Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s Author(s): Sheila Fitzpatrick Source: Slavic Review,

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Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s

Sheila Fitzpatrick

"Which one of us had never written letters to the supreme powers ... If they are preserved, these mountains of letters will be a veritable treasure trove for historians." l So wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam, always a sharp-eyed anthropologist of Soviet everyday life.2 Historians who have encountered this treasure trove in Soviet archives newly opened over the past few years are likely to agree. The great volume of public letter-writing-the "mountains" of complaints, denunciations, statements of opinion, appeals, threats and confessional outpourings that ordinary Russians3 sent to Soviet political leaders, party and government agencies, public figures, and newspapers-constitutes one of the major discoveries associated with the opening of the archives.4 This
My thanks to Jeffrey Brooks, David Fitzpatrick, Catriona Kelly, Gary Saul Morson, StevenPincus, RichardSaller and Lewis Siegelbaum fortheircommentson thisarticle in various versions,and to those at Berkeley,Harvard, University Texas at Austin, of of as University Wisconsin at Madison and SydneyUniversity, well as membersof the of Russian Studies workshopat theUniversity Chicago, who offered helpfulcomments on the paper version. 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, AlfLiidtke,ed., TheHistory Everyday trans.William Templer e.g. of Life, (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1995), which tends to conflate the subject of "everydaylife" withthatof resistanceto authority. 3. By "ordinaryRussians," I mean the people withoutofficialpower or position sometimesreferredto as subalterns.I have not asked GayatriSpivak's question, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (LarryGrossbergand Cary Nelson, eds., Marxism and theInterpretation Culture[Urbana: University Illinois Press, 1988]), since in the present of of context,he/sheobviouslycan. 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 nmentioned. On petitions in the imperial period: GregoryL. Freeze, FromSupplication to A Revolution: Documentary Social History Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford Unliversity of Press, 1988) and AndrewVerner,"Discursive Strategiesin the 1905 Revolution:Peasant Petitions from Vladimir Province," Russian Review54, no. 1 (1995); on Soviet underSovietRule (London: MacMillan & Co., 1958) petitions:Merle Fainsod, Smolensk mein Recht (esp. chap. 20: "The Rightto Petition") and MargaretaMominsen,Hilfmir, zu finden: Russische von bis Bittschriften Iwan demSchrecklichen Gorbatschow (Frankfurt: in the Propylien Verlag, 1987); on Soviet complaints:Nicholas Lampert,Whistleblowing A and under SovietUnion: Study Complaints Abuses StateSocialism of (New York: Schocken Books, 1985); 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 Review17 (1952) and idem., "Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Sociological and Interrelationsof Criticsand the Criticized,"ibid. 18 Press: Social Characteristics Ecrita la Pravda (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1980); Ste(1953); C. Revuz, Ivan Ivanovitch Slavic Review55, no. 1 (Spring 1996)

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phenomenon deservesclose attentionfrompolitical scientists and specialists in cultural studies as well as social historians.In this essay I will explore the topic throughan examination of the different genres of public letter-writing the 1930s,as revealed in the declassifiedfiles in of Soviet archives,5 throughanalysis of the characteristic tropes,rhetorical stylesand modes of self-representation employed in these letters.6 I use the term"public" to distinguish letterswritten public figto ures and institutions fromthe privatelettersthatindividualswroteto friends and family. the "publicness" of such letters But was onlypartial; and this incompletepublicness is one of the letters'most problematic and interesting aspects. Though sent to public addressees,7a majority of the letters deal withpersonal questions,rangingfromhousing problems and grievances against spouses to loneliness and loss of faith. True, a substantialminorityof the lettersdeal with public matters, whetherin the formof complaintsabout bureaucraticabuses of power
phen White, "Political Communications in the USSR: Letters to the Party, State and Press," Political Studies 31 (1983); Small Fires: Lettersfrom 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); and Dear ComradeEditor: Readers' Lettersto the Soviet Press under Perestroika,trans. and ed. Jim Riordan and Sue Bridger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 5. The data base for this essay are some hundreds of citizens' letters (usually filed as Pis'ma trudiashchikhsia" "Pis'ma rabochikh krest'ian") culled fromn variety of state or i a and party archives, both central and regional. The most valuable collections of citizen' letters were found in Gosudarstvennyiarkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF, formerly TsGAOR), particularly f. 5446, op. 81a (Vyshinskii) and op. 82 (Molotov); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyiarkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE, formerly TsGANKh), particularly f. 396 (Krest'ianskaia gazeta); Rossiiskii tsentrkhraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI, formerly TsPA IM-L, particularly f. 78 (Kalinin) and f. 475 (Glavsevmorput'); Tsentral'nyigosudarstvennyi 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 obkomunder Zhdanov, f. 24, op. 2v and 2g; Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhivgoroda Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA S-P, formerly LGA, the Leningrad state archive); Partiinyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (PANO); and Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirskoioblasti (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 year-sof the 1930s are also likely to be overrepresented. 6. 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). 7. 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.

