Documents: The Russian (Communist) revolution: From Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin

Documents 1A and 1B: “Bloody Sunday” On January 22nd, 1905, the infamous “Bloody Sunday” of Russian history occurred. On that day a large group of disaffected Russian steelworkers, students and clergy tried to storm the Winter Palace, the headquarters of the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas

II (who was actually away at the time). Father Georgii Gapon, an Orthodox Christian priest, was outraged by industrial and political abuses in Russia. He not only drafted a petition requesting reforms (Doc. 1A), but helped lead a march to

present it directly to Tsar Nicholas II himself. The Tsarist troops, seeing the incredible numbers among the crowd, took action in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” which left 130 dead and over 1,000 injured (Doc. 1B). The

outrage and nationwide uprisings sparked by this event later led, in October, to the Tsar agreeing to modest reforms, including a Duma (the Russian parliament), but was weak and soon dismantled by the Tsar weeks later. Below, read both the petition he drafted demanding reforms as well as his eyewitness account of the

Bloody Sunday massacre.

1A: The St. Petersburg Workmen’s Petition to Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II ~ Father Georgii Gapon, January 1905

“Sovereign!

We, workers and inhabitants of the city of St. Petersburg,…our wives, children, and helpless old parents, have come to you, Sovereign, to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished and oppressed, we are burdened with work, and insulted. We are treated not like humans [but] like slaves who must suffer a bitter fate and keep silent. And we have suffered, but we only get pushed deeper and deeper into a gulf of misery, ignorance, and lack of rights. Despotism and arbitrariness are suffocating us, we are gasping for breath. Sovereign, we have no strength left. We have reached the limit of our patience. We have come to that terrible moment when it is better to die than to continue unbearable sufferings. And so we left our work and declared to our employers that we will not return to work until they meet our demands. We do not ask much; we only want that without which life is hard labor and eternal suffering. Our first request was that our employers discuss our needs together with us. But they refused to do this; they denied us the right to speak about our needs, on the grounds that the law does not provide us with such a right. Also unlawful were our other requests: to reduce the working day to eight hours; for them to set wages together with us and by agreement with us; to examine our disputes with lower-level factory administrators; to increase the wages of unskilled workers and women to one ruble per day; to abolish overtime work; to

provide medical care attentively and without insult; to build shops so that it is possible to work there and not face death from the awful drafts, rain and snow. Our employers and the factory administrators considered all this to be illegal: every one of our requests was a crime, and our desire to improve our condition was slanderous insolence. Sovereign, there are thousands of us here; outwardly we are human beings, but in reality neither we nor the Russian people as a whole are provided with any human rights, even the right to speak, to think, to assemble, to discuss our needs, or to take measure to improve our conditions. They have enslaved us and they did so under the protection of your officials, with their aid and with their cooperation. They imprison and send into exile any one of us who has the courage to speak on behalf of the interests of the working class and of the people. They punish us for a good heart and a responsive spirit as if for a crime. To pity a down-trodden and tormented person with no rights is to commit a grave crime. The entire working people and the peasants are subjected to the [arbitrariness] of a bureaucratic administration composed of embezzlers of public funds and thieves who not only have not concern at all for the interests of the Russian people but who harm those interests. The bureaucratic administration has reduced the country to complete destitution, drawn it into a shameful war (World War One), and brings Russia ever further towards ruin. We, the workers and the people, have no voice in the expenditure of the enormous sums that are collected from us. We do not even know where the money collected from the impoverished people goes. The people are deprived of any possibility of expressing its wishes and demands, or of participating in the establishment of taxes and in their expenditure. Workers are deprived of the possibility of organizing into unions to defend their interests. Sovereign! Does all this accord with the law of God, by whose grace you reign? And is it possible to live under such laws? Would it not be better if we, the toiling people of all Russia, died? Let the capitalists – exploiters of the working class – and the bureaucrats – embezzlers of public funds and the pillagers of the Russian people – live and enjoy themselves. Sovereign, this is what we face and this is the reason that we have gathered before the walls of your palace. Here we seek our last salvation. Do not refuse to come to the aid of your people; lead it out of the grave of poverty, ignorance, and lack of rights; grant it the opportunity to determine its own destiny, and deliver it from them the unbearable yoke of the bureaucrats. Tear down the wall that separates you from your people and let it rule the country together with you. You have been placed [on the throne] for the happiness of the people; the bureaucrats, however, snatch this happiness out of our hands, and it never reaches us; we get only grief and humiliation. Sovereign, examine our requests attentively and without any anger; they incline not to evil, but to the good, both for us and for you. Ours is not the voice of insolence but of the realization that we must get out of a situation that is unbearable for everyone. Russia is too big, her needs are too diverse and many, for her to be ruled only by bureaucrats. We need popular representation; it is necessary for the people to help itself and to administer itself. After all, only the people know its real needs… Let the capitalist be there, and the worker, and the bureaucrat, and the priest, and the doctor and the teacher. Let everyone, whoever they are, elect their representatives. Let everyone be free and equal in his voting

rights, and to that end order that elections to the Constituent Assembly be conducted under universal, secret and equal suffrage… …These, sovereign, are our main needs, about which we have come to you… Give the order, swear to meet these needs, and you will make Russia both happy and glorious, and your name will be fixed in our hearts and the hearts of our posterity for all time. But if you do not give the order, if you do not respond to our prayer, then we shall die here, on this square, in front of your palace. We have nowhere else to go and no reason to. There are only two roads for us, one to freedom and happiness, the other to the grave. Let our lives be sacrificed for suffering Russia. We do not regret that sacrifice, we embrace it eagerly.

~Georgii Gapon, priest; Ivan Vasimov, worker.”

