favor. Such writers usually represented themselves as weak and powerless, victims of a "bitter fate" and
15. Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 91-92. 16. PANO, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, 11. 172-73. T h e translation reproduces the punctuation of the original. 17. TSGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, 1. 106. 18. Zbid., d. 2224, 11. 44-48. 19. CTARF, f. 5446, o p . 81a, d. 24, 1. 69.

84

Slavic Review

adverse circumstances."' The help they requested was of various kinds: many simply told a hard-luck story and asked for money, which was sometimes given.21Eikhe, first secretary of the west Siberian kraikom, received many letters from women trying to trace husbands who owed child support. A single mother in Leningrad asked Kirov to find her nine-year-old son a place in an orphanage "or else give him to the Red Army to be brought up." "I haven't even got enough for bread," she wrote. "My son and I go hungry, everything has been sold. I have n o bedding left, n o pillows, and both of us are barefoot and in rags."" A laborer wrote to Molotov asking for cast-off underwear (belle) for his family (andlor a job as an investigator for the NKVD).':' In Zhdanov's mail as Leningrad first secretary, almost a third of all citizens' letters were about housing: crowded apartments, damp and decaying apartments, fights in communal apartments, contested rights to living space, threats of eviction, pleas for rooms from families currently renting a "corner" in a kitchen or corridor.'%olotov's mail, like Zhdanov's, was full of pleas about housing. O n e letter, signed by three Moscow children, begged him to rescue their family of six from life in six square meters under the stairs in Lubianka alley.'5 Requests for housing and other favors came to Molotov from members of the Soviet elite as well as ordinary people. Three young members of the Writers' Union, successful but poorly housed, wrote a joint letter begging for "normal" living condition^.^" A pianist living with his pregnant wife and grand piano in a room of ten square meters made a similar request; and a child-prodigy violinist asked for a car to drive him to school.27 These elite letters belong to a special sub-genre of client-to-patron communications, for Molotov, like almost all Soviet political leaders, acted as a patron to a stable of regular clients from the intelligentsia. Because of his previous position as state prosecutor, Vyshinskii's mail as deputy chairman of Sovnarkom in 1939-1940 included many appeals from wives, mothers and daughters (and occasionally hus20. For an analysis of petitions of this kind for restoration of voting rights, see Golfo Alexopoulos, "The Ritual Lament: Spoiled Identities and Discourses of Kehabilitation in the 1920s and 1930s," paper presented at 27th National Convention of AAASS, Washington, DC, October 1995. 21. For examples of responses, see TsCA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, 1. 41. In one case, the surn of 100 rubles was specified. 22. TsGA IPD, f. 24, o p . 2g, d. 768, 1. 117. For another plea to place children in an orphanage, see ibid., f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554, 1. 66. 23. GAKF, f. 54413, op. 82, d. 27, 1. 28. 24. Calculated from TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 4, 11. 3-6. The next most popular categories (in order) were requests for passports and Ideningrad residence permits, appeals against judicial sentences, requests for work, appeals from prisoners for amnesty and requests for places in educational institutions. 25. Ibid.,d. 64, 161. 26. Ibid., d. 77, 11. 9-10. The writers were Pavel Nilin, Gentladii Fish ancl Lev Kubinshtein. 27. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, 1. 133; ibid., d. 72, 1. 34.

Supplicants and Citizens

85

bands, fathers and sons) of arrested persons, mainly great purge victims. "[My husband] did not commit any crimes, and his health and personal qualities make him incapable of crime. I have lived with him for 40 years and know him to be an absolutely honest man," wrote the wife of a beekeeper from ~ a r a t o v . ' " ' ~ husband has been in prison ~ almost a year and half," wrote the wife of one Hans Erman, probably a career army officer. "A terrible reward for 20 years of honest, selfless toil!" "I ask of you truth and only truth, as a representative of the regime," this same letter concluded, "and I beg you for it, as a human being." "I Denunciation is the genre of public epistolary communication that to many people epitomizes the Stalin p e r i ~ d . " The large number of ~' denunciations in all types of archives (state, party, city, regional, military and so on, in addition to the still inaccessible KGB archives) show that this form of letter-writing was indeed common at all levels of stalinist society and that the authorities often acted on the denunciations. But I found several unexpected facets of these letters. First, most denunciations were signed, not (as Soviet folk wisdom has it) anonymous. Second, denunciation was a multi-purpose tool that might be used for a whole range of purposes, including expressing loyalty to the regime; protecting oneself from the accusation of not denouncing; trying to settle scores with competitors, personal enemies and tiresome neighbors; obliquely offering one's services to the NKVD as an informer; expressing outrage at corruption or other bureacratic abuses; seeking justice and the redress of grievances which the writer had been unable to gain through the courts or by other means. A major category of denunciation is the "loyalty" denunciation written by one communist against another and dealing with political sins like contacts with former oppositionists or foreigners and antiSoviet talk. Since it was a communist's duty to denounce, such letters usually contain little in the way of explication of motives or selfijustification. Thus a communist student at the Military Air Academy baldly communicated damaging information on Otto Schmidt, the Arctic explorer: "I consider it necessary to inform you that 0 . 1 ~ Schmidt was . closely acquainted with Tishauer, who has been arrested as a German s p y . . ., , H I Non-communists also wrote "loyalty" denunciations, though less routinely. An office worker, feeling it her duty to give information about her neighbor's anti-Soviet conversations to the wonderfully imagined "State Archives for the Protection of the Tranquillity of our Happy Fatherland,"'4' wrote directly to Zhdanov lest her information
28. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 348, 11. 95, 101-2. 29. Ibid., d. 93, 11. 319, 321, 323-24. 30. For a more detailed discussion of denunciations, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below: Soviet Denunciations of the 1930s," NCSEER report (1994), an expanded version of which is forthcoming in Journal of Modern History, December 1996. 31. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, o p . 1, d. 16, 1. 36. 32. T h e full title of this non-existent institution was "Cosudarstvennye Arkhivy po okhrane spokoistviia nashei schastlivoi rodiny i stroiashchegosia sotsializma."