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or statementsof opinion about public policy. But these letterswere rarelypublished, even when sent to newspapers in the hope of publication. While many "opinion" lettersdid achieve a restricted kind of publicityby theirincorporationinto summarieson the stateof public opinion sent to the Politburo by Pravda,PresidentKalinin and other major recipientsof citizens'letters, this happened withoutthe knowledge of authors.In some cases, those who wroteletterson public matters either left them unsigned (if the opinions were sufficiently antiSoviet) or requested that their names be withheldin any subsequent investigation(if the letter was a denunciation of local officialswho mightretaliate). of the decade, were written singleauthors,not by groups,collectives by or associations. Thus, "public" was a letter-writing essentiallyform indiof vidual, private communication8 withtheauthorities topics on both private and public. This paradox suggeststwoveryimportant lines of enquiry.First, this activitymust be taken very seriouslyby anyone seeking insight as into the privatelives of Soviet citizens,theirarticulationof identity individualsand theirsense of themselvesas social beings. Second, for
all the qualifications that have to be attached to the term "public" in this context, the writing and reading of these letters to the authorities is as close to a public sphereO as one is likely to get during the Stalin period. In a period when information flow was sharply restricted, citizens' letters (along with the NKVD's reports on "the mood of the population") constituted one of the few modes of transmission of public opinion that continued to function. Most "public" letters of the 1930s, particularly after the early years

There are many distinct genres of letters in the archives: complaints, denunciations, petitions, requests for assistance, confessional letters, letters of opinion, threatening letters. Patriotic citizens wrote letters of advice on public policy and signed their names. Angry citizens sent letters of abuse and invective anonymously. Abandoned wives, widows and orphans wrote plaintive pleas for help; lonely people poured out their hearts and asked for understanding. Prisoners and their relatives appealed for amnesty; disenfranchised persons petitioned for reinstatement of civil rights and passports; recent migrants from villages asked for urban residence permits; poor people asked for all kinds of "material help," including shelter, old clothes and money; parents sought to have their children admitted to universities and sometimes orphanages. People wrote letters to the authorities for many differentpurposes: to get housing, to get justice, to get a job, to
8. Althoughthe communicationin public letter-writing went two ways,it would be prudentto avoid the Bakhtinianconcept of "dialogism" (M.M.Bakhtin, Dialogic The Imagination,ed. Michael Holquist, trans.CarylEmerson and Michael Holquist [Austin: University Texas Press, 1981]). of 9. I do not use the term"public sphere" in the special sense associated withJurgen Habermas, Structural Transformation the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Categoryof of Bourgeois Society,trans.Thomas Burger,(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

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collect child support,to defend an arrestedrelative,to finda missing one, to hurt a neighbor,to get rid of theirboss, to warn about plots and conspiracies,to complain about high prices. Letterswere written to solve problems,resolve disputes and settlescores. People wrote in a spiritof duty,malice, ambition,loneliness,despair. were signed,thougha minority wereanonymous.These Most letters or latter(anonimki) usuallycontain abuse of the regime,threats denunconstruction authority: of ciations.Most lettersmanifest paternalistic a justice is invoked, as well as compassion and charity;many writers as emphasizingtheirpowportraythemselves supplicantsand victims, to erlessness. Most writerstailored their self-presentation a convensocial stereotype widow and thelike); still,some tional (simple peasant, took pains to emphasize their individuality, relating vivid personal and theywroteto manydifferent All sortsof people wroteletters, addressees. Political leaders such as Stalin, Molotov and Kalinin received many letters,as did all central partyand state agencies, especially the procuracyand the secret police. At the regional level, party secretarieswere recipientsof many letters.Newspapers were another major destination.Hardly any of these letterswere published,though a luckyfewwere boiled down to a shortparagraph each for the "Signals fromthe Localities" or "Readers' Letters"column thatsome newspapers ran. What the newspapers did-and it was one of their most functions-was to processcitizens'complaints, forward them important to the appropriate authoritiesfor action and in some cases conduct theirown investigations. It is impossible to know either how many letterswere sent to the the authoritiesin the 1930s or how representative surviving lettersare data of the totalnumberof lettersthatwere sent.The onlyquantitative in available are incomplete and relate only to particular institutions specificyears.'0Had I chosen to base this essay on a single "population" of letters(for example, those in the Krest'ianskaia gazeta archive for1938), I could have made more or less meaningful statements about But I took a different their statistical distribution. approach, less like than that of a botanist exploring the varietyof that of a census-taker When I encountereda typeof letter plant life in an unfamiliarterrain. thatwas new to me, I noted it; once I had encountered the same type I of letterrepeatedly, classifiedit as a species and gave it a name. The of and distinctive properties markings these species (genres),as well as
10. For example, Leningrad partyand state institutions (probablyexcluding the NKVD) reportedlyreceived about a thousand lettersper day in 1936 (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46,1. 13), and the newspaperKrest'ianskaia gazetareporteda figurealmost as high a year earlier (Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 10, 22 and 24 July 1935). As Leningrad obkom secretary, Zhdanov was receiving150-200 citizens' lettersa day in 1936 (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46,1. 13), while Molotov was getting about 30 a day at Sovnarkom at the same period (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51,1. 259). In mid-1939the Soviet state prosecutor'sofficewas receiving 1,500 complaints a day (GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93,1. 17).

