Supplicants and citizens: Public letter-writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s

Slavic Review

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 78-105

  Fitzpatrick, Sheila ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 8744291638     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2500979     Document Type: Article

References (140)

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 not follow that of recent German scholarship on Alltagsgeschichte, e.g. Alf Lüdtke, 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 or position sometimes referred to as subalterns. I have not asked Gayatri Spivak's question, "Can 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, he/she obviously can.
4. Though the archives have opened up a new dimension to the topic, earlier work on different aspects of Russian and Soviet public letter-writing should be mentioned. On petitions in the imperial period: Gregory L. Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
5. and Andrew Verner, "Discursive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasant Petitions from Vladimir Province," Russian Review 54, no. 1 (1995);
6. on Soviet petitions: Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (London: MacMillan & Co., 1958) (esp. chap. 20: "The Right to Petition")
7. and Margareta Mommsen, Hilf mir, mein Recht zu finden: Russische Bittschriften von Iwan dem Schrecklichen bis Gorbatschow (Frankfurt: Propyläen Verlag, 1987);
8. on Soviet complaints: Nicholas Lampert, Whistleblowing in the Soviet Union: A Study of Complaints and Abuses under State Socialism (New York: Schocken Books, 1985);
9. on Soviet letters to newspapers: A. Inkeles and K. Geiger, "Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Press: Areas and Modes of Complaint," American Sociological Review 17 (1952)
10. and A. Inkeles and K. Geiger, idem., "Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Press: Social Characteristics and Interrelations of Critics and the Criticized," American Sociological Review ibid. 18 (1953);
11. C. Revuz, Ivan Ivanovitch Écrit à la Pravda (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1980);
12. Stephen White, "Political Communications in the USSR: Letters to the Party, State and Press," Political Studies 31 (1983);
13. Small Fires: Letters from the Soviet People to 'Ogonyok' Magazine 1987-1990, selected and ed. by Christopher Cerf and Marina Albee with Lev Gushchin (New York: Summit Books, 1990);
14. and Dear Comrade Editor: Readers' Letters to the Soviet Press under Perestroika, trans. and ed. Jim Riordan and Sue Bridger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
15. The data base for this essay are some hundreds of citizens' letters (usually filed as "Pis'ma trudiashchikhsia" or "Pis'ma rabochikh i krest'ian") culled from a variety of state and party archives, both central and regional. The most valuable collections of citizen' letters were found in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF, formerly TsGAOR), particularly f. 5446, op. 81a (Vyshinskii) and op. 82 (Molotov); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE, formerly TsGANKh), particularly f. 396 (Krest'ianskaia gazeta); Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI, formerly TsPA IM-L, particularly f. 78 (Kalinin) and f. 475 (Glavsevmorput'); Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii i sotsialisticheskogo stroitel'stva goroda Moskvy (TsGAOR g. Moskvy), particular f. 1474 (Rabkrin); Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskoi dokumentsatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA IPD, formerly LPA, the Leningrad party archive), particularly the secret files of the obkom under Zhdanov, f. 24, op. 2v and 2g; Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv goroda Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA S-P, formerly LGA, the Leningrad state archive); Partiinyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (PANO); and Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (GANO). Because of my topical interests when I was doing this research, my sample may be biased in favor of letters from peasants, letters from women and denunciations. Because the largest number of denunciations fall in 1937 and 1938, and because the only year for which letters to Krest'ianskaia gazeta are preserved is 1938, the last years of the 1930s are also likely to be overrepresented.
16. A recent work that has influenced my analysis of letters is David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).
17. Usually, but not always, these were officials. But note that public figures like writers, scientists and Polar explorers also received many letters of similar type. On letters to Otto Schmidt and other Polar explorers, see John McCannon, "Backstage at the North 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 citizens to stop writing to him about their health problems, see his letter to the editor, Izvestiia, 22 January 1936, 6.
18. 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, 1981]).
19. I do not use the term "public sphere" in the special sense associated with Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).
20. 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, l. 13), and the newspaper Krest'ianskaia gazeta 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, l. 13), while Molotov was getting about 30 a day at Sovnarkom at the same period (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, l. 259). In mid-1939 the Soviet state prosecutor's office was receiving 1,500 complaints a day (GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, l. 17).
21. Thus Foucault's reflections on confession, grounded in its meaning in Christian ritual, do not have particular relevance to the discussion that follows (Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley [New York: Vintage Books, 1990], vol. 1).
22. Tolkovyi slovar' zhivago velikorusskago iazyka Vladimira Dalia, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. 2.
23. E.g. in the Kalinin and Lunacharskii fonds in RTsKhIDNI, the Molotov and Vyshinskii fonds in GARF, the Kirov and Zhdanov (obkom) fonds in TsGA IPD and the Eikhe (kraikom) fond in PANO.
24. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1522, ll. 215-18.
25. Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 91-92.
26. PANO, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, ll. 172-73. The translation reproduces the punctuation of the original.
27. TSGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, l. 106.
28. Ibid., d. 2224, ll. 44-48.
29. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 24, l. 69.
30. For an analysis of petitions of this kind for restoration of voting rights, see Golfo Alexopoulos, "The Ritual Lament: Spoiled Identities and Discourses of Rehabilitation in the 1920s and 1930s," paper presented at 27th National Convention of AAASS, Washington, DC, October 1995.