1B: Eyewitness Testimony of the “Bloody Sunday” Massacre ~ Father Gapon, January 1905

“We were not more than thirty yards from the soldiers, being separated from them only by the bridge over the Tarakanovskii Canal, which here marks the border of the city, when suddenly, without any warning and without a moment’s delay, was heard the dry crack of many rifle-shots. I was informed later on that a bugle was blown, but we could not hear it above the singing, and even if we had heard it we should not have known what it meant. Vasiliev, with whom I was walking hand in hand, suddenly left hold of my arm and sank upon the snow. One of the workmen who carried the banners fell also…. I turned rapidly to the crowd and shouted to them to lie down, and I also stretched myself out upon the ground. As we lay thus another volley was fired, and another, and yet another, till it seemed as though the shooting was continuous. The crowd first kneeled and then lay flat down, hiding their heads from the rain of bullets, while the rear rows of the procession began to run away. The smoke of the fire lay before us like a thin cloud, and I felt it stiflingly in my throat…. A little boy of ten years, who was carrying a church lantern, fell pierced by a bullet, but still held the lantern tightly and tried to rise again, when another shot struck him down. Both the smiths who had guarded me were killed, as well as all those who were carrying the icons and banners; and all these emblems now lay scattered on the snow. The soldiers were actually shooting into the courtyards of the adjoining houses, where the crowd tried to find refuge and, as I learned afterwards, bullets even struck persons inside, through the windows. At last the firing ceased. I stood up with a few others who remained uninjured and looked down at the bodies that lay prostrate around me. I cried to them, ‘Stand up!’ But they lay still. I could not at first understand. Why did they lie there? I looked again, and saw that their arms were stretched out lifelessly, and I saw the scarlet stain of blood upon the snow. Then I understood. It was horrible. And my Vasiliev lay dead at my feet. Horror crept into my heart. The thought flashed through my mind, ‘And this is the work of our Little Father, the Tsar.’ Perhaps this anger saved me, for now I knew in very truth that a new chapter was opened in the book of the history of our people. I stood up, and a little group of workmen gathered round me again. Looking backward, I saw that our line, though still stretching away into the

distance, was broken and that many of the people were fleeing. It was in vain that I called to them, and in a moment I stood there, the center of a few scores of men, trembling with indignation amid the broken ruins of our movement.”

HISTORICAL NOTE: Interestingly, Father Gapon was later found hanged roughly a year after the Bloody Sunday massacre. WHY? Apparently Father Gapon was also

secretly a member of the Tsar’s secret police at the time as a way to get information! Initially, Gapon did not want the Tsar overthrown and thought his secret influence could bring real change for Russian factory workers. However, seeing no progress came from the Tsar, Gapon later fully denounced the Tsar, stopped secretly working for Tsar’s police, and joined Soviet revolutionaries (including Vladimir Lenin) to overthrow Tsar Nicolas II. However, when he

revealed to Soviet revolutionaries that he once had double loyalties that included secretly working for the Tsar, the revolutionaries realized they could not trust him

and hanged him at a cottage in St. Petersburg in March of 1906.[Ascher, Abraham. (1988). "Gapon and Bloody Sunday." In his Revolution of 1905, vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.]

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DOCUMENT 2: Tragedy Befalls the Last Russian TsarRussian Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his thrown due to increased civil

unrest about Russia’s involvement in WW1 and his failure to seriously address other economic and political matters, which then lead to Russia being ruled by the

Provisional Government. In October/November of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, an opponent of both the Tsar and the new Provisional Government, led the Bolsheviks

(Communists) is a successful coup d’état of Russia. Anti-Bolshevik forces (the White Army) immediately took up arms to oust the Communist regime leading

Russia into a brutal civil war. Against this backdrop of political chaos, the Tsar and his family were initially kept as prisoners near St. Petersburg and then transported

to the town of Ekaterinburg in the Spring of 1918. The seven members of the imperial family and their servants were confined to a house which had been seized

by the Bolsheviks. As the White Army began closing in for an attempted rescue mission, the Tsar’s Bolshevik captors told them they were being moved to a new location in the middle of the night to “protect them.” Below is testimony from Pavel Medvedev, one of the guards watching the royal family on their last day

alive.

"In the evening of 16 July, between seven and eight p.m., when the time of my duty had just begun; Commandant Yurovsky, [the head of the execution squad] ordered me to take all the…revolvers from the guards and to bring them to him. I took twelve revolvers from the guards…and brought them to the commandant's office. Yurovsky said to me, 'We must shoot them all tonight; so notify the guards not to be alarmed if they hear shots.' I understood, therefore, that Yurovsky had it in his mind to shoot the whole of the Tsar's family, as well as the doctor and the servants who lived with them, but I did not ask him where or by whom the decision

had been made...At about ten o'clock in the evening in accordance with Yurovsky's order I informed the guards not to be alarmed if they should hear firing. About midnight Yurovsky woke up the Tsar's family. I do not know if he told them the reason they had been awakened and where they were to be taken, but I positively affirm that it was Yurovsky who entered the room occupied by the Tsar's family. In about an hour the whole of the family, the doctor, the maid and the waiters got up, washed and dressed themselves…. The maid carried a pillow. The Tsar's daughters also brought small pillows with them. One pillow was put on the Empress's chair; another on the heir's (Nicholas II’s son’s) chair. It seemed as if all of them guessed their fate, but not one of them uttered a single sound. At this moment eleven men entered the room: Yurovsky, his assistant, two members of the Extraordinary Commission, and seven Letts [operatives of the infamous Cheka or Secret Police]. Yurovsky ordered me to leave, saying, 'Go on to the street, see if there is anybody there, and wait to see whether the shots have been heard.' I went out to the court, which was enclosed by a fence, but before I got to the street I heard the firing. I returned to the house immediately (only two or three minutes having elapsed) and upon entering the room where the execution had taken place, I saw that all the members of the Tsar's family were lying on the floor with many wounds in their bodies. The blood was running in streams. The doctor, the maid and two waiters had also been shot. When I entered the heir was still alive and moaned a little. Yurovsky went up and fired two or three more times at him. Then the heir was still."

["The Execution of Tsar Nicholas II, 1918," Eyewitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2005).]