histories.

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their place in the natural ecology of their region, are the subject of this article. The firstgenre I will examine is the confessional letter(ispoved'). This is not confessionin the Christiansense' 1or in the broader meaning of an admission of guiltthatis the first definition theword given of in Dal"s dictionary. is Dal"s second definition It thatapplies: "a sincere or and complete confession(soznanie) explanation (ob"iasnenie) one's of and actions."12 I choose to begin withthisgenre, convictions, thoughts even thoughotherslike complaintsand denunciationswere employed more frequently, that readers will get an immediate taste of the so flavorof manyof the "public" lettersthatpeounmistakeably personal ple wroteto political leaders,and even to newspapersand government institutions. Such letterswere writtento Stalin, as one mightexpect, but he was not the only recipientand it was not purelya "Stalin cult" phenomenon. There seem to be similar lettersin the archives of all Soviet political leaders,'3 including regional partybosses. An archetypalconfessional letterwas sent to Zhdanov in 1935 by an Ekaterina Burmistrova, upwardly-mobile worker(vydvizhenka) who in was struggling school and in trouble on this account withher local partycommittee."Deeply-respectedcomrade Zhdanov," she wrote in a ramblingand emotional letter,"I beg you not to refuseto listen to my confession (ispoved')and help me understand my actions and the atmospherethatsurroundsme . . ." In contrastto manyletter-writers, Burmistrovahad no specificdemands or requests,though she hoped for a personal meeting; nor was she seeking punishmentfor those responsible for her unhappiness. She was simplyexpressingher misery,her confusionand her sense of inadequacy and rejection."I can't go on, I have no other resort . . . They have turned my whole soul upside down, my nerves will not stand it"-the letteris full of such phrases. As withmanywriters, feelingsof isolation and abandonment came throughclearly. Writtendiagonally in the margin on the last page are the words: "Comrade Zhdanov, I couldn't find a common
language with them" (members of her local party committee).'4 A request for "a personal conversation, even if only for five minutes" is also the postscript to a plaintive letter that Anna Timoshenko, wife of a party official in the Western oblast',wrote to the firstsecretary I.P. Rumiantsev. Timoshenko's subject was her "own unof the obkom,

11. Thus Foucault's reflections confession,grounded in its meaning in Chrison tian ritual, do not have particular relevance to the discussion that follows (Michel Foucault, History Sexuality, of trans.Robert Hurley [New York: Vintage Books, 1990], vol. 1). slovar'zhivago 12. Tolkovyi velikorusskago iazykaVladimira Dalia, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. 2. 13. E.g. in the Kalinin and Lunacharskiifondsin RTsKhIDNI, the Molotov and in in Vyshinskiifonds GARF, the Kirov and Zhdanov (obkom)fonds TsGA IPD and the in Eikhe (kraikom)fond PANO. 14. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1522,11.215-18.

