The Great Terror in Micro Historical Research: Repressions in Solton District of Altai Region in 1937-1938

Studying the history of the Great Terror at the micro level allows us to concretize the knowledge of the basic problems of the history of mass repressions in 1937-1938 adequate resolution of which is not possible if the study is limited purely to approaches based on the principles and methods of macro historical research. These are questions about the objectives of the repressions, criteria and the mechanism for selecting victims of repressions, forms and methods of interaction of the NKVD, party organizations and local activists in the implementation of repressive policies, the specifics of investigative procedures during the Great Terror. The repressions in Solton district, greater in scale if compared to many other districts of the Altai region, are accounted for by the following: 1) the special repressive action in November 1937 led to some ‘failures’ in the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan and in the campaign for elections to the Supreme Council of the USSR; 2) the use of specific methods for implementing repressive policies on the part of local district leadership that contributed to the escalation of terror (the examination of collective farms and compiling of special acts with an obligatory indication of ‘enemies of the people’; 3) the emphasize put on eradication of noncollective forms of rural economy, which had been developed in Solton. The last two factors are indicative of the specificities of the repressive policies implemented during the Great Terror in rural areas of the country, with its focus on the tasks of socialist modernization related to the strengthening of collective farming. Although the punitive action of November 1937 in Solton was more of a ‘special action’ character, and in this respect can be regarded as an ‘incident’, which was beyond the scope of the generally conducted repressions, it shows more clearly than ‘ordinary’ repressions do the specificity of the repressive operation fulfilled under the NKVD order № 00447: the extreme simplification of the investigative procedures, large-scale falsified charges, active cooperation in the implementation of repressive policies between the NKVD, party structures, and rural activists. Thus, this repressive action can be considered as one of the culmination points in the repressive policies on the implementation of the order № 00447.

Keywords

Authors

References