The Ural-Siberian Method

Abstract

By itself the decision in Kraikom Directive No. 43 to borrow the peasant self-taxation process for grain procurement was still only semi-precise, though the okruzhkoms no doubt were jolted into action by the decision given that it had the stamp of authority of the Politburo. As a consciousness-raising exercise for the party as to the rationale for the new method and the procedural practicality of its implementation, on 22 March Sovetskaia sibir’ carried a leading story about the use of the method of ‘social influence’ in the village of Zav’ialovo, Novosibirsk Okrug, under the headline: ‘Bedniaks and seredniaks make the kulak well-off element in the countryside sell grain surpluses to the state.’ The time had come, it went on, to ‘stop nannying the kulak’ and ‘begging him to sell grain’. That this story was dreamt up as a propaganda exercise is suggested not just by the fact that its content was a tissue of lies but also that OGPU and Novosibirsk Okruzhkom reports on the implementation of the ‘new method’ nowhere discuss the events in this supposedly prototypical village.¹