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familylife." She had writtenRumiantsevmany bearably tormenting lettersin the past but had never sent them("theywere all of a personal character"); now she could not refrainfrom pouring out her heart, and begged Rumiantsevto findtime to read her letterand to reply.'5 A wrongedwife,Sedova, wroteto the westSiberian partycommitby tee to protestboth againsther mistreatment her husband,a member partyelite,and the brusque dismissalof her complaints of the district partycommittee("They said he didn'tbeat you he didn't by the district particular.We can't forcehim to live withyou ... It is his do anything privatelife"). Sedova's storywas about her misery;her plea was for a for and ear: "I'm not asking the kraikom the raikom Sedov sympathetic human being I don't want to be thrown to live with me, but I am a overboardand I don't wantpeople to make funof me ... I am unhappy 1' if [you] push me away therewill be no point to mylife." member made an unA 1935 letterfroma Leningrad Komsomol usual confession about religion: writinganonymouslyso as to avoid trouble for singingin a church choir, she asked Stalin to close down her church and thus "save youthfromthat infection. . . The church ..." 17 it's singingis so sad and comforting, a terribletemptation letterscame frommen. "I am a memberof your Some confessional partyand write to you openly what is in my heart," wrote a young communistto Stalin in 1936. He and his wife,both Petrogradworkers in 1917, had foughtin the revolutionand later volunteeredas worker While theywere out in the coun"25,000-ers"during collectivization. attacked by kulaks. She had never his tryside, wife had been savagely regained her health, though they moved out of the city on doctors' orders,and had recentlydied. alone I misshera greatdeal,comradeStalin.And nowI findmyself and moreover the far in thedepthsof theprovinces, from railroad, The and impressionable neurotic. windwhistling I havebecomevery me. are of at thewindow theizbaand theblackquietness destroying be my If I werewith wifeit wouldn't so terrible... Appeals forhelp, sent in huge numbersto the authoritiesin the Stalin me period, constitutethe second genre. "Help, theyare throwing out in the Civil War, [I my on to the street, motheris 76, I lost three sons child, myheart is weak, myhusband is in a mental have] a mentally-ill This telegram,sent in 1940 to Sovnarhospital. Help me quickly."}'t whose object a kom,offers capsule versionof the typical"victim"letter, usually reprewas to obtain some kind of help or favor.Such writers as sented themselves weak and powerless,victimsof a "bitterfate" and
15. Smolensk Archive,WKP 386, 91-92. 16. PANO, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, 11.172-73. The translationreproduces the punctuation of the original. 17. TSGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518,1. 106. 18. Ibid.,d. 2224,11.44-48. 19. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 24,1. 69.

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2( adverse circumstances. The help theyrequested was of various kinds: many simplytold a hard-luckstoryand asked for money,which was sometimesgiven.2' Eikhe, firstsecretaryof the west Siberian kraikom, received manylettersfromwomen trying trace husbands who owed to child support. A single motherin Leningrad asked Kirov to find her nine-year-old a place in an orphanage "or else give him to the Red son Armyto be broughtup." "I haven't even got enough for bread," she wrote."My son and I go hungry, everything been sold. I have no has bedding left,no pillows,and both of us are barefootand in rags."22 A laborer wrote to Molotov asking for cast-off underwear (bel'e) his for family(and/ora job as an investigator the NKVD).2 for In Zhdanov's mail as Leningrad first secretary, almost a thirdof all citizens' letterswere about housing: crowded apartments,damp and in decayingapartments, fights communal apartments, contestedrights to living space, threatsof eviction,pleas for rooms fromfamiliescur-

like Zhdanov's, was full of pleas about housing. One letter,signed by of threeMoscow children,begged him to rescue theirfamily six from life in six square metersunder the stairsin Lubianka alley.25Requests for housing and other favorscame to Molotov frommembersof the Soviet elite as well as ordinarypeople. Three young membersof the Writers'Union, successfulbut poorly housed, wrotea joint letterbegging for "normal" living conditions.26 A pianist living with his pregnant wife and grand piano in a room of ten square meters made a violinistasked for a car to drive similar request; and a child-prodigy him to school.27These elite lettersbelong to a special sub-genreof client-to-patron communications,for Molotov, like almost all Soviet political leaders, acted as a patron to a stable of regular clients from the intelligentsia. Because of his previous position as state prosecutor,Vyshinskii's mail as deputy chairman of Sovnarkom in 1939-1940 included many appeals from wives, mothers and daughters (and occasionally hussee 20. For an analysis of petitionsof this kind for restorationof votingrights, Golfo Alexopoulos, "The Ritual Lamen-t: Spoiled Identities and Discourses of Rehalbilitation in the 1920s and 1930s," paper presented at 27th National Convention of AAASS, Washington,DC, October 1995. 21. For examples of responses,see TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, 1. 41. In one case, the sum of 100 rubles was specified. 22. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 768, 1. 117. For another plea to place children in an orphanage, see ibid.,f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554, 1. 66. 23. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 27, 1. 28. 24. Calculated fromTsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 4, 11. 3-6. The next most popular
categories (in order) were requests for passports and Leningrad residence permlits, appeals against judicial sentences, requests for work, appeals from prison-er-s for amilnesty and requests for places in educational institution-s.