86

Slavic Review

"fall into the hands of some still unmasked scoundrel" who might have penetrated the security agencies."" There were many such denunciations of neighbors, especially neighbors in communal apartments. In many cases the writer clearly hoped to get a neighbor evicted or arrested so as to free u p living space.34 Malice, self-interest and party duty were not the only stimuli to denunciation. A quest for justice was at least the ostensible motive of many denunciations written by subordinates against their bosses and by ordinary people against officials. These letters, filed by Krest'ianskaia gazeta's archivists under the heading "abuse of power (zloupotreblenie vlast'iu)," belong to a special category on the borderline between denunciations and complaints. Most "abuse" denunciations came from peasants and were directed against kolkhoz chairrnen.'"hey were appeals to higher authorities (including newspapers) to intervene and correct the misbehavior of lower officials, usually framed in terms of indignation and a demand for justice. A typical rural "abuse" letter details the sins of kolkhoz leaders (stealing from the kolkhoz, monopolizing kolkhoz assets, drunkenness, favoritism, rudeness to kolkhozniks), often labeling them "kulaks" for good measure, and ends with a call to "punish the rascals as they deserve." "These kulak scum take the grain and sell 16 kilos [on the market] for 50 rubles a pud, while honest toilers go hungry. Comrades, where is your vigilance (sic) twenty years of Soviet power and this kind of abomination and terrorizing of the dark masses continu e s . :4(jPeasant "abuse" letters might also be framed as calls for rescue. ~ "Save our kolkhoz," a kolkhoznitsa begged Krest'ianskaia gazeta, describing how her kolkhoz had been bankrupted and "brought to ruin" by its leader^.:'^ Punishment rather than rescue is the leitmotif of this denunciation of an anti-semitic trade-union boss: "In the twelfth year of the great October revolution, that poisonous, harmful bedbug, who long ago should have been crushed and annihilated, still sits behind the chairman's desk. Poluzadov ought to be slapped down to get rid of his desire to insult Jews once and for all."'4" Complaints, a genre closely related to denunciations, may be distinguished from them by a primary stress on the writer's victimization rather than the subject's misdeeds and the need for punishment. Nevertheless, the line is a fine one. The writer of the "bedbug" denunciation, for example, had almost certainly been a victim of Poluzadov's antiSemitism. Conversely, the women who wrote a complaint in 1933 about their neighbors' drinking parties concluded with a call for punishment:
33. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 29, d. 14, 1. 84. 34. Occasionly this hope was made explicit: see Tsentral'nyi niunitsipial'nyi arkhiv g. Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 1039, op. 2, d. 2140, 1. 6 (courtesy of Viktoriia Tiazhel'nikova). 35. Q.v. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap. 8. 36. RGAE, f. 396, o p . 10, d . 128, 1. 159. 37. Ibid., d. 161, 11. 49-51. 38. GARF, f. 5451, op. 14, d . 68 (4), 1. 30.

Supplicants and Citizens

87

"We women workers living at no. 10, Dukhovskii Lane ask that those guilty of causing disturbances be made to answer for it and give us some peace at night." "'I Of course, some complaints were not denunciations, for example, a letter sent to Molotov by a Moscow engineer, indignant after spending a whole day in vain search for shoes for his child:
Today I went round more than 40 shops and everywhere all you heard was the answer NO. They turned u p in one store but what kind of shoes were those, crudely made and costing 45 rubles. Of course that's nothing to you, but for a person earning 150-180 rubles o r even 250 rubles a month it is very, very expensive.. ."'

Opinions, suggestions and advice constitute a genre of their own. A wide range of suggestions for the improvement of Soviet life and state policies was offered in citizen's letters: to remove all "rub" and "slug" words from Russian language because of their servile connotations; to pass a law against blat; to limit the sale of alcoholic beverages near factories; to prohibit betting at the racetrack; to prevent discrimination against non-smokers in offices; to establish a socialist alternative to the Nobel Prizes to reward "heroism, great discoveries, [and] selfless struggle for the good of the world"; to allow Old Believers premises for religious services; to remove the stigma from "former people" and let those who were deported from Moscow and Leningrad return to their h ~ m e s . There are also occasional attempts to open ~' an ideological discussion: a Siberian tekhnikum student student wrote to Eikhe in 1935 asking his opinion on an issue under dispute among his classmates-whether it was possible to "build communism in one country." 4' While many of the "opinion" letters are essentially apolitical, others stake out political positions that range from strongly critical to ultra-loyal. Ultra-loyalists were those who not only accepted but even exaggerated regime values, especially with respect to watchfulness and suspicion of possible "enemies," "wreckers" and foreign spies. At the time of Kirov's murder, one Leningrader wrote offering to "avenge" Kirov by personally carrying out the death sentences against his murderers. After Radio Moscow played the funeral march from Chopin's Blflat Piano Sonata on the day that Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed, a vigilant citizen wrote to alert Molotov to this coded trotskyite signal, evidence that enemies had penetrated the state arts committee. Other writers warned that publishing statistics on pig-iron production gave valuable information to the fascists and expressed dismay that
39. TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7 , d . 7 2 , 1. 42. 40. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 11. 248-49. 41. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 51, 1. 144; ibid. op. 81a, d . 24, 11. 48-49; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 120, 1. 155; TsCA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d . 46, 1. 10; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 108, 11. 19-22; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d . 4 6 , 1. 11; ibid., d . 47, 1. 157; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 51, 1. 276. 42. PANO, f. 3, op. 9 , d . 10, 11. 457-59.

88

Slavic Review

Lenin's image had been cheapened by its reproduction on the new 30ruble note.4" Among the critical letters (a larger group than the ultra-loyal), signed outright attacks on Stalin or his policies are rare but not totally lacking. In 1930, for instance, a communist from Berezovka near Odessa signed his name to a letter to Pravda strongly criticizing Stalin's article "Dizzy with Success" as a weapon in the hands of the Party's enemies, and expressing the hope that comrade Stalin would "recognize his mistake and return to the correct path."44 To be sure, letters of such boldness are rarely encountered after 1930. But some later letters to Molotov and other political leaders directly criticize the addressee for specific actions or statements. For example, while the engineer who wrote to Molotov about children's shoes blamed "do-nothings in the commissariats" for shortages, he added that "this doesn't absolve you from responsibility," for Molotov had "loudly proclaimed to the whole USSR and the whole world that in the next two years prices would fall, but in a few months prices for shoes, clothing and other things increased. Oy, how badly that turned out . . ."4" More often, signed criticism of political leaders was directed at second-tier figures like Litvinov, Kollontai and Lunacharskii (to name three popular targets, suspected by many communists of "bourgeois" or "liberal" tendencies). The following, written in 1936, is one of many attacks on the commissar for foreign affairs:
What kind of person is Litvinov? A tricky fellow who long ago succumbed to the bourgeoisie. Soon he will put a monocle in his eye and play Bismarck. His opinion of 1.V.Stalin is known to everyone here and abroad. . . . Litvinov wants the laurel wreaths of the bourgeoisie, not the praise of the proletariat, which nauseates him . . . Currying favor with bourgeois ministers is not diplornacy, it's shameful!'"'

Regime policies on issues like education were often criticized, and sometimes such criticism had broader implications. For example, a low-level soviet official who described himself as "a Soviet patriot" for the past fifteen years wrote to Kirov at the end of 1932 to say that his loyalty was being severely tested by the regime's handling of food shortages. In particular, he said, he could not understand "why we have forsaken our children. My wife works in railroad school no. 5 in Pskov. She says that when a doctor inspected the children's health it turned out that about 90 percent were weakened from malnutrition.. ." How could this happen when "we are building the future of all mankind"? 47 Distinguished by their proprietorial attitude to the regime and confident assumption of the right to reprimand it, Leningrad workers were
43. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d . 727, 1. 341; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 51, 11. 21323; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d . 1554; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82., d . 56, 1. 331. 44. GARF. f. 3316, op. 16a, d . 446, 1. 190. 45. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 51, 11. 248-49. 46. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d . 226, 1. 38. 47. Ibid., op. l b , d. 449, 1. 7 3 .

