3 September 1933
SECRET
TO THE CHAIRMEN OF REPUBLIC AND TERRITORIAL (REGIONAL)
CONTROL COMMISSIONS AND WORKERS'-PEASANTS' INSPECTORATES (KK/RKI)
Reports of new tactics practiced by the kulaks involving the
organization of hunger protests in certain places in the North
Caucasus, the Ukraine, and the Lower Volga have reached the
Central Control Commission from local Control Commissions and
Workers'-Peasants' Inspectorates.
While reports from certain localities of individual incidents
of hunger among the peasants have been verified, cases of
feigning hunger and starvation have been noted in spite of
hidden and buried reserves of food provisions. This represents a
new maneuver on the part of the kulaks in their campaign to
undermine the gathering of seeds and spring sowing.
The Central Control Commission of the VKP(b) [Communist
Party] proposes:
1) That each report of cases of hunger among the kolkhoz
[collective farm] members be investigated and that, where a case
of feigning hunger is brought to light, the perpetrators are to
be considered counterrevolutionary elements, and that necessary
measures be taken against them.
Decisive measures are to be taken against the organizers of
such protests. In addition, it is necessary that this maneuver
on the part of the class enemy be exposed in the presence of the
members of a given kolkhoz.
2) That, at the same time, a warning be issued against a
possible bureaucratic attitude, here and there, to a real
absence of food provisions in certain kolkhozy of certain
districts suffering from harvest failure, and that help should
be organized to provide foodstuffs from available territorial
reserves to kolkhozy and kolkhoz members who are in real need.