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Document 3: Excerpts of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ~ by Vladimir Lenin

(Written in 1916; published in mid-1917)Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir (V.I.) Lenin, was one of the

leading political figures and successful radical revolutionaries of the 20th century, who masterminded the Bolshevik (Communist) take-over of power in Russia in

1917, and became the first Communist dictator of what would become known as the Soviet Union (now called Russia again). Lenin was expelled from college for

his radical Marxist views and even sent into exile, but came back to lead the Bolsheviks to their eventual stranglehold on Russia’s Communist government. Influenced by the anti-capitalist, bourgeoisie-despising writings of Karl Marx,

Lenin’s Marxist worldview and analysis of world affairs is clearly evident in this pamphlet below. Specifically, he draws conclusions below about the causes and effects of global capitalism surrounding the events of World War One, and about

what can be done to stop it.

…It is proved in the pamphlet that the [first world] war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of booty) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital, etc…

…The building of railways seems to be a simple, natural, democratic, cultural and civilizing enterprise; that is what it is in the opinion of the bourgeois professors who are paid to depict capitalist slavery in bright colors, and in the opinion of petty-bourgeois barbarians. But as a matter of fact the capitalist threads, which in thousands of different intercrossings bind these enterprises with private property in the means of production in general, have converted this railway construction into an instrument for oppressing [hundreds of] millions of people (in the colonies and semi-colonies), that is, more than half the population of the globe that inhabits the dependent countries, as well as the wage-slaves of capitalism in the “civilized” countries. Private property based on the labor of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants are things of the distant past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression, [imperialism], and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries. And this “booty” is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are drawing the whole world into their war over the division of their booty… The tens of millions of dead and maimed left by the war—a war to decide whether the British or German group of financial plunderers is to receive the most booty—and those… “peace treaties”, are with unprecedented rapidity opening the eyes of the millions and tens of millions of people who are downtrodden, oppressed, deceived and duped by the bourgeoisie. Thus, out of the universal ruin caused by the war a world-wide revolutionary crisis is arising which, however prolonged and arduous its stages may be, cannot end otherwise than in a proletarian revolution and in its victory… To combat these tendencies is the bounden duty of the party of the proletariat, which must win away from the bourgeoisie the small proprietors who are duped by them, and the millions of working people who enjoy more or less petty-bourgeois conditions of life… Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution…

[Published on May 31, 1916 in Voprosy Strakhovania No. 5 (54). Published according to the manuscript.]

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Document 4: Lenin’s Speech to the Petrograd Soviet ~ November 8, 1917The Russian Provisional Government fell in the November Revolution of 1917.

Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the tightly organized Bolsheviks (Communists) quickly took control. On November 8th, 1917, Lenin made the

following speech in the Russian city of Petrograd to the Petrograd* Soviet**. Soon after, an anti-Communist White Army would engage in a civil war against Lenin’s

Bolshevik (Communist) forces known as the Red Guards; Lenin’s forces would ultimately prevail and Russia fell to his Communist dictatorship, eventually

renaming Russia “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” (a.k.a. The Soviet Union).

Comrades, the workmen's and peasants' revolution, the need of which the Bolsheviks have emphasized many times, has come to pass.  What is the significance of this revolution?  Its significance is, in the first place, that we shall have a soviet government, without the participation of bourgeoisie of any kind.  The oppressed masses will of themselves form a government.  The old state machinery will be smashed into bits and in its place will be created a new machinery of government by the soviet organizations.  From now on there is a new page in the history of Russia, and the present third Russian revolution shall in its final result lead to the victory of [Communism]. One of our immediate tasks is to put an end to the war at once.  But in order to end the war, which is closely bound up with the present capitalistic system, it is necessary to overthrow capitalism itself.  In this work we shall have the aid of the world labor movement, which has already begun to develop in Italy, England, and Germany.  A just and immediate offer of peace by us to the international democracy will find everywhere a warm response among the international proletarian masses.  In order to secure the confidence of the proletariat, it is necessary to publish at once all secret treaties.  In the interior of Russia a very large part of the peasantry has said:  Enough playing with the capitalists; we will go with the workers.  We shall secure the confidence of the peasants by one decree, which will wipe out the private property of the landowners.  The peasants will understand that their only salvation is in union with the [industrial] workers.  We will establish a real labor control on production.  We have now learned to work together in a friendly manner, as is evident from this revolution.  We have the force of mass organization which has conquered all and which will lead the proletariat to world revolution. We should now occupy ourselves in Russia in building up a proletarian socialist state.      Long live the world-wide socialistic revolution. ... 

* “Petrograd” was initially the city of St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great. It was renamed in 1917 to “Petrograd” as the Bolsheviks thought it sounded too German. It was again renamed after Lenin’s death in 1924 to “Leningrad.” Finally, in 1991 at the fall of the Soviet Union, it went back to its original name of “St. Petersburg.”

** "Soviet" refers to "a representative council of workers and peasants (or soldiers)", which started organizing in cities and villages in close cooperation with Lenin’s Communist government. After the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin handed the administration of the whole country to the soviets, and one was created in every locality. Of course, only communists could be elected to it.

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Document 5: Lenin – Murderous Russian Communist Dictator and TyrantLenin was not just a “radical idealist” and “Communist revolutionary”; he was also

a totalitarian tyrant who engaged in mass incarcerations, torture, slave labor,

forced exiles, and executions of his political enemies and their families. Most often this dirty work was the responsibility of the Cheka- Lenin’s secret police force that he created in 1917 (later the KGB). Initially used as a tool to help rid Russia of its

bourgeois capitalist class to more quickly achieve a proletarian paradise, it was essentially a torture and killing squad in Lenin’s Communist police state to terrorize anyone opposing him politically or personally. The following three

documents below should help illustrate the ruthlessness and barbaric nature of both Lenin and his Communist regime. Unbelievably, it would actually get exponentially worse after Lenin’s death when Josef Stalin becomes dictator.

5a: The following is an editorial from a Communist publication, The Red Sword, published in 1918 by the Cheka:

“We reject the old systems of morality and ‘humanity’ invented by the bourgeoisie to oppress and exploit the ‘lower classes.’ Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To do so, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles … Blood? Let blood flow like water! Let blood stain forever the black pirate’s flag flown by the bourgeoisie, and let our flag be blood-red forever! For only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves from the return of those jackals.”