31. For examples of responses, see TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, l. 41. In one case, the sum of 100 rubles was specified.
32. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 768, l. 117. For another plea to place children in an orphanage, see ibid., f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554, l. 66.
33. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 27, l. 28.
34. Calculated from TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 4, ll. 3-6. The next most popular categories (in order) were requests for passports and Leningrad residence permits, appeals against judicial sentences, requests for work, appeals from prisoners for amnesty and requests for places in educational institutions.
35. Ibid., d. 64, 161.
36. Ibid., d. 77, ll. 9-10. The writers were Pavel Nilin, Gennadii Fish and Lev Rubinshtein.
37. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, l. 133; ibid., d. 72, l. 34.
38. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 348, ll. 95, 101-2.
39. Ibid., d. 93, ll. 319, 321, 323-24.
40. 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.
41. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, l. 36.
42. The full title of this non-existent institution was "Gosudarstvennye Arkhivy po okhrane spokoistviia nashei schastlivoi rodiny i stroiashchegosia sotsializma."
43. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, l. 84.
44. Occasionly this hope was made explicit: see Tsentral'nyi munitsipial'nyi arkhiv g. Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 1039, op. 2, d. 2140, l. 6 (courtesy of Viktoriia Tiazhel'nikova).
45. Q.v. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap. 8.
46. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128, l. 159.
47. Ibid., d. 161, ll. 49-51.
48. GARF, f. 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4), l. 30.
49. TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474. op. 7, d. 72, l. 42.
50. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, ll. 248-49.
51. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, l. 144; ibid. op. 81a, d. 24, ll. 48-49; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 120, l. 155; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, l. 10; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 108, ll. 19-22; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, l. 11; ibid., d. 47, l. 157; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, l. 276.
52. PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, ll. 457-59.
53. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, l. 341; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, ll. 213-23; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82., d. 56, l. 331.
54. GARF. f. 3316, op. 16a, d. 446, l. 190.
55. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, ll. 248-49.
56. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226, l. 38.
57. Ibid., op. 1b, d. 449, l. 73.
58. E.g. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 48, l. 223.
59. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, ll. 147-49.
60. Ibid., op. 2v, d. 1518, l. 62.
61. Ibid., d. 1518, l. 9, and d. 727, l. 367.
62. Ibid., d. 1518, ll. 1, 14.
63. GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, l. 148. Ernst Thälman was a German communist leader whose imprisonment by the nazis was the subject of many indignant articles in the Soviet press.
64. GARF, f. 3316, op. 40, d. 14, l. 100.
65. Ibid., op. 16a, d. 446, l. 100.
66. The argument in this section does not depend on the Saussurian distinction between langue and parole (Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. and trans. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye [New York: Philosophical Library, (1959)]).
67. E.g. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, l. 323; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2224, l. 46.
68. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 1b, d. 449, l. 72 (1932 letter to Kirov from a young worker-vydvizhenets).
69. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226, l. 38.
70. GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070, l. 4.
71. The Russian, retaining the original punctuation and spelling, is "dobry den, tavarichi robotniki. Kvam kolkhoznik." RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, l. 289.
72. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, l. 147.
73. Ibid., d. 48, l. 223 (my emphasis).
74. PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 801, l. 209. Despite the familiar greeting, the writer noted that he was not personally acquainted with Denisov.
75. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, l. 237.
76. Congratulatory telegrams on International Women's Day sent to Zhdanov by branches of the wives' volunteer movement, Obshchestvennitsa, 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, ll. 185-88).
77. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2219, l. 1.
78. Ibid., d. 1544, ll. 184-92.
79. Ibid., op. 2g, d. 46, l. 2; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, l. 1173.
80. GARF, f, 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4), l. 30; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 65, ll. 212-14; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, l. 24.
81. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, l. 84; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, l. 97; GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070, l. 4.
82. For the nineteenth century, see Mommsen, Hilf Mir, 54, 56, 104-5, and passim; for Soviet examples, see above ("father," "justice") , and GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 179, l. 170; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, l. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, l. 68 ("crust").
83. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 826, ll. 23-24.
84. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 142, l. 177; ibid., d. 26, l. 139; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 48, l. 223.
85. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 200-5.
86. 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, l. 66.
87. See RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, l. 79 for the quatrains and RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 67, l. 33, and ibid., d. 129, unpag., for cartoons. The request for a job is in d. 129.
88. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 26, ll. 137-39.
89. There were 6 signatories, 2 identifying themselves as "sympathizers [of the Communist Party]" and 4 as "kolkhozniks."
90. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 86, l. 406; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, l. 295; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 142, l. 141; GARF, f. 3316, op. 64, d. 1854, l. 258.
91. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, ll. 24, 29-32.
92. Q.v. the 1936 letter to Rumiantsev headed "A sel'kor's signal," Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 219.
93. Of letters sent to Krest'ianskaia gazeta in 1937-1938, less than 1% were published but almost 60% were sent out for investigation, and responses (outcomes) were reported on 33% (RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 857, ll. 27-31 [Orgburo resolution "On the situation in Krest'ianskaia gazeta" 12 April 1938]).
94. See Cerf et al., eds., Small Fires (1990)
95. and Riordan and Bridger, eds., Dear Comrade Editor (1992).
96. By "the language of Pravda," 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 of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. E.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
97. RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, l. 158; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 79, l. 86; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, l. 76; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, l. 1434; ibid., op. 11, d. 41, l. 31; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, l. 49; ibid., d. 87, l. 281; ibid., d. 86, l. 391; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 10, l. 2; ibid., d. 9, l. 8; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, l. 77; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 9, l. 108.
98. For a "model" letter allegedly from kolkhozniks, headed "Destroy the Enemy without Mercy," see Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 25 January 1938, 3.
99. On 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.
100. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 39-40; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534, ll. 176, 183.
101. See TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, l. 37 for a literal use (about Leningrad's soccer team); and ibid., d. 3548, l. 62 (for popular comments on price increases reported by the NKVD).
102. 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, 1967], vol. 1 [XIV], 190 [my emphasis]).
103. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, l. 1; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128, l. 159; GARF f. 3316, op. 64, d. 1854, l. 258.
104. These epistolary performances differ in important respects from the face-to-face interactions described by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1959).
105. In seventeenth century Russian petitions, virtually all petitioners refer to themselves as "orphans" of their lords (siroty tvoi). See Krest'ianskie chelobitnye XVII v. Iz sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).
106. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534, ll. 176, 183.
107. Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 129-32.
108. From letters to Krest'ianskaia gazeta in RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, l. 289;
109. Krest'ianskaia gazeta ibid., d. 128, ll. 66-69 (paraphrase).
110. See RGAE, f. 396, 7. d. 26, ll. 207-8.
111. GARF, f. 3316, op. 41, d. 85, ll. 41-43.
112. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, ll. 248-49; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, l. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, l. 159.
113. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 27, l. 172; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 179, l. 170; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 9, 126.
114. Letters in TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, ll. 335-36; and ibid., op. 2g, d. 47, l. 272 (my emphasis).
115. RGAE, f. 396, d. 86, ll. 391-92; Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 144-47.
116. RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, l. 159; and Smolensk Archive, WKP 190, 26; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, l. 157.
117. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, l. 23; ibid., d. 2220, l. 10.
118. GANO, f. 288, op. 2, d. 902, l. 6.
119. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, l. 115; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, ll. 403-9; ibid., d. 1518, l. 8.
120. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, l. 103.
121. TsGA IPD, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, ll. 172-73.
122. Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 322-3; TsPA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 15, ll. 92-3; ibid., op. 1b, d. 449, l. 72.
123. PANO f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, ll. 172-73.
124. 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, 1980]).
125. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 772, ll. 23-24.
126. Ibid., ll. 248-52.
127. Ibid., op. 2g, d. 48, ll. 197-203.
128. Ibid., ll. 5-8.
129. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 64, l. 206.
130. Ibid., op. 2v, d. 1534, ll. 176-83.
131. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, ll. 13-16.
132. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 19, ll. 200-6.
133. The discussion that follows is not framed in terms of response theory and it should be clear from my analysis so far that I do not share the view that a text has no meaning apart than that which the reader imparts to it (see Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpetive Communities [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980]).
134. would like at this point to acknowledge the inspiration of Gary Saul Morson's "Training Theorists" (AAASS NewsNet, May 1995, 7-8), which prompted me to think more deeply on the uses and abuses of theory and to devise the technique of "counter-footnoting" used above (on response theory) and in notes 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 56, 85, 92 and 111. A counter-footnote is required when the text contains a concept or keyword that may, contrary to the author's intention, arouse a conditioned "theory" reflex in the reader. The note tells the reader which canonical work has been involuntarily invoked and warns him/her to disregard it.
135. For examples, see RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 64, l. 165; ibid., d. 68, ll. 77-78; ibid., d. 143, l. 211.
136. L. Sosnovskii, "Letter from the Editorial Board," Izvestiia, 5 May 1936, 4.
137. The cases I know best are those of Eikhe in Novosibirsk (from PANO files), Kirov and Zhdanov in Leningrad (TsGA IPD) and Rumiantsev in the western oblast' (Smolensk archive).
138. For a fascinating case study of a conman, a prodigious writer of petitions and denunciations who turned to playwriting when he found himself 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.
139. For more on this topic, see Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below," loc. cit.
140. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 26, ll. 137-39; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 182.