Sufllicants and Citizens

89

particularly likely to write admonitory letters. Leningraders' criticisms were directed most frequently at elite privileges and the Party's growing alienation from the working class.48 Sometimes they conveyed a veiled threat, as in the signed letter to Zhdanov, dated June 1937, in which a communist worker (who had just been fired for drunkenness and absenteeism) ,complained that the factory bosses had become a new ruling caste, treating the workers even worse than the capitalists had done: 'tJust think, comrade Zhdanov, how many of us are candidates for the trotskyites, although I always struggled and will struggle for socialism against capitalism, but as for others in the same position as I am, I can't answer for them, only I hear them cursing Soviet power.4" Anonymous letters often expressed similar sentiments. A 1935 anonimka from Leningrad complains that "the apparats . . . are filled with princes, aristocrats and clergy[.] These creatures sit in all the apparats and most have party cards. But the worker has n o right to work in the apparats[,] they are all driven all out so as not to be an eyesore . . ." "' The anonimka is a genre with its own characteristic tropes. O n e trope is anger, often explosively expressed, directed against members of the old and new privileged classes, foreigners andJews. The Russian revolution was part of an international Jewish conspiracy, and Stalin and Kirov had sold out to the Jews, according to one Leningrad anonimka of 1934. Workers were fed u p with Jewish domination and would soon end it by another revolution, another asserted." The threat in the second letter is not unusual. After Kirov's murder, many anomimki make sinister reference to it, warning, for example, that if prices were not lowered, other political leaders would share Kirov's fate." A 1936 anonimka from a convict, complaining that "only women and orphans remain in Soviet collective farms and the husbands of these women all sit in damp jails like your Thalman," warns that there might be uprisings and war if the regime did not release "at least the kolkhozniks" from prison."" Sarcasm is another characteristic trope in anonimki. Writers commonly either focused their barbs on the gulf between the rhetoric of "great Soviet achievements" and Soviet reality, or ridiculed the regime's hypocrisy in condemning capitalist governments for oppressing their citizens. "So this is a glorious epoch," wrote one anonymous writer in 1936. But "for me the following thing remains incomprehensible . . . We have a colossal army of convicts, tens of millions of them, who are overflowing the jails, the camps, and the [labor] colonies . . .
48. E.g. T s G A IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 48, 1. 223. 49. T s G A IPD, f. 24, o p . 2g, d . 47, 11. 147-49. 50. Ibid., o p . 2v, d. 1518, 1. 62. 51. Ibid., d . 1518, 1. 9 , and d. 727, 1. 367. 52. Ibid., d . 1518, 11. 1, 14. 53. G A N O , f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, 1. 148. Ernst T h a l m a n was a German communist leader whose irnprisolllllent by the nazis was the subject o f Inany indignant articles in the Soviet press.

90

Slavic Review

In the majority of cases the accusation a ainst them is completely braAn anonimka sent to Praurla zen, crass and based entirely on lies . . in 1930 notes sarcastically that the first five-year plan had omitted to budget for the necessary building of prisons: "the supreme potentate (Caucasian Prince Stalin) and his faithful servant (peasant starosta Kalinin) forgot about that . . ."55
.jPr4

The language" of Soviet "public" letters also merits attention. Many letters choose a comradely salutation as the mode of address: "Dear (dorogoi) comrade," as in "Dear comrade Vyshinskii" or "My dear comrade Stalin,"" though the more formal "respectedldeeply respected (uvazhaemyi, mnogouvazhaemyi) comrade" also occurs. Communists and Komsomol members often signed their letters "with communist (Komsomol) greetings," or sometimes "with comradely greetings." Party members might give the number of their party card (especially when writing denunciations). Workers often identified themselves by factory as well as by name. In some letters, political leaders are addressed with the familiar second person singular (ty),'%ut a sense of intimacy is more often conveyed by other means. "Give some thought to this question, talk it over in the Kremlin," a communist worker advised Zhdanov in a letter on foreign policy."' " ~ k h ! Mikhail Ivanovich! Check this o u t . . . ," wrote an anonymous denouncer of plots to President Mikhail ~alinin.~' Some uneducated writers used the salutation "Good day!" One letter to Krest'ianskaiagazeta begins as if the writer had just knocked on the editorial door: "Good day, comrade staffers! A kolkhoznik is here to see you." Some writers attempted to blend the intimacy of comradeship with that of supplication, as in a communist agronomist's appeal whose flavor is hard to convey in English: "Touarishch Zhdanou, chutkii, rodnoipomogi (Comrade Zhdanov, dear sensitive one, help me).""%thers softened comradely criticism with a sense of shared historical mission, as in the exalted ending of a worker's complaint about elite privileges:":4 "I remain, with respect and in the conviction of the victory of communism, N.A. Kosoch. 2 April, 1937, 3 o'clock at night. My five little
54. GARF, f. 3316, op. 40, d. 14, 1. 100. 55. Ibid., o p . 16a, d. 446, 1. 100. 56. T h e argument in this section does not depend on the Saussurian disti~lction between langue and parole (Ferdinand de Saussure, Cour.ve i n General Lin,gwistics, ecl. and trans. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye [New York: Philosophical Library, (1!)59)]). 57. E.g. GARF, f. 5446, o p . 81a, d. 93, 1. 323; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2224, 1. 46. 58. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. l b , d. 449,l. 72 (1932 letter to Kirov from a young rvol.kei-vydvizhenets). 59. TsGA I P D , f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226, 1. 38. 60. GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070, 1. 4. 61. T h e Russian, retaining the original punctuation and spelling, is "dohry den, tavarichi robotniki. K v a m kolkhoznik." RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, 1. 289. 62. TsCA IPI), f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 147. 63. Ibid., d. 48, 1. 223 (my emphasis).

Sufllicants and Citizens

91

ones sleep, and I write for the future." The comradely style could also take a belligerent turn. A communist's denunciation of a low-level official sent to a regional administrator opens with a comradely "Good day, comrade Denisov" but ends harshly: "This bastard should be driven out of the trade union. If you don't take measures, I will write directly to the Central Committee of the Party."64 Epithets like "leader of the proletariat" or "comrade-in-arms (soratnik) of Stalin" and grandiose terms like vozhd' (leader) appear in citizens' letters of the 1930s, though perhaps less often than one might expect. For example, a Leningrad worker petitioning "comrade Zhdanov" in 1937 addressed him as "leader (vozhd') of the Leningrad bolsheviks [and] comrade-in-arms of the leader of peoples, comrade Stalin." " o n the whole, however, the flattering "courtier's" style is more likely to come from the intelligentsia and the new privileged class than from the lower classes, and to be found in ceremonial collective epistles rather than individual letters.""'Our dear and beloved Andrei Aleksandrovich," was how the painter Mark Shafran prefaced his request that Zhdanov pose for his portrait;" and a mathematician seeking support for his path-breaking work, Bases o a New Algebra, not only f implored Zhdanov to extend his "personal protection and patronage (zashchita i pokrovitel'stvo)" but also sent in two acrostics that he had composed on the names of Stalin and ~irov."' Simpler people used simpler methods of flattery. "Knowing your love and care for child r e n . . ." wrote a mother of three to Zhdanov, asking for "material help" (money); "Knowing your exceptional responsiveness (chuthost'). . . ," wrote a petitioner to ~ikhe.""The image of the political leader as a benevolent father who protects and pities his children, o r as a trusted and understanding friend, is often encountered in the letters. "Be a good father" and protect us from the temptations of religion, the Leningrad komsomolka appealed to Stalin. "I beg you as a father, as a friend of the people," the betrayed wife wrote to Rumiantsev. "My only friend, who deeply understands the human heart," the distraught widower addressed Stalin. "Justice" was regularly invoked by letter-writers. "Where is truth and justice?" "Comrades, answer us please where we can find justice.. . ?" "If there is any justice in Soviet power, punish those peo~le."~" "Duty" appears equally often but only in one specific context:
64. PANO, f: 3, op. 9, d. 801, 1. 209. Despite the familiar greeting, the writer. noted that he was not personally acquainted with Denisov. 65. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 237. 66. Congratulatory telegrams o n International Women's Day sent to Zhdanov by branches of the wives' volunteer movement, Obs/zchestvennitsa, were full of flowery epithets like "loyal comrade in arms of comrade Stalin" and "leader of the toilers of Leningrad oblast'" (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 2219, 11. 185-88). 67. TsCA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2219, 1. 1. 68. Ibid., d. 1544, 11. 184-92. 69. Ibid., op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 2; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 1173. 70. GARF, f, 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4), 1. 30; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 65, 11. 212-14; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 24.