5b: In a November 1918, Martin Latsis, deputy chief of the Cheka, gave the following orders below to his officers that was part of a first campaign of Soviet

genocide by Lenin’s new Communist government:

“We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. In your investigations don’t look for documents and pieces of evidence about what the defendant has done, whether in deed or in speaking or acting against Soviet authority. The first question you should ask him is what class he comes from, what are his roots, his education, his training, and his occupation.”

5c: During the summer of 1918, many of Russia's central cities, including Moscow and Petrograd, were cut off from the grain-producing regions of Ukraine, the

northern Caucasus Mountains, and Siberia by the civil war in Russia. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people were on the brink of starvation. The city of Penza

was critical in providing food to the cities, but the government used drastic measures, such as forced collection of grain, on the peasants. One particular group

of Russian peasants were kulaks, who were the wealthier peasant farmers who owned land and even could afford to hire laborers. A peasant revolt, led by kulaks,

erupted in Penza on August 5th, 1918, in opposition to forced collection of grain (and a loss of income/profits), which soon spread to neighboring regions. By

August 8th, 1918, Soviet forces had crushed the revolt of these “capitalist bloodsuckers”, but the situation remained tense. Lenin sent several telegrams to

Penza demanding harsher measures in fighting these kulaks as many still continued to resist. Below is Lenin’s letter to the communists in the Russian city of

Penza concerning Kulak resistance on November 18th, 1918:

11-8-18Send to Penza

To Comrades (Communist friends) Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists.Comrades! The revolt by the…kulak[s]… must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.

1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.

2. Publish their names.3. Take away all of their grain.4. Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

[Source: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/trans-ad2kulak.html]

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Document 6: Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy ; A Report To The Second All-Russia Congress Of Political Education Departments

~ October 17, 1921The “New Economic Policy” (NEP) was an economic plan of Soviet Russia

proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who described it as a progression towards "state capitalism" within the “proletariat state” of the Soviet Union. The NEP

represented a strong and ironic change in direction as it represented a more capitalist-oriented economic policy, deemed necessary after the Russian Civil

War (1917-1922) and a catastrophic famine in 1921. Up until the NEP, producers were not directly compensated for their labor, so oftentimes they simply stopped working, leading to widespread shortages. The civil war disrupted transportation

(especially railroads) and basic public services. Shipments of food and fuel by railroad and water dramatically decreased, and hunger and poor conditions drove

residents out of cities. Drought and frost led to the Russian famine of 1921, in which millions starved to death, and urban support for the Bolshevik Party eroded.

Lenin had to quickly make the case that financial (capitalist) incentives were needed to get things turned around, yet still did not completely turn away from Communism or his goal of a proletarian state. Below are some excerpts from his New Economic Policy to try and save the Soviet Union- as well as his own neck-

from its economic and political hardships.

Abrupt Change Of Policy Of The Soviet Government And The R.C.P.…The[r]e are the defects that I should like to speak about both in connection with and in respect of the New Economic Policy...Why? Because our previous economic policy...assumed that there would be a direct transition from the old Russian economy to state production and distribution on communist lines….

Our MistakeAt the beginning of 1918 we expected a period in which peaceful construction would be possible. When the [treaty with Germany] was signed it seemed that danger had subsided for a time and that it would be possible to start peaceful construction. But we were mistaken, because in 1918 a real military danger overtook us in the shape of the…outbreak of civil war, which dragged on until 1920. Partly owing to the war problems that overwhelmed us and partly owing to the desperate position in which the Republic found itself when the imperialist war ended…we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution. We thought that under the surplus-food appropriation system the peasants would provide us with the required quantity of grain, which we could distribute among the factories and thus achieve communist production and distribution.

…Ever since 1917, when the problem of taking power arose and the Bolsheviks explained it to the whole people, our theoretical literature has been definitely stressing the necessity for a prolonged, complex transition through socialist accounting and control from capitalist society (and the less developed it is the longer the transition will take) to even one of the approaches to communist society.

A Strategic RetreatThe surplus-food appropriation system in the rural districts—this direct communist approach to the problem of urban development—hindered the growth of the productive forces and proved to be the main cause of the profound economic and political crisis that we experienced in the spring of 1921. That was why we had to take a step which from the point of view of our line, of our policy, cannot be called anything else than a very severe defeat and retreat…

Purport Of The New Economic Policy…The main problem in the light of the New Economic Policy is to take advantage of the situation that has arisen as speedily as possible.

The New Economic Policy means substituting a tax for the requisitioning of food; it means reverting to capitalism to a considerable extent—to what extent we do not know. Concessions to foreign capitalists (true, only very few have been accepted, especially when compared with the number we have offered) and leasing enterprises to private capitalists definitely mean restoring capitalism, and this is part and parcel of the New Economic Policy; for the abolition of the surplus-food appropriation system means allowing the peasants to trade freely in their surplus agricultural produce, in whatever is left over after the tax is collected—and the tax~ takes only a small share of that produce. The peasants constitute a huge

section of our population and of our entire economy, and that is why capitalism must grow out of this soil of free trading…

Who Will Win, The Capitalist Or Soviet Power?…[W]e must remember the peasants. It is absolutely incontrovertible and obvious to all that in spite of the awful disaster of the famine…the improvement that has taken place in the position of the people has been due to the change in our economic policy.

The restoration of capitalism would mean the restoration of a proletarian class engaged in the production of socially useful material values in big factories employing machinery, and not in profiteering, not in making cigarette-lighters for sale, and in other “work” which is not very useful, but which is inevitable when our industry is in a state of ruin.