rently renting a "corner" in a kitchen or corridor.24 Molotov's mail,

25. Ibid.,d. 64, 161. 26. Ibid., d. 77, 11.9-10. The writerswere Pavel Nilin, Gennadii Fish and Lev Rubinshtein. 27. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, 1. 133; ibid.,d. 72, 1. 34.

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bands, fathersand sons) of arrested persons, mainlygreat purge victims. "[My husband] did not commit any crimes,and his health and personal qualities make him incapable of crime.I have lived withhim for40 yearsand know him to be an absolutelyhonest man," wrotethe wife of a beekeeper fromSaratov.28 "My husband has been in prison almost a year and half,"wrote the wifeof one Hans Erman, probably "A a career armyofficer. terriblerewardfor20 yearsof honest,selfless toil!" "I ask of you truthand only truth,as a representativeof the regime,"thissame letterconcluded, "and I beg you forit,as a human Denunciation is the genre of public epistolarycommunicationthat to many people epitomizes the Stalin period.3"The large number of denunciations in all typesof archives (state,party,city,regional, militaryand so on, in addition to the stillinaccessibleKGB archives)show was that this form of letter-writing indeed common at all levels of stalinistsocietyand that the authoritiesoftenacted on the denunciations.But I found severalunexpected facetsof theseletters. First,most denunciations were signed, not (as Soviet folk wisdom has it) anonymous. Second, denunciation was a multi-purposetool that mightbe to used fora whole range of purposes,includingexpressingloyalty the regime; protectingoneself from the accusation of notdenouncing; to trying settlescores withcompetitors, personal enemies and tiresome neighbors; obliquely offeringone's services to the NKVD as an informer; expressingoutrage at corruptionor other bureacraticabuses; had been seekingjusticeand the redressof grievanceswhichthe writer unable to gain throughthe courts or by other means. A major categoryof denunciation is the "loyalty"denunciation written one communistagainst another and dealing with political by sins like contacts with formeroppositionists or foreignersand antiSoviet talk.Since it was a communist'sdutyto denounce, such letters usually contain littlein the way of explication of motivesor self-justiAir fication. Thus a communiststudentat the Military Academybaldly on communicateddamaging information Otto Schmidt,the Arcticexplorer: "I consider it necessaryto informyou thatO.Iu. Schmidt was closely acquainted withTishauer, who has been arrestedas a German An less routinely. office worker, feelingit her dutyto give information about her neighbor's anti-Soviet conversations to the wonderfully imagined "State Archivesforthe Protectionof the Tranquillityof our wrote directlyto Zhdanov lest her information Happy Fatherland,"32
95, 101-2. 28. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 348, 11. 29. Ibid.,d. 93, 11.319, 321, 323-24. "Sig30. For a more detailed discussion of denunciations,see Sheila Fitzpatrick, nals fromBelow: Soviet Denunciations of the 1930s," NCSEER report (1994), an exDecember 1996. History, of in panded version of which is forthcoming Journal Modern 31. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, 1. 36. po was "Gosudarstvennye institution Arkhivy 32. The full title of this non-existent
"29 being."

spy .