Slavic Review "I consider it my duty (party duty, duty as a citizen) to inform you . . ." is one of the standard preambles to a d e n ~ n c i a t i o n . ~ ' While much research remains to be done on the relationship between Soviet letters to authority and prerevolutionary petitions, it is clear that many letters of the 1930s use conventions that predate the Soviet regime. Construing an authority figure as a "beloved father," appealing for justice (without reference to law), complaining to higher authority about local abuses, writing pathetically of "the crust of bread" that was so often lacking-all these are as standard in the repertory of nineteenth century petitions as in the those of the 1 9 3 0 s . ~ ~ In the mid-1920s, a Soviet official categorized citizens' letters concerning taxes as follows: 1) typed petitions written by lawyers, citing laws and administrative instructions; 2) hand-written scribes' petitions ("big letters with curlicues") using emotional rather than legal argumentation; and 3) personal pleas, often with autobiographical details, clumsily written on dirty scraps of paper.7:4By the 1930s the third type of letter was flourishing, the first had largely disappeared, while the second survived mainly in the countryside, where scribes' familiar "curlicues" decorated some letters right up to World War 11. It is not unusual for writers to have embellished their letters with literary or historical references. "The voice of the kolkhoznik dies away, a voice crying in the wilderness," wrote a peasant (a comparatively rare Biblical reference). "[They are] driving me to the edge, as the Nicholai 1's black band of butchers drove Pushkin," declaimed another. A worker warned that leaders alienated from the masses might meet the fate of "the Greek hero of myths Antzeus [who] severed himself from mother earth and suffocated in the air and his only strength was the mother earth who bore him." 74 Drawing on literary and cinematic sources, Svetlana Boym has recently suggested that grafomaniia-the urge towards pisatel'stuo (writerliness) in those without literary talent-moved out of its nineteenth century intelligentsia home to become an "all-people's" affliction during the Soviet period.7"~aving aside the red herring of literary talent or its absence, the urge to write for the sake o writing is very marked in f popular letter-writing of the 1930s. The letters often convey an exhiliration and delight in the power to use language that reminds the reader how recently some of their writers had acquired literacy. For
71. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 84; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, 1. 97; GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070, 1. 4. 72. For the nineteenth century, see Mommsen, HilfMir, 54, 56, 104-5, and passi~n; for Soviet examples, see above ("father," 'tjustice"), and GANO, f. 47, o p . 5, d. 179, 1. 170; TsCAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, 1. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 68 ("crust"). 73. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 826, 11. 23-24. 74. RGAE, f. 396, o p . 10, d. 142, 1. 177; ibid., d. 26, 1. 199; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 'Lg, d. 48, 1. 223. 75. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies ofEveryduy Lifr in Kzissia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 200-5.

Supplicants and Citizens

93

the historian (and n o doubt the original addressee as well), reading such letters may be a moving experience. Writing letters to the authorities surely was, or at least could be, as much a form of popular culture and an expression of popular creativity as the amateur theatricals and balalaika playing that are usually listed under these headings. The line between popular letter-writing and popular writing in the literary sense is a fine one, and there are signs that many amateur writers refused to draw it. The readers who deluged Krest'ianskaia gazeta with letters of complaint, denunciation and enquiry were also spontaneously sending the newspaper "artistic" production-drawings, poems, and short stories-that they hoped would be published.7"Sometimes the genre distinction simply melts away: anonymous indictments of Soviet power are crafted in classical quatrains, while "abuse of power" letters come illustrated with cartoons. In one such case, the writerlartist ended his letter by requesting a job as a caricaturist with the newspaper.77 An item in Krest'ianskaia gazeta's mail that straddles the boundary between letter-writing and popular art is an essay in fairy-tale (skazka) form under the title "Exploits (podvigi) of the Hooligan Knave S.M. Tychinkin."

'"

In the dark little village of M. Kemary .. resounded the name of the First of August kolkhoz . . . Why it grew (sic) communist kolkhoz chairman E.E.Vaseev was sent to it with Soviet spirit and a communist heart. Vaseev did not touch strong drink, and all the masses loved Vaseev . . . But for those who were stealing from the kolkhoz, life became dreary. Vaseev would not let them steal from the kolkhoz, [so] they threw themselves on Vaseev, wanting to force him out, but the stalwart communist pushed off the rascals. Who was the head of the rascals? Tychinkin Stepan Mikhailovich . . . There was n o end to the beatings and hooliganism, there is not enough paper to describe all his tricks . . .

The collective authors7" asked the newspaper "to publish our note (zametka),"a commonly expressed desire, despite the infrequency of its realization. Many writers to newspapers also indicated their commitment to publication by giving titles to their letters, usually modeled on headings in the Soviet press: "Which of Them Are Class Enemies?" "Take
76. Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 10 July 1935. In the period 5-8 July, the paper received 90 drawings and 45 poems and short stories. Citizens also sent poems and other literary compositions to obkom secretaries: see, for example, TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554, 1. 66. 77. See KTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 79 for the quatrains and KGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 67, 1. 33, and ibid., d. 129, unpag., for cartoons. T h e request for a job is in d. 129. 78. RGAE, f. 396, o p . 10, d. 26, 11. 137-39. 79. There were 6 signatories, 2 identifying themselves as "sympathizers [of the Communist Party]" and 4 as "kolkhozniks."

94

Slavic Review

Appropriate Measures," "Illegal Business," "Is This Not Wrecking?" "I A kolkhoz veterinary feldsher (and perhaps, judging by his elegant script, a former scribe), V.V. Smirnov headed his denunciation of a kolkhoz chairman with a whole array of decoratively-inscribed slogans: "A serious signal from 'Red Potiagino' kolkhoz, Viatskii sel'sovet, Bollshesollskii raion, Iaroslavll oblastl. THERE CAN BE NO MERCY FOR ENEMIES OF THE SOVIET PEOPLEITHEY ARE PROTECTING ENEMIES UNPUNISHED CRIMINALS"~' Even letters not written to newspapers were sometimes given titles by their authors." This brings us back to an earlier question about the "publicness" of public letter-writing. Given the very small chance of getting a letter published and the much greater chance of evoking official response (investigation of a dispute, punishment of an offender, accelerated access to a scarce good),"' the rational goal of writing letters was not publication but official intervention. Yet many letter-writers persisted in asserting the contrary. This suggests that the flood of readers' letters to newspapers and journals in the era of gorbachevian glasnost184was no accident and that perhaps what Soviet letter-writers wanted all along was to get their letters into print and their opinions into the public sphere. Letter-writers of the Stalin era did their best to master the language Soviet epithets, party jargon and rhetorical devices were of ~ r a v d a . ~ " used exuberantly and sometimes incongruously: "It is not a kolkhoz but a nest of gentry and gendarmes," "A CLUSTER OF FORMER PEOPLE has gathered in the house," "Degenerate elements have wormed their way onto the kolkhoz board," "We are now waging decisive war with grabbers (machi)," "Revolutionary legality was brazenly violated," "They were deaf to [my] signals," "[He] took the path of terror," "More than once I unmasked [them].., but the district leaders hide my unmaskings under the blanket," "An incorrigible opportunist and hidden trotskyite," "A self-seeker (shkurnik) with a party card," "This handful of