We Must Not Count On Going Straight To CommunismWe must not count on going straight to communism. We must build on the basis of peasants’ personal incentive…. The difficulty lies in creating personal incentive. We must also give every specialist an incentive to develop our industry. Have we been able to do that? No, we have not! We thought that production and distribution would go on at communist bidding in a country with a declassed proletariat. We must change that now…

Should We Work for Our Own Benefit?… Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. Since we must necessarily learn quickly, any slackness in this respect is a serious crime. And we must undergo this training, this severe, stern and sometimes even cruel training, because we have no other way out… The masses must become conscious of this, and not only conscious of it, but put it into practice…

[Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 60-79]

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Document 7: Excerpts of a Communist Party Resolution “On Safekeeping Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms and Cooperatives and

Strengthening Public (Socialist) Property” ~ August, 1932Iosif (Josef) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, more commonly known as Joseph Stalin

(he adopted the word “Stalin,” meaning “man of steel”), was the Soviet Union’s 2nd

Communist leader/dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. Like Lenin before

him, Stalin also faced opposition to the forced collectivization of farms from kulaks, particularly in the Ukraine. Below is an excerpt issuing direction on what

to do with these troublesome “kulak-capitalists” who are interfering with the communist goal of collective farms during Stalin’s Soviet rule. (In a “collective

farm,” private-owned farmland was to be surrendered to the Soviet gov’t, and each farmer was required to work and produce food. All food would then be collected by the gov’t, which decided who would get what and how much.) People caught

hoarding and selling excess food for profit, keeping more than their allotted amount, or who refused to turn their farms over to the gov’t were thus deemed as

criminals. Kulaks in the Ukraine were among the most consistent and stubborn troublemakers for Stalin’s Communist Russia.

August 7, 1932

II.1. Make all property belonging to collective farms and cooperatives (harvests in

the fields, public reserves, livestock, cooperative stock and stores, etc.) equivalent to state property and fully strengthen the protection of this property against theft.

2. Use judicial repressions of the highest degree as measures of social protection against theft of kolhosp (a collective farm) and collective property: execution by shooting and confiscation of all property, variable under mitigating circumstances to ten years imprisonment with confiscation of all property.

3. Amnesty cannot be granted to criminals sentenced in cases of collective farm and cooperative property theft.

III.1. Conduct decisive battle with all anti-public, kulak-capitalist elements that use

violence and threats, or promote the use of violence and threats, against collective farmers, forcing them to leave or purposefully destroy collective farms.

2. Use measures of judicial repressions for protecting collective farms and collective farmers from violence and threats on the part of kulak and other anti-public elements: imprisonment for five to ten years in a concentration camp.

3. Amnesty cannot be granted to criminals sentenced in these cases.

Head, USSR Central Executive Committee, M. Kalinin Head, Council of Peoples’ Commissars, V. Molotov(Skryabin)Secretary, USSR Central Executive Committee, А. Yenukidze

[Source: Communist newspaper, August 9, 1932; “Collectivization of agriculture: the most important resolutions of the Communist Party and Soviet government, 1927-1935,” Moscow, 1957, pp. 423-424.]

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Document 8: Eyewitness and Survivor Testimony of the Holodomor: Stalin’s forced famine-genocide of Ukrainian Kulaks, 1932-1933.

In June of 1933, at the height of the Holodomor (Ukrainian forced-famine of kulaks by Stalin), 28,000 men, women and children in Ukraine were dying of starvation each day.  The land that was known worldwide as the “breadbasket of Europe”

was being ravaged by a man-made famine of unprecedented scale. Why did Stalin forcibly starve millions of his own people? Stalin and his followers were

determined to teach Ukraine’s farmers, particularly the Ukrainian kulaks, “a lesson they would not forget” and to “eliminate the kulaks as a class” for resisting

collectivization, which meant giving up their own land to work on government controlled farms called “collectives.” Moreover, the famine was meant to deal “a crushing blow” to any aspirations for independence from the Soviet Union by the

Ukrainians, 80 percent of whom worked the land. While millions of people in Ukraine and in the mostly ethnically Ukrainian areas of the northern Caucasus

were dying, the Soviet Union was denying the famine and exporting enough grain from Ukraine to have fed the entire population. For 50 years, surviving

generations were forbidden to speak of it, until the Soviet Union was near collapse. Below is testimony from some survivors of the Holodomor in the Ukraine under

Stalin.

7a: "From 1931 to 1934 we had great harvests. The weather conditions were great. However, all the grain was taken from us. People searched the fields for mice burrows hoping to find measly amounts of grain stored by mice..." ~as remembered by Mykola Karlosh

7b: "I’m asking for your permission to advance me any amount of grain. I’m completely sick. I don’t have any food. I’ve started to swell up and I can hardly move my feet. Please don’t refuse me or it will be too late." ~From a petition to the authorities by P. Lube

7c: "Where did all bread disappear, I do not really know, maybe they have taken it all abroad. The authorities have confiscated it, removed from the villages, loaded grain into the railway coaches and took it away someplace. They have searched the houses, taken away everything to the smallest thing. All the vegetable gardens, all the cellars were raked out and everything was taken away. Wealthy peasants were exiled into Siberia even before Holodomor during the “collectivization”. Communists came, collected everything. Children were crying beaten for that with the boots. It is terrifying to recall what happened. It was so dreadful that every day became engraved in my memory. People were lying everywhere as dead flies. The stench was awful. Many of our neighbors and acquaintances from our street died…” ~ From the memories of Olexandra Rafalska, Zhytomir

7d: "At that time I lived in the village of Yaressky of the Poltava region. More than a half of the village population perished as a result of the famine. It was terrifying to walk through the village: swollen people moaning and dying. The bodies of the dead were buried together, because there was no one to dig the graves. There were no dogs and no cats. People died at work; it was of no concern whether your body was swollen, whether you could work, whether you have eaten, whether you could – you had to go and work. Otherwise – you are the enemy of the people.