. .''931

Non-communists also wrote "loyalty" denunciations, though

sotsializma." okhranespokoistviianashei schastlivoirodinyi stroiashchegosia

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penetrated the security agencies.33 There were many such denunciations of neighbors, especially neighbors in communal apartments. In many cases the writer clearly hoped to get a neighbor evicted or arrested so as to free up living space.34 Malice, self-interest and party duty were not the only stimuli to denunciation. A quest forjustice was at least the ostensible motive of many denunciations written by subordinates against their bosses and by ordinary people against officials.These letters,filed by Krest'ianskaia gazeta's archivists under the heading "abuse of power (zloupotreblenie vlast'iu)," belong to a special category on the borderline between denunciations and complaints. Most "abuse" denunciations came from peasants and were directed against kolkhozchairmen.35 They were appeals to higher authorities (including newspapers) to intervene and correct the misbehavior of lower officials,usually framed in terms of indignation and a demand for justice. A typical rural "abuse" letter details the sins of kolkhoz monopolizing kolkhozassets, drunkleaders (stealing from the kolkhoz, often labeling them "kuenness, favoritism, rudeness to kolkhozniks), laks" for good measure, and ends with a call to "punish the rascals as they deserve." "These kulak scum take the grain and sell 16 kilos [on the market] for 50 rubles a pud, while honest toilers go hungry. Comrades, where is your vigilance (sic) twenty years of Soviet power and this kind of abomination and terrorizing of the dark masses continues." 36 Peasant "abuse" letters might also be framed as calls for rescue. a begged Krest'ianskaiagazeta, describing "Save our kolkhoz," kolkhoznitsa how her kolkhozhad been bankrupted and "brought to ruin" by its leaders.37 Punishment rather than rescue is the leitmotif of this denunciation of an anti-semitic trade-union boss: "In the twelfthyear of the great October revolution, that poisonous, harmful bedbug, who long ago should have been crushed and annihilated, still sits behind the chairman's desk. Poluzadov ought to be slapped down to get rid of his desire to insultJews once and for all." 38 Complaints, a genre closely related to denunciations, may be distinguished from them by a primary stress on the writer's victimization rather than the subject's misdeeds and the need for punishment. Nevertheless, the line is a fine one. The writer of the "bedbug" denunciation, for example, had almost certainly been a victim of Poluzadov's antiSemitism. Conversely, the women who wrote a complaint in 1933 about their neighbors' drinking parties concluded with a call for punishment:
33. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 84.
arkhiv munitsipial'nyi 34. Occasionly this hope was made explicit: see TsentralPnyi 35. Q.v. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian

"fall into the hands of some stillunmasked scoundrel" who mighthave

(TsMAM), f. 1039, op. 2, d. 2140, 1. 6 (courtesyof ViktoriiaTiazhel'nikova). g. Moskvy Press, 1994), chap. 8. (New York: Oxford University Collectivization after Village 36. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128, 1. 159. 49-51. 37. Ibid.,d. 161, 11. 38. GARF, f. 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4),1. 30.

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"We women workers living at no. 10, Dukhovskii Lane ask that those guilty of causing disturbances be made to answer for it and give us some peace at night." 39 Of course, some complaints were not denunciations, for example, a letter sent to Molotov by a Moscow engineer, indignant after spending a whole day in vain search for shoes for his child: all Today I wentround more than40 shops and everywhere you heard was the answer NO. They turned up in one store but what kind of madeand costing rubles.Of course that's 45 shoes were those, crudely nothingto you, but for a person earning 150-180 rubles or even 250 rubles a month it is very,veryexpensive.. .4' Opinions, suggestions and advice constitute a genre of their own. A wide range of suggestions for the improvement of Soviet life and state policies was offered in citizen's letters: to remove all "rab" and "slug" words from Russian language because of their servile connotations; to pass a law against blat; to limit the sale of alcoholic beverages near factories; to prohibit betting at the racetrack; to prevent discrimination against non-smokers in offices; to establish a socialist alternative to the Nobel Prizes to reward "heroism, great discoveries, [and] selfless struggle for the good of the world"; to allow Old Believers premises for religious services; to remove the stigma from "former people" and let those who were deported from Moscow and Leningrad return to their homes.4' There are also occasional attempts to open student student wrote an ideological discussion: a Siberian tekhnikum to Eikhe in 1935 asking his opinion on an issue under dispute among his classmates-whether it was possible to "build communism in one While many of the "opinion" letters are essentially apolitical, others stake out political positions that range from strongly critical to ultra-loyal. Ultra-loyalists were those who not only accepted but even exaggerated regime values, especially with respect to watchfulness and suspicion of possible "enemies," "wreckers" and foreign spies. At the time of Kirov's murder, one Leningrader wrote offering to "avenge" Kirov by personally carrying out the death sentences against his murderers. After Radio Moscow played the funeral march from Chopin's B-flatPiano Sonata on the day that Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed, a vigilant citizen wrote to alert Molotov to this coded trotskyite signal, evidence that enemies had penetrated the state arts committee. Other writers warned that publishing statistics on pig-iron production gave valuable information to the fascists and expressed dismay that
f. 39. TsGAOR g. Moskvy, 1474, op. 7, d. 72,1. 42. 40. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51,11.248-49. 41. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51,1. 144; ibid.op. 81a, d. 24,11.48-49; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 120,1. 155; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 10; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 108, 11.19-22; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 11; ibid.,d. 47,1. 157; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 1. 276. 457-59. 42. PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 11. country."42

