Struggle Against "Sabotage" of Grain Collection Campaigns as Part of the NKVD Mass Operation by Order No. 00447: Repressive Action in the Solton District of Altai Region
The article considers the consecution, results and consequences of the repressive action aimed at suppressing the "sabotage of grain procurements" which was carried out in November 1937 in the Solton district of the Altai krai as a part of a mass operation based on the order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00447. The author reveals the specifics and scale of repression against various groups of the district's population that had become the object of repression collective farmers, sole proprietors, MTS (machine and tractor stations) employees and officials of the collective farm administration. It was determined that the repressive action was aimed primarily at collective farms that allowed the greatest arrearage in the implementation of the bread delivery plan. The disproportionality of the scale (taking into consideration the share in bread deliveries) and the increased level of cruelty of repression against individual farmers were caused by the fact that the more general goal in the repression directed against this category of rural population was the destroying and isolating "socially alien" groups of the population, which was implemented during mass operations of NKVD, and came to the fore much more than the utilitarian task of implementing the grain procurement plan. The functional involvement of MTS in realization of grain harvesting operations and ensuring bread deliveries caused the spread repressive actions, which were carried out to prevent sabotage of grain procurements, on the employees of machine tractor stations, who were often convicted in the scopes of general investigative cases with members of the collective farms they had served. Although the repressions carried out during the November 1937 action were limited to the arrests of representatives of the lower level of management officials of the collective farm administration, this action served as a kind of "trigger" for the escalation of repressions against district level functionaries. At the same time, the materials presented in the article indicate that the repressive policy was not performing its function of increasing the effectiveness of the mechanism for withdrawing from collective farms their products at low prices set by the state a function of the collective farm system that is most important for transferring funds from agriculture to industry in order to finance accelerated industrialization.