Many people never lived to see the crops of 1933 and those crops were considerable. A more severe famine, other sufferings were awaiting ahead. Rye was starting to become ripe. Those who were still able made their way to the fields. This road, however, was covered with dead bodies, some could not reach the fields, some ate grain and died right away. The patrol was hunting them down, collecting everything, trampled down the collected spikelets, beat the people, came into their homes, seized everything. What they could not take – they burned." ~From the memories of Galina Gubenko, Poltava region

7e: "The famine began. People were eating cats, dogs in the Ros’ river all the frogs were caught out. Children were gathering insects in the fields and died swollen. Stronger peasants were forced to collect the dead to the cemeteries; they were stocked on the carts like firewood, than dropped off into one big pit. The dead were all around: on the roads, near the river, by the fences. I used to have 5 brothers. Altogether 792 souls have died in our village during the famine, in the war years – 135 souls" ~As remembered by Antonina Meleshchenko, village of Kosivka, region of Kyiv

7f: "I remember Holodomor very well, but have no wish to recall it. There were so many people dying then. They were lying out in the streets, in the fields, floating in the flux. My uncle lived in Derevka – he died of hunger and my aunt went crazy – she ate her own child. At the time one couldn’t hear the dogs barking – they were all eaten up.” ~From the memories of Galina Smyrna, village Uspenka of Dniepropetrovsk region

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Document 9: Gulag Voices ~ Anne ApplebaumThe Soviet “Gulag” (derived from a Russian acronym, Glavnoye upravleniye

lagerey - usually translated "Chief Directorate of Camps") in Soviet Russia was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor/concentration camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s until the 1950s, though the first such camps were created in 1918. Over the years, however, it has come to

signify the whole Soviet slave labor camp system, a regime that reached its deadly peak under Josef Stalin’s despotic rule and saw millions of men and women

transported to camps in Siberia and other outposts of the Soviet empire. There, they had to endure sub-Arctic temperatures, undertake heavy labor at gunpoint and try to avoid starving to death. Between 1929 and 1953, the year of Stalin’s

death, 18 million people passed through this Gulag system — many of them never to return. How did one wind up there? The Gulag held many types of prisoners and

was the Soviet Union’s main penal system: robbers, rapists, murderers, and thieves spent their sentences not in prisons but in the Gulag to work. In addition,

the Gulag held political prisoners, a group including not only real opponents of the Soviet regime or supporters of capitalism but also many innocents caught up in the

paranoid clutches of the Soviet secret police. Most prisoners were the victims of arbitrary and severe legal campaigns under which petty theft, lateness, or even

unexcused absences from work were also punished by many years in these concentration camps. Below are selected excerpts from the book, Gulag Voices,

edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum, which tells the stories of some of the survivors; harrowing reminders, told in their own heart-rending words, of one of the darkest chapters of 20th-century history illustrating the

oppression of Stalin’s Soviet Russia.

KAZIMIERZ ZAROD was a young Polish civil servant and army reservist who, with many others, fled east from Poland’s capital of Warsaw when the Nazis attacked on September 1, 1939. But when the Soviets invaded Poland on September 17, he was arrested. After interrogation, he was sent to a Siberian forestry camp, which he knew only as Labor Corrective Camp No. 21.

AT 3AM each morning, an alarm was beaten out on a triangle. Dressing was unnecessary as we slept in our clothes. Tumbling off the hard wooden shelf on which I slept, I joined the queue for the one water bucket, where I filled a small soup container and splashed my face with a few handfuls. Soap, a tiny scrap of which we were issued with once a month, we kept for the evenings when we returned filthy from work. By 3.30am, we were supposed to be in the square to be counted. On snowy mornings, this could be a long, cold, agonizing business. Assuming the right number of bodies were present, the foreman of each working party was then dispatched to collect the bread for the day. How much bread you got depended on how much timber you had cut the day before, a tally that really could be the difference between life and death. Those who met 100 per cent of the punishing targets — a physical impossibility for most men — earned 900g of bread (about 2lb), while those returning only 50 per cent of their targets got 300g. Made from rye which had not been thoroughly cleaned, this black bread was the source of Gulag life and carefully hoarded throughout the day. A little with the breakfast soup; a few bites during the short dinner break at midday; more with the soup in the evening to stave off the inevitable pangs of hunger after 12 hours of cutting and stacking logs. If a prisoner stole clothes or tobacco and was discovered, he could expect a good beating from his fellow inmates. But the unwritten law of this camp was that anyone caught stealing another man’s bread earned a death sentence. An ‘accident’ was not difficult to arrange in the forest.

ELENA GLINKA, a 29-year-old engineering student, was arrested on false charges of treason, and spent six years in the Gulag. She was sent to one of the camps on the dreaded Kolyma Peninsula, where winter temperatures hover between -19C to -38C. Having disembarked at a small fishing village, she witnessed one of the mass rapes, nicknamed the ‘Kolyma tram’ because of the brutal manner in which they were carried out. As the youngest of the prisoners, Elena was ‘chosen’ for the exclusive use of the local miners’ Party boss — and thus spared the worst of an ordeal that still left her so traumatized she could write about it only in the third person.

‘WOMEN in Burgurchan!’ The news spread like wildfire and within an hour men began flocking to the town hall — first the locals, then men from farther afield, some on foot, some on motorbikes. There were fishermen, geologists, fur-trappers, a team of miners and their Party boss and even some convicts who had bolted from

their logging camp. Cigarettes, bread, even lumps of cured salmon were tossed to the corralled women prisoners who, after two days at sea, swallowed the food without chewing. Then bottles began to clink and the men, as if on command, retreated to one side to drink vodka with the guards. There were songs and toasts, but there was also a clear purpose to this debauch as, one by one, the women’s guards passed out, dead-drunk, whooping and hollering, the men rushed the women and began to haul them into the building, twisting their arms, dragging them through the grass, brutally beating any who resisted. They knew their business; it was coordinated and confident. Benches were removed, planks nailed over the windows, kegs of water hauled in. That done, whatever rags or blankets they had at hand — padded vests, bedrolls, mats — were spread out and the women thrown to the floor. A line of about 12 men formed by each woman and the Kolyma tram began. When it was over, the dead women were dragged away by their feet; the survivors were doused with water from the buckets and revived. Then the lines formed up again.