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Lenin's image had been cheapened by itsreproductionon the new 30ruble note.43 Among the critical letters (a larger group than the ultra-loyal), attackson Stalin or his policies are rare but not totally signed outright lacking.In 1930,forinstance,a communist from Berezovkanear Odessa signed his name to a letterto Pravda strongly criticizing Stalin's article "Dizzy withSuccess" as a weapon in the hands of the Party'senemies, and expressing the hope that comrade Stalin would "recognize his mistakeand returnto the correctpath."44To be sure, lettersof such boldness are rarelyencountered after 1930. But some later lettersto Molotov and other political leaders directly criticizethe addressee for For example, while the engineer who specificactions or statements. wrote to Molotov about children's shoes blamed "do-nothingsin the for commissariats" shortages,he added that"this doesn't absolve you for fromresponsibility," Molotov had "loudly proclaimed to the whole USSR and the whole world thatin the next twoyearsprices would fall, but in a few months prices for shoes, clothing and other things increased. Oy, how badly thatturned out . . ."45 More often,signed criticismof political leaders was directed at second-tier figureslike Litvinov,Kollontai and Lunacharskii (to name three popular targets, suspected by many communistsof "bourgeois" in or "liberal" tendencies).The following, written 1936, is one of many attackson the commissarfor foreignaffairs: A fellow wholong ago sucWhatkindof personis Litvinov? tricky to in cumbed thebourgeoisie. Soon he willputa monocle hiseyeand His is here playBismarck. opinionof I.V.Stalin knownto everyone and abroad.... Litvinov the of wants laurelwreaths thebourgeoisie, whichnauseateshim... Currying not the praiseof the proletariat, favor with is ministers not diplomacy, shameful!4'" it's bourgeois and Regime policies on issues like education were oftencriticized, sometimes such criticismhad broader implications.For example, a who described himselfas "a Soviet patriot"for low-levelsovietofficial the past fifteen yearswroteto Kirov at the end of 1932 to say thathis was being severely testedby theregime'shandlingof food shortloyalty ages. In particular,he said, he could not understand "why we have forsakenour children.My wifeworksin railroad school no. 5 in Pskov. She says thatwhen a doctor inspected the children'shealth it turned out thatabout 90 percentwere weakened frommalnutrition ." How ... of could thishappen when "we are building the future all mankind"?47 Distinguishedby theirproprietorialattitudeto the regimeand confident were assumptionof therightto reprimandit,Leningradworkers
43. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 1. 341; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 11.21323; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82., d. 56,1. 331. 44. GARF. f. 3316, op. 16a, d. 446,1. 190. 45. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 11.248-49. 46. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226,1. 38. 47. Ibid.,op. lb, d. 449,1. 73.

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particularly likelyto writeadmonitory letters. Leningraders'criticisms were directed most frequently elite privilegesand the Party'sgrowat ing alienation fromthe workingclass.48Sometimes theyconveyed a veiled threat,as in the signed letterto Zhdanov, dated June 1937, in which a communistworker(who had just been firedfor drunkenness and absenteeism) complained that the factorybosses had become a new ruling caste, treatingthe workerseven worse than the capitalists had done: 'Just think,comrade Zhdanov, how many of us are candidates for the trotskyites, althoughI alwaysstruggledand will struggle forsocialism against capitalism,but as forothersin the same position as I am, I can't answer for them, only I hear them cursing Soviet power. oftenexpressed similarsentiments. 1935 A 49Anonymousletters anonimka fromLeningrad complains that "the apparats... are filled with princes, aristocratsand clergy[.]These creatures sit in all the apparatsand most have partycards. But the workerhas no rightto work in the apparats[,]theyare all driven all out so as not to be an eyesore... The anonimka a genre with its own characteristictropes. One is trope is anger, oftenexplosivelyexpressed,directed against members of the old and new privilegedclasses,foreigners andJews.The Russian revolutionwas part of an international Jewishconspiracy,and Stalin and Kirov had sold out to theJews,according to one Leningrad anonimka 1934. Workerswere fedup withJewish of dominationand would soon end it by another revolution,another asserted.5' The threatin the second letteris not unusual. AfterKirov's murder,manyanomimki make sinisterreferenceto it,warning,forexample, thatif prices were not lowered,other political leaders would share Kirov's fate.52 1936 A froma convict,complaining that"only women and orphans anonimka remain in Soviet collective farmsand the husbands of these women all sit in damp jails like your Thilman," warns that there mightbe uprisingsand war ifthe regimedid not release "at least thekolkhozniks" fromprison. Sarcasm is another characteristic trope in anonimki. Writerscommonly either focused theirbarbs on the gulfbetween the rhetoricof "great Soviet achievements" and Soviet reality,or ridiculed the rein gime's hypocrisy condemningcapitalistgovernments oppressing for their citizens. "So this is a glorious epoch," wrote one anonymous writerin 1936. But "for me the followingthingremains incomprehensible . . . We have a colossal armyof convicts,tens of millionsof them, who are overflowing jails, the camps, and the [labor] colonies . .. the
48. E.g. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 48,1. 223. 49. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47,11. 147-49. 50. Ibid.,op. 2v, d. 1518,1. 62. 51. Ibid.,d. 1518,1. 9, and d. 727,1. 367. 52. Ibid.,d. 1518,11. 1, 14. 53. GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, 1. 148. Ernst Thailiman was a Germiiain comiymunist leader whose imprisonment the nazis was the subject of manyindignanlt by articlesin the Soviet press.