---

80. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 86, 1. 406; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 295; RGAE, f. 396,op. 1 0 , d . 142,l. 1 4 1 ; C A R F , f . 3 3 1 6 , o p . 6 4 , d .1854,1.258. 81. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, 11. 24, 29-32. 82. Q.v. the 1936 letter to Rumiantsev headed "A sel'kor's signal," Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 219. 83. Of letters sent to Krest'ianskaia gazeta in 1937-1938, less than 1 % were published but alrnost 60% were sent out for investigation, and responses (outcomes) were reported on 33% (RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 857, 11. 27-31 [Orgburo resolution "On the situation in Krest'ianskaia gazeta," 12 April 19381). 84. See Cerf et a]., eds., Small Fires (1990) and Riordan and Bridger, eds., Dear Comrade Editor (1992). 85. By "the language of Pravdu," I mean the vocabulary, rhetorical devices and conventions of style and format characteristic of the central party newspaper. This is not a Foucauldian discourse, on which see Michel Foucault, The Archeology ofKnowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. E.M.Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).

Supplicants and Citizens

95

kulak hold-outs (nedobitki)," "Whiteguardists, trotskyites and wreckers." "5 Quotations from Stalin are to be found in the letters of the 1930s, though less often (and more ambiguously) than one might imagine on the basis of the "model letters" occasionally published in the press.x7 A handful of phrases seem to have lodged firmly in the popular mind. "Cadres decide everything" was one of them, used both as boilerplate and as a pointed remark from mistreated employees." Another was "Life has become better, life has become more cheerful"-sometimes used ironically.") ~ u perhaps the most popular of all Stalin's tropes in the late t 1930s was a phrase borrowed from Aesop's fables, "wolves in sheep's clothing." "Let them uncover who she is, tear off the mask . . . [from] the wolf in sheep's clothing"; "Those wolves in sheep's clothing are happy to harm our party in the kolkhoz at every turn"; "We need to know how to recognize the enemy in sheep's clothing who is conspicuously showing devotion to Soviet power but thinking like a wolf."'" Like memoirists and actors, those who write letters to the authorities are involved in a sort of performance. Many cast themselves in particular roles and draw on established social stereotypes and rhetorical conventions in enacting them.''2 There are many orphans in the Soviet letter files-perhaps even more than there were in real life."" Some writers cited their parentless state and upbringing in an or-

86. RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 158; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d . 79, 1. 86; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, 1. 76; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 1434; ibid., o p . 11, d. 41, 1. 31; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d . 161, 1. 49; ibid., d. 87, 1. 281; ibid., d. 86, 1. 391; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 10, 1. 2; ibid., d. 9, 1. 8; GANO, f. 47, o p . 5, d. 206, 1. 77; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 9, 1. 108. 87. For a "model" letter allegedly frotn kolkhozniks, headed "Destroy the Enetny without Mercy," see Krest'ianskaiagazeta, 25 January 1938, 3. O n the treatment of Stalin in Leningrad letters, see Sarah Davies, "The 'Cult' of the Vozhd': Representations in Letters from 1934-1941," forthcoming in Russian History. 88. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, 11. 39-40; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534, 11. 176, 183. 89. See TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, 1. 37 for a literal use (about Leningrad's soccer team); a n d ibid., d. 3548,l. 62 (for popular comments o n price increases reported by the NKVD). 90. In his speech to the February-March plenum (1937), Stalin asked why "our leading comrades ... have not managed to discern the real face of the enemies of the people, have not managed to recognize wolves in sheep's clothing, have not managed to tear the masks off them" (I.V.Stalin, Robert H. McNeal, ed. Sochineniia, [Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 19671, vol. 1 [XIV], 190 [my emphasis]). 91. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 1; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128, 1. 159; GARF f. 3316, op. 64, d. 1854, 1. 258. 92. These epistolary performances differ in important respects from the face-toface interactions described by Erving Goffman in The Presentation ofSeCf in Everyday Lqe (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1959). 93. In seventeenth century Russian petitions, virtually all petitioners refer to themselves as "orphans" of their lords (siroty tuoi). See Krest'ianskie chelobitnye XVII u. Iz sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

96

Slavic Review

phanage as evidence of their impeccable Soviet values: "vigilance and justice were implanted in my ~ h i l d h o o d . " "Others used them as a ~ synecdoche for the powerlessness and vulnerability that must arouse compassion. The orphaned Churkov siblings, children of deported kulaks, played on this response when petitioning for the return of the family izba." The presentation of self as weak, poor, uneducated, powerless was perhaps most typically a ploy used by women and children. But it was also used by peasants. "Comrades, help, we appeal to you for help, for mental capacity (sic) . . ." "We are uneducated (malog-ramotnye), it is easy to fool and rob us.""" Women writers frequently wrote as mothers. In many cases, this was because they were writing on their children's behalf, asking that a son or daughter be admitted to college, given medical treatment or released from prison. Mothers of Red Army men had a practical purpose for thus identifying themselves, since a range of special benefits were available to them."' Some women cite the fact that their children were communists, Komsomol members or vydvizhentsy as evidence of their worth as Soviet citizens. Women asking for "material help" invariably mention the plight of their children, barefoot and in rags, "without a crust of bread." A peasant woman writing anonymously to condemn cursing and hooliganism in her village signed the letter "Mother." Male letter-writers often presented themselves as patriots. A statement of communist party membership was one obvious way of making this claim, but many reinforced it with references to specific services to the revolution (for example, serving in the Red Guards, volunteering for the Red Army, fighting bandits in the far east or the Caucasus). As an epistolary trope, shedding blood in the civil war had the greatest resonance. "I am a communist since 1918 and lost my health (an arm) for the new life." "I have already paid my debt with blood, fighting on the fronts of the civil war." "[We] did not spare [our] blood and fought the parasites." In anonimki, a favorite legitimizing device was to sign the letter "Veteran of the Civil War" or (in Siberia) "Red Partisan." ""' There were women patriots, too. O n e of them, asking Kirov's help on a family matter in 1934, described herself as "a member of the bolshevik party since March 1917" who had been arrested by Junkers in 1917, taken part in the battle of Pulkovo and so on. Three years later, the

""

""

94. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534, 11. 176, 183. 95. Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 129-32. 96. From letters to Krest'ianskaiagazeta in RGAE f. 396, o p . 10, d. 161, 1. 289; ibid., d. 128, 11. 66-69 (paraphrase). 97. See RGAE, f. 396, 7. d . 26, 11. 207-8. 98. GARF, f. 3316, o p . 41, d. 85, 11. 41-43. 99. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 11. 248-49; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, 1. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 159. 100. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d . 2 7 , l . 172; GANO, f. 47, o p . 5, d. 179,l. 170; PANO, f . 3 , o p . 9 , d . 9 , 126.