HAVA VOLOVICH was a newspaper sub-editor who was arrested in 1937, aged 21, for being publicly critical of the damage done to Ukrainian peasants by the new collective system, which grouped together dozens of farms to make one giant super-farm. She remained in the Gulag for 16 years, where she became one of the tens of thousands of young prisoners to become pregnant and have a baby. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death.

A number of men offered their ‘services’ — and I did not choose the best by any means. But the result of my choice was an angelic little girl with golden curls. I called her Eleanor. There were three mothers in our barracks and we were given a tiny little room of our own. By night, we brushed from our babies the bedbugs that fell from the ceiling like sand. By day, we left them with any old woman who had been let off work, knowing these women would calmly help themselves to the food we left for the children. Every night for a year, I stood at my child’s cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying, begging God to prolong my torment by 100 years if it meant I wouldn’t be parted from my daughter. But God did not answer my prayer. Eleanor had barely started walking and had just uttered her first, heart-warming word — ‘Mama’ — when we were dressed in rags, despite the winter’s chill, bundled into a freight car and transferred to the ‘mother’s camp’. Here, I was expected to work in the forest, felling trees as normal during the day — while my pudgy little angel with the golden curls, back at the camp’s infant shelter, soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips. I caught a chill on the bladder, terrible lumbago and shaved my hair off to avoid getting lice. My appearance could not have been more miserable and wretched. But in return for bribes of firewood, the guards let me see my daughter outside normal hours. But the things I saw! I saw nurses shoving and kicking children out of bed before washing them in ice-cold water. I saw a nurse grab the nearest baby, tie back its arms and then cram spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat. My little Eleanor began to fade faster. ‘Mama, want home,’ she cried one evening, her little body covered with mysterious bruises. On the last day of her life, when I picked her up to breast-feed her, she stared wide-

eyed into the distance, clawing and biting at my breast, begging to be put down. In the evening, when I came back with my little bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year & four months in this world & died on March 3, 1944.

 [Source: Gulag Voices, edited by Anne Applebaum, is published by Yale University Press]

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Document 10: The First Five Year Plan: Stalin’s Speech to the Central Communist Party ~ January 1933

The first Five Year Plan, introduced in 1928, concentrated on the development of agricultural production, but mainly pushed industrial development including iron and

steel, machine-tools, electric power and transport. Joseph Stalin set the workers high targets. For example, he demanded a 110% increase in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in electric power. He justified these

demands by claiming that if rapid industrialization did not take place, the Soviet Union would not be able to defend itself against an invasion from capitalist

countries in the west. Every factory had large display boards erected that showed the output of workers. Those that failed to reach the required targets were publicity criticized and humiliated. Some workers could not cope with this

pressure and absenteeism increased. This led to even more repressive measures being introduced. Records were kept of workers' lateness, absenteeism and bad

workmanship. If a worker's record was poor, he was accused of trying to “sabotage the Five Year Plan” and- if found guilty- could be shot or sent to Gulag concentration

camps. In 1933, Joseph Stalin spoke to the Central Communist Party about the objectives and results of the first Five Year Plan provided below.

What was the fundamental task of the five-year plan? The fundamental task of the five-year plan was to transfer our country, with

its backward, and in part medieval, technology, on to the lines of new, modern technology.

The fundamental task of the five-year plan was to convert the U.S.S.R. from an agrarian and weak country, dependent upon the caprices of the capitalist countries, into an industrial and powerful country, fully self-reliant and independent of the caprices of world capitalism.

The fundamental task of the five-year plan was, in converting the U.S.S.R. into an industrial country, to completely oust the capitalist elements, to widen the front of socialist forms of economy, and to create the economic basis for the abolition of classes in the U.S.S.R., for the building of a socialist society....

The fundamental task of the five-year plan was to transfer small and scattered agriculture on to the lines of large-scale collective farming, so as to ensure the economic basis of socialism in the countryside and thus to eliminate the possibility of the restoration of capitalism in the U.S.S.R.

Finally, the task of the five-year plan was to create all the necessary technical and economic prerequisites for increasing to the utmost the defense capacity of the country, enabling it to organize determined resistance to any attempt at military intervention from abroad, to any attempt at military attack from abroad....

The main link in the five-year plan was heavy industry, with machine building as its core. For only heavy industry is capable of reconstructing both industry as a whole, transport and agriculture, and of putting them on their feet. It was necessary to begin the fulfillment of the five-year plan with heavy industry. Consequently, the restoration of heavy industry had to be made the basis of the fulfillment of the five-year plan....

But the restoration and development of heavy industry, particularly in such a backward and poor country as ours was at the beginning of the five-year plan period, is an extremely difficult task; for, as is well known, heavy industry calls for enormous financial expenditure and the existence of a certain minimum of experienced technical forces.... Did the Party know this, and did it take this into account? Yes, it did. Not only did the Party know this, but it announced it for all to hear. The Party knew how heavy industry had been built in Britain, Germany, and America. It knew that in those countries heavy industry had been built either with the aid of big loans, plundering other countries, or by both methods simultaneously. The Party knew that those paths were closed to our country. What, then, did it count on? It counted on our country’s own resources. It counted on the fact that, with a Soviet government at the helm, and the land, industry, transport, the banks and trade nationalized, we could pursue a regime of the strictest economy in order to accumulate sufficient resources for the restoration and development of heavy industry. The Party declared frankly that this would call for serious sacrifices, and that it was our duty openly and consciously to make these sacrifices if we wanted to achieve our goal....

What are the results of the five-year plan in four years in the sphere of industry?

We did not have an iron and steel industry, the basis for the industrialization of the country. Now we have one.

We did not have a tractor industry. Now we have one.

We did not have an automobile industry. Now we have one.

We did not have a machine-tool industry. Now we have one. We did not have a big and modern chemical industry. Now we have one.

We did not have a real and big industry for the production of modern agricultural machinery. Now we have one.

We did not have an aircraft industry. Now we have one.

In output of electrical power we were last on the list. Now we rank among the first. In output of oil products and coal we were last on the list. Now we rank among the first....

Finally, as a result of all this the Soviet Union has been converted from a weak country, unprepared for defense, into a country mighty in defense, a country prepared for every contingency, a country capable of producing on a mass scale all modern means of defense and of equipping its army with them in the event of an attack from abroad....

[Source: “The First Five Year Plan, Stalin’s Speech to the Central Communist Party in January 1933”; reprinted in Primary Source Document Workbook to Accompany World Civilizations, by Philip J. Adier; prepared by Robert Welborn, (New York: West Publishing Company, 1996), pp. 92–93.]

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Document 11: Stalin’s Continued Oppression: The Great Purge (1935-1938)The tragic decade, 1935 to 1945, saw two mass slaughters ordered by heads of

state—Stalin’s Great Terror or “Purges” and Hitler’s “final solution” of the Jewish problem. Stalin conducted several different purges during his reign including: Communist Party officials whom he felt threatened him, members of the army, intelligentsia, and other Soviet nationals (kulaks, etc.). Roughly 8-13 million

people were immediately killed or died in gulag camps. One such “purge” by Stalin was outlined by Stalin himself and announced on July 30, 1937, by NKVD (Stalin’s

secret police and later becoming the infamous KGB) chief Nikolai Yezhov in a directive known as “Operational Decree No. 00447.” It is remarkable in that it

clearly- and without euphemisms- spells out the logic and procedures of Stalin’s mass repressions with absolutely no effort to hide its intentions. As its title implies, it was an operational order - a cookbook used by thousands of NKVD officials and

party activists to carry terror to the remote corners of the vast Soviet Union. Yezhov’s Order No. 00447 was designed to solve a major logistic and operational

task: the elimination, through execution or long prison sentences, of a large number of persons whom Stalin considered to be his enemies in a short period of time. Eighteen months later, 681,000 persons had been shot under this decree

alone. Ironically, Yezhov himself eventually shared the same fate as his victims and was purged. (Needing a scapegoat for the excesses of the Great Terror, Stalin fired

him in November of 1938, and he was executed on February 2, 1940.) Below are excerpts of Stalin’s Operational Decree No. 00447.

Statement of PurposeFormations of substantial numbers of former kulaks, earlier repressed persons, those concealing themselves from repression, escapees from camps, work colonies, or deportation have been detected by investigations of anti-Soviet groupings. There are many formations of formerly repressed religious persons and sectarians, and former active participants in anti- Soviet armed activities. They have remained almost untouched in the village. They include large cadres of anti-Soviet political parties (listed), and also cadres of former activists in bandit rebellions, members of White punitive organizations, repatriates, and so on. Some, leaving the village for the city, have infiltrated industrial enterprises, transport, and construction. Moreover, significant numbers of criminals, thieves- recidivists, pillagers and others serving out sentences, escaping from places of confinement, and hiding

from repression are accumulating in villages and cities. The inadequate battle against these criminal contingents has created conditions that support their criminal activities. The organs of state security are faced with the task—in the most merciless fashion—to destroy this band of anti-Soviet elements, to protect the working Soviet population from their counter- revolutionary intrigues and, finally, once and for all, to put an end to their foul subversive work against the foundations of the Soviet state…

Schedule…In connection with this, I order: to begin in all republics, regions and provinces operations for the repression of former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals on August 5, 1937. Operations will begin in Uzbek, Turkmen, Tadzhik and Kirgiz republics on August 10, and in the Far Eastern and Krasnoyarsk regions and in Eastern Siberia on August 15. Operations should end within a four-month period. Contingents of the second category are not to be repressed until special instructions are issued. In cases where a commissar of the republican NKVD, or a head of an administration or of a provincial department, having completed first- category operations, considers it possible to begin operations on the second category, he is required to ask my permission and only after that to start the operation.

I. Contingents (Quotas) Subject to Repression 1. Former kulaks, returning after serving out their punishment and continuing to

conduct active anti- Soviet subversive activity2. Former kulaks escaping from camps or labor colonies carrying out anti- Soviet

activity. 3. Former kulaks and socially dangerous elements, belonging to rebellious,

fascist, terrorist, and bandit formations, serving out their terms, hiding from repression or escaping from places of confinement and resuming their anti-Soviet criminal activity.

4. Members of anti- soviet parties (listed), former Whites, gendarmes, officials, members of punitive organizations, bandits, and gang members, accomplices, those assisting escapes, re- emigrants, those hiding from repression, fleeing from places of confinement and continuing to conduct anti-Soviet activity.

5. Those exposed as a result of investigations as the most hostile and active participants in currently- being- liquidated Cossack- White Guard insurgent organizations, fascist, terrorist, espionage- diversionist counter- revolutionary formations.

6. The most active anti-Soviet elements among former kulaks, members of punitive bodies, bandits, sectarian activists, church officials and others currently being held in prisons, camps, work colonies and continuing to carry out active anti-Soviet insurgency work.

7. Criminals (bandits, thieves, recidivist thieves, professional contrabandists, swindler- recidivists, livestock thieves) carrying out criminal activity and circulating in criminal milieu.

8. Criminal elements located in camps and work colonies and conducting criminal activity.

9. All the above elements currently located in villages—in collective farms, state farms, agricultural enterprises and in cities—in industrial and trade

enterprises, transport, in Soviet institutions and in construction are subject to repression.

II. About Measures of Punishment and the Numbers of Those To Be Repressed 1. All kulaks, criminals and other anti- Soviet elements to be repressed are to be divided into two categories:

a. The first category includes the most dangerous and most hostile of the above listed elements. They should be immediately arrested and after examination of their cases by troikas are—to be shot.

b. In the second category are the remaining less active but nonetheless hostile elements. They are to be arrested and placed in camps for terms of 8 to 10 years, but the most evil and socially dangerous should be sentenced to prisons according to the specification of the troika. 52 chapter five

The approved figures are for orientation purposes. The heads of the republican NKVDs and the directors of regional and provincial NKVD administrations do not have the authority to exceed them independently. No arbitrary raising of the figures is allowed…

[Source: http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/Lenins_Brain_Paul_Gregory_43.pdf]