Supplicants and Citizens

97

same woman wrote to Zhdanov asking help in a new family crisis. It is interesting to note that this time-no doubt in response to the public revaluation of the family associated with the debate on abortion and anti-abortion law of 1936-she introduced a subtle change into her self-representation: not only a revolutionary patriot now but also a parent, she appealed to Zhdanov in 1937 "as a member of the bolshevik party since March 1917 and as the mother o three children." l o ' Another f form of patriotic identification was as a correspondent from the factory or village (rabkor,sel'kor), that is a public-spirited citizen who wrote to the newspaper on a regular basis, voluntarily and without pay, "signaling" local bureaucratic inefficiency and "unmasking" wrongdoers. The rabkorlsel'kor movement of the 1920s had much in common with that of American whistleblowers in the 1970s, except that Soviet targets were not corporate executives but anti-Soviet engineers and corrupt kolkhoz chairmen. During collectivization, a number of village correspondents were murdered by "kulaks." Though the formal institution was lapsing by the late 1930s, the image of the fearless truth-teller retained its appeal and many peasant authors of "abuse" letters adopted the sel'kor persona. "I am persecuted as a sel'kor" was a familiar refrain."" The trope of past oppression-prerevolutionary poverty, misery and exploitation-served both as an appeal to compassion and as evidence of pro-Soviet sympathies. Kolkhozniks described themselves as former poor peasants and batraks; Old Believers pointed out that they they had been persecuted under the tsar."':' "I was illegitimate, my mother worked as a batrachka in Tver guberniia," wrote a communist administrator embroiled in a local feud, seeking to establish her credentials as one who had suffered under the old regime. "In childhood I experienced great poverty," noted the wife of an arrested factory manager in her appeal on behalf of her husband in 1937.Io4 Self-identification as a worker was another way of establishing Soviet loyalties. In the eyes of "worker" writers, this status carried special rights, including the right to criticize the regime. Such men expected the authorities to listen to them and the archival record suggests that their expectations were justified. They announced their worker identity proudly; for example, one writer signed himself "worker Slashchev, Vasilii Fedorovich, member of the union of river transport of Bobrovskii creek, employed continuously in river transport since 1908 u p to the present day." "'"Of course, the "worker" label was also used manipulatively. Anonymous letter writers frequently signed themselves

101. Letters in TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 11. 335-36; a n d ibid., o p . 2g, d. 47, 1. 272 (my emphasis). 102. RGAE, f. 396, d. 86, 11. 391-92; Snxolensk Archive, WKP 386, 144-47. 103. RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 159; a n d Smolensk Archive, WKP 190, 26; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 157. 104. TsGA IPD, f. 24, o p . 2v, d. 1514, 1. 23; ibid., d. 2220, 1. 10. 105. GANO, f. 288, op. 2, d. 902, 1. 6.

98

Slavic Review

"Odessa worker," "Production worker," "Worker at the Putilov plant," "Old worker" and the like.lo6 In the course of the 1930s, writers increasingly often represented themselves as achievers. The quintessential achievers of the decade were shockworkers (udarniki) and stakhanovites, over-fulfillers of norms who were singled out for rewards and public recognition. Three Komsomol workers from the Moscow metro construction project added the phrase "decorated shockworkers (udarniki-znachkisty)" to their signatures on a denunciation of politicians in their native south 0setiia.Io7 Another writer identified herself as "an obshchestvennitsa, initiator of the movement of wives of engineering-technical personnel in the city of Leningrad, for which I was decorated by the government." " ' 9 0 be a vydvizhenets-that is, someone promoted from the lower classes into a while-collar administrative or professional position-constituted achievement, and a number of letter-writers described themselves in this way."'" Usually this conveyed pride in having risen from humble origins. But Sedova, the Siberian wronged wife encountered earlier, gave it a different twist, perhaps unintentionally, in a poignant final sentence that made upward mobility seem just another form of uprooting: "I am a vydvizhenka, an orphan." "" It would be misleading, however, to give the impression that all letter-writers presented themselves as embodiments of a few recognizable social types. O n the contrary, a distinct sub-group of writers stressed their individuality and the particularity of their experiences. I l l The repertoire of such writers might include philosophical reflection, irony (as distinct from the sarcasm that was a stock-in-trade of many expos6 letters), introspection, emotional display and analysis of psychology and motivation. Confession (ispoved') is the genre in which individualized autobiography and uninhibited emotional display are the norm. "I thirsted for boiling, vital activity," wrote a young Leningrader describing the spiritual odyssey that ended in her resignation from the Komsomol.
1 wanted to throw myself into work so as to forget myself as an individual (knk individuum), to lose count of time, to submerge myself in the worries, joys and excitement of the collective. I thought that I
could find all that only in the Komsomol collective. But from the first I was disappointed. . . I 1 '
106. GAKF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, 1. 115; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 11. 403-9;

ibid., d. 1518, 1. 8.
107. GAKF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, 1. 103. 108. 'TsGA IPD, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, 11. 172-73. 109. Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 322-3; TsPA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 15, 11. 92-3; ibid., o p . l b , d. 449, 1. 72. 110. P A N O f . 3 , o p . l l , d . 4 1 , 1 1 . 172-73. 11 1. It is not clear, however, that this reflects a general increase in self-consciousness about identity comparable with that discovered in Elizabethan England by Stephen Greenblatt (Renaissance Self-Fashioning. From More to Shakespeare [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19801). 112. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 772, 11. 23-24.

Supplicants and Citizens

99

But not all letters about emotional distress belonged to the confessional genre. A communist schoolmaster wrote to Zhdanov in 1934 imploring him to find out the truth about the death of his daughter, an engineer on the Caucasus railway who had died in mysterious circumstances after having endured sexual harrassment from bosses and colleagues. In her grief, the author's wife had become convinced that there had been some kind of cover-up; she would wake him in the middle of the night to ask where their daughter was and whether she had been shut away in a mental hospital. The wife suspected her husband of involvement in the cover-up, even though he had sent letters and petitions in all directions. "Life has become hell," the letter concludes."" Another man's life was hell for different reasons: 31 years old in 1937, he was an orphan who had worked as a shepherd and agricultural laborer and had lived on the street as a homeless besprizornyi before joining the kolkhoz and the Communist Party in the early 1930s. Despite his lack of education, he was promoted to head a rural soviet and then, in September 1937, to the much more formidable job of chairman of a district soviet. Here, coping with the aftermath of his predecessor's arrest as an enemy of the people, he was completely out of his depth, tormented by his "political and general illiteracy" and the mockery of unnamed people who called him "durak." By his own description, he was wracked by "nervous illness" and unable to eat ("In two and a half months of such a life. . . , I have lost as much as ten kilograms from the weight of the organism"). H e begged to be relieved of his position.'I4 An engineer, who was the daughter of an Armenian father killed in ethnic strife during the civil war and a mother who died as a refugee shortly afterwards, described these circumstances and her privileged upbringing in her brother's apartment in the Dom Pravitel'stva in Moscow before outlining her immediate problem: she was about to be fired from her job for consorting with persons now exposed as trotskyites (the year was 1937), even though her association with them was related to her work as an informer for the NKVD."" A woman wrote to Molotov protesting the Moscow soviet's decision to evict her from the apartment she had occupied for twelve years on the grounds that only her former husband had claim to it. This was a true irony of fate, she wrote, because she had just managed to graduate with a degree in animal husbandry, seven years after her husband had left her with the "cruel words" that she was a mere housewife who had "lagged behind political life." An older woman sent Zhdanov an eight-page letter about her troubles at work, dwelling with a touch of wry humor on the conflicts

""

113. Ibid.,11. 248-52. 114. Ibid.,op. 2g, d. 48, 11. 197-203. 115. Ibid., 11. 5-8. 116. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 64, 1. 206.

100

Slavic Review

provoked by her prickly and zealous character, and with sadness on her personal isolation and over-dependence on the companionship of the workplace."7 A man whose wife had been arrested as a spy wrote to Molotov explaining that this was something of which she was just temperamentally incapable:
She is not a complex person, not someone who hides things . . . With my character, I might be able to conceal the fact that some misfortune had happened to me. She could not. She "unloaded" everything very quickly, indeed words were unnecessary-her feelings were too transparent not to see them even if you were not particularly looking. I cannot believe that she was hiding some kind of dark secret under a mask of simplicity. . . I 1 '

The most remarkable and extended epistolary autobiography (six pages, in the copy typed by Krest'ianskaia gazeta) was penned in 1938 by a Voronezh' peasant in his early fifties, A.I. ~oluektov.""Poluektov's letter has an "abuse of power" theme, but it disdains the stylistic conventional of the genre, beginning instead with a shrewd sociological analysis of his kolkhoz and discussion of its leadership problems. Then it gets down to the heart of the matter: "Now I will say what kind of person I am (chto ia za chelovek) and how I ended u p in Losevo in the Dzerzhinskii kolkhoz." Poluektov was the son of a peasant with aspirations to better himself, which he inherited. Before the revolution both father and son tried the paths of self-betterment that were then available: consolidation of family land under the Stolypin reform and, for the son, apprenticeship to a merchant in the neighboring town of Pavlovsk. "I . . . began to study commercial matters, subscribing to a business (tovarovedenie) journal and also enrolling in bookkeeping courses . . . My father always discouraged me from going into agriculture . . ." The family's status as "Stolypin" peasants and the generally capitalist trend of their prewar aspirations were to cause them trouble in the Soviet period. "Even now they call my father a stolypinite and some kolkhozniki, whom I have raked over the coals for misbehavior in the newspaper or at a general [kolkhoz] meeting, even threaten to 'teach me a lesson' . . ." Called u p in 1916, Poluektov became a junior NCO who "tried to get promoted to the senior ranks" until the February revolution devalued that avenue of advancement. After February he was elected to his local army committee, began to read revolutionary literature and made a militant public speech against the war that nearly got him arrested by the kerenskyites. His unit "dissolved into bolshevism" just before the October revolution and he returned to Losevo, where he was quickly elected to various offices, "where my first act was to confiscate the property of my [former] master." Still with one foot in the town and one in the village, he held low-level administrative
117. Ibid., op. 2v, d. 1534, 11. 176-83. 118. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, 11. 13-16. 119. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 19, 11. 200-6.

Supplicants and Citizens


positions in Pavlovsk and participated in organizing the first Losevo kolkhoz during the civil war. In 1922, to his lasting chagrin, he muffed his chance of joining the Communist Party: "I wrote an application for admission to the Party but my comrade with whom I shared digs [in Pavlovsk] smashed my desire so badly that I tore u p the application, but later it turned out that they dekulakized that comrade and sent him to Karaganda." When he tried to join the Party later, he was rejected after someone objected that he was the son of a Stolypin peasant. Making the best of things, Poluektov came back to the village for good in his late forties, working as accountant in the kolkhoz and the village co-op after collectivization, while his sons acquired the more glamorous status of tractor-drivers. At the time of writing, he combined the persona of model citizen and Kulturtrager with that of kolkhoz gadfly. A pillar of the kolkhoz drama circle, choir, ham radio group, literacy and civil defence societies, and the International Society for Aid to Political Prisoners, he indubitably enjoyed tweaking the noses of kolkhoz leaders in his dual capacity as guardian of financial probity (as a member of the kolkhoz auditing commission) and muckraking sel'kor. Since letters are texts that are read as well as written, it remains to consider the question of response.'"' The degree and kind of response that could be expected from the authorities is obviously crucial to one's understanding of the phenomenon of popular letter-writing. If letters are written without any reasonable expectation of response, this is oneway communication that presumably has little significance in the general picture of statelsociety relations. If, on the other hand, citizens reasonably (on the basis of experience) expect a response to their letters, the communication is two-way and the public significance of the process is much enhanced. We have only incomplete and non-systematic information on the responses of the authorities to citizens' letters. A stream of official instructions throughout the 1930s ordered all institutions to respond to citizens' letters in a timely and conscientious manner. Unfortunately, these same instructions note that many authorities failed to d o this. By a rough estimate based on my work in various archives, perhaps 15-30 percent of the letters that have been preserved received
120. T h e discussion that follows is not framed in terms o f response theory and it should be clear from my analysis so far that I d o not share the vikw that a text has n o meaning apart than that which the reader imparts to it (see Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority oflnterpetive Comn~unities[Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19801). I would like at this point to acknowledge the inspiration o f Gary Saul Morson's "Training Theorists" (AAASS NewsNet, May 1995, 7-8), which prompted me to think more deeply on the uses and abuses o f theory and to devise the technique o f "counter-footnoting" used above ( o n response theory) and in notes 2, 3, 8 , 9, 11, 56, 85, 92 and 111. A counter-footnoteis required when the text contains a concept or keyword that may, contrary to the author's intention, arouse a condi. tioned "theory" reflex in the reader. 'The note tells the reader which canonical work has been involuntarily invoked and warns himlher to disregard it.

102

Slavic Review

some kind of response, that is, provoked some kind of bureaucratic action o r order to act. The figure rises to 70 percent in some archives if we expand the meaning of "response" to include a bureaucrat's instruction to a secretary to type out a handwritten letter. What proportion of all letters survives in the archives is, of course, unknown. For all the deficiencies of the data, however, it is clear that letterwriting was indeed a form of two-way communication. Writers could reasonably hope for a response to their letters and had the right to complain if they received none. Officials were supposed to respond and could be reprimanded for failing to d o so. Of course, there were many forms of possible response. Responses could be perfunctory or involve serious investigations of citizens' complaints. They could support petitions o r deny them. They could punish the target of a denunciation letter or, on occasion, punish the denouncer. O n e can get a sense of the range of responses by surveying the disposition of some of the cases mentioned earlier in this article. I shall start with positive outcomes. The grieving widower trapped in the lonely forest was given a job in Leningrad; the tormented komsomolka was sent to a sanatorium for a rest; the letter from the schoolmaster father was forwarded to the Caucasus for elucidation of the circumstances of his daughter's death. The kolkhoznitsa's plea to "Save our kolkhoz" was forwarded by Krest'ianskaia gazeta to regional authorities, whose investigation led to the firing of the kolkhoz accountant; and Poluektov's letter was forwarded too, though in this case there is n o sign that an investigation resulted. Two of the three young members of the Writers' Union who asked Molotov for housing received it; and Zhdanov was sufficiently impressed by the sycophantic mathematician to call "urgently" for a "serious" report on his Bases o a New Algebra. f The Churkov orphans aroused a sympathetic response in Rumiantsev's office ("Fix things for the kids [ustroi detishek]," his assistant wrote to the local soviet chairman), although, as it turned out, even this was not enough to get them their izba back once local bosses had got their hands on it. Vyshinskii responded conscientiously to the appeals he received from prisoners' relatives, even though his responses did not usually help the victims. In the Erman case, he called for a review by the chief military prosecutor and then wrote to Erman's wife with the news that the eight-year sentence had been upheld. He tried to follow the same procedure in the beekeeper's case, but when the report came in, it showed that the man had been summarily executed in Saratov in 1937. Perhaps understandably, Vyshinskii left the appeal of the beekeeper's wife unanswered. Shafran's request to paint Zhdanov's portrait was dismissed with the curt notation "File (Archiv)," and there is n o sign of any reply to the outpourings of the distraught vydvizhen.6~ and the wronged wives, the cry of distress from the uydvizhenets promoted beyond his abilities, or the letters of opinion from the angry engineer and the Litvinov critic. In general, opinion letters rarely received replies. But that is not to say they were ignored. Newspapers regularly compiled summaries

Supplicants and Citizens


(suodki) of correspondence received on various topics for the information of government and party leaders. The letter about overflowing jails, for example, was included in a 1936 summary sent by Krest'ianskaia gazeta to the constitutional commission. Letters could make trouble for their authors. The student's enquiry about the possibility of building communism provoked an immediate police investigation of trotskyite influence in his school (though the writer himself was thought naive rather than dangerous). The feldsher's denunciation was investigated and found to be groundless; moreover, the report noted ominously, the writer himself had "a lot of disgraceful things (bezobraziia) and abuses" to answer for. With "abuse of power" letters, there was always the possibility that the denunciation would backfire and damage the author. Sometimes it was the denouncers rather than their intended victims who ended u p in prison or under investigation by the NKVD."' From this range of responses, it is evident not only that popular letter-writing in the Stalin period was a two-way transaction but also that it could be a bit of a gamble for the initiator. But only some kinds of letters carried a real risk, just as only some kinds of letters were likely to bring their writers tangible benefits. T o understand the distribution of outcomes, it is useful to think of letter-writers in terms of two major categories, "supplicants" and "citizens." These two types of letter-writer seem to inhabit different worlds, though their letters lie side by side in the archives and the writers themselves might have been neighbors. The supplicant was implicitly a subject rather than a citizen. He sent his private complaints, requests, petitions and confessions to an authority figure imagined as a benevolent father (or father-confessor) or a patron. Women letter-writers were often supplicants, as were peasants. Supplicants' letters might ask for justice as well as mercy, but they did not invoke rights. They portrayed their authors as victims and dwelt on their miseries and misfortunes. Supplicants' letters, though sent to public figures and requesting them to act in their official capacity, dealt with private and personal concerns. Another kind of supplicant letter was part of a transaction between client and patron, the client normally belonging to the cultural and scientific elite, and the patron to the communist political leadership. Elite supplicants tended to be conspicuously deferential and generous with flattery. Patrons like Molotov responded to their clients' requests in a routine, businesslike manner that implied acceptance of the premise of patronage systems everywhere: that the patron's ability to look after his clients is an index as well as a prerogative of power. For supplicants, letter-writing was not a risk-taking enterprise, since the worst of the likely outcomes was that their letter would be ignored. Writing a supplicant's letter was something like buying a ticket in the state lottery (another popular

121. For examples, see RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 64, 1. 165; ibid., d. 68, 11. 77-78; ibid., d . 143, 1. 21 1.

104

Slavic Review

pastime in Stalin's Russia): it cost little, carried n o obligations and offered the chance, however remote, of a big win. Supplicant letter-writing, though widespread, was almost never discussed in Soviet media or official instructions. A rare exception was a 1936 article by the veteran party journalist, Lev Sosnovskii, urging newspapers and other recipients of such letters to be more responsive to the problems of the little man, while expressing the hope that little men would learn to approach the agencies of Soviet power "not like timid supplicants but like masters." Obviously many supplicants' letters were ignored but there were also many that were not. My own impression from the archives is that obkom secretaries,":' in particular, were often quite responsive to appeals from ordinary people-indeed, that harking to the pleas of widows and orphans was one of the more satisfying aspects of a senior communist administrator's job, providing reassurance that Soviet power really was on the side of the poor and humble, and leaving a glow of conscious virtue. The citizen was a more "modern" figure than the supplicant. Citizens wrote letters to the editor o r the Politburo to state opinions, criticize policies, suggest improvements, blow the whistle on corrupt officials, point out miscarriages of justice and denounce wrongdoers as their "duty as a citizen." They acted, or claimed to act, in the public interest; if they had private motives for writing, they concealed them. They used the language of rights and among the rights they implicitly claimed was the right to be heard. Citizens often addressed party leaders as "comrade" and were willing to remind them of the promises of the revolution. (This was particularly true of urban workers in the "citizen" category.) The majority of citizen letter-writers were male and urban, but the rural citizen, in the person of the sel'kor, was a recognizable figure. Though letters of citizens were filed as "secret" in the archives, they were essentially public communications in form and content-and also in aspiration, judging by the stubbornly reiterated hope of publication. Yet citizens, unlike supplicants, were taking a risk when they wrote their letters. They were more gamblers than buyers of lottery tickets. Many citizens' letters had n o possibility of a pay-off that would directly benefit their authors. Others might bring indirect benefits (e.g. by getting rid of a corrupt boss or abusive kolkhoz chairman), but could also damage the writers if the targets of denunciatory letters found out who had written them. "Opinion" letters might make an impact via being included in a "public opinion" summary sent u p to the Politburo; but they might also bring trouble to the author if the opinions expressed offended someone in authority. The NKVD made a practice of trying to discover identities of the authors of anonimki

"'

122. L. Sosnovskii, "Letter frorn the Editorial Board," Zzuestiia, 5 I\lIay 1936, 4. 123. T h e cases I k n o w best are those o f Eikhe i n Novosibirsk ( f r o m P A N 0 files),
Kirov and Zhdanov in Leningrad ( T s G A IPD) and Rurniantsev i n the western oblnst' (Smolensk archive).

Supplicants and Citizens

105

and that could spell trouble for those who put their anti-soviet opinions on paper. Behind the supplicant and the citizen are discernible other less distinct figures: the conman, assuming the persona of supplicant or citizen for his own nefarious ends;"4 the would-be informer, using a denunciation as a scarf to trail in front of the secret po1ice;""he memoirist; the grafoman . . . But these shadowy figures must await another interpreter. To borrow some conventional closing phrases from the letters, "there is no end" to the richness of the subject, "there is not enough paper to describe it." "It is only one tenth of what I could say . . . But I am tired of writing." ""
124. For a fascinating case study of a conman, a prodigious writer of petitions and denunciations who turned to playwriting when h e found hirnself in prison facing a death sentence, see Golfo Alexopoulos, "Writer on Death Row: Portrait of an 'Artist' in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1937," unpublished paper presented to the Contemporary European Culture workshop, University of Chicago, 16 February 1995. 125. For Inore o n this topic, see Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below," loc. cit. 126. RGAE, f. 39G, op. 10, d. 26, 11. 137-39; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, 11. 182.

Potrebbero piacerti anche