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In the majorityof cases the accusation aRainstthemis completelybraon sent to Pravda zen, crass and based entirely lies . . ."' 4An anonimka in 1930 notes sarcasticallythat the first five-year plan had omittedto budget for the necessarybuilding of prisons: "the supreme potentate Kalservant(peasant starosta (Caucasian Prince Stalin) and his faithful inin) forgotabout that ... 55
The language56 of Soviet "public" lettersalso merits attention. Many letters choose a comradely salutation as the mode of address: "Dear (dorogoi)comrade," as in "Dear comrade Vyshinskii" or "My dear comrade Stalin,"57 though the more formal "respected/deeply respected comrade" also occurs. Communists and (uvazhaemyi, mnogouvazhaemyi) Komsomol members often signed their letters "with communist (Komsomol) greetings," or sometimes "with comradely greetings." Party members might give the number of their party card (especially when writing denunciations). Workers often identified themselves by factory as well as by name. In some letters,political leaders are addressed with the familiar second person singular (ty),58 but a sense of intimacy is more often conveyed by other means. "Give some thought to this question, talk it over in the Kremlin," a communist worker advised Zhdanov in a letter on foreign policy.59 "Ekh! Mikhail Ivanovich! Check this out ... ," wrote an anonymous denouncer of plots to President Mikhail Kalinin.60 Some uneducated writers used the salutation "Good day!" One letter to Krest'ianskaia gazeta begins as if the writerhad just knocked on the editorial door: "Good day, comrade staffers! kolkhoznik here A is to see you."61 Some writers attempted to blend the intimacy of comradeship with that of supplication, as in a communist agronomist's appeal whose flavor is hard to convey in English: "TovarishchZhdanov,chutkii, rodnoipomogi(Comrade Zhdanov, dear sensitive one, help me)." 152 Others softened comradely criticism with a sense of shared historical mission, as in the exalted ending of a worker's complaint about elite privileges: " "I remain, with respect and in the conviction of the victory of communism, N.A. Kosoch. 2 April, 1937, 3 o'clock at night. My five little
54. GARF, f. 3316, op. 40, d. 14,1. 100. 55. Ibid.,op. 16a, d. 446,1. 100. 56. The argumentin this section does not depend on the Saussurian distinction in Linguistics, and ed. betweenlangueand parole(Ferdinand de Saussure, (Course General trans.Charles Bally and AlbertSechehaye [New York: Philosophical Library,(1959)]). 57. E.g. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, 1. 323; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2224, 1. 46. a to 58. TsGA IPD, f.24, op. lb, d. 449, 1.72 (1932 letter- Kirov fromiiyoungwvotrkervydvizhenets). 59. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226,1. 38. 60. GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070,1. 4. den, 61. The Russian, retaining the original punctuation and spelling, is "dobry RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161,1. 289. tavarichi robotniki. Kvamkolkhoznik." 62. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47,1. 147. 63. Ibid.,d. 48,1. 223 (my emphasis).

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The comradely style could also take ones sleep,and I writeforthefuture." a belligerent turn. A communist's denunciation of a low-level official sent to a regional administrator opens with a comradely "Good day, comrade Denisov" but ends harshly: "This bastard should be driven out of the trade union. If you don't take measures, I will write directly to the Central Committee of the Party."64 Epithets like "leader of the proletariat" or "comrade-in-arms (soratnik) of Stalin" and grandiose terms like vozhd' (leader) appear in citizens' letters of the 1930s, though perhaps less often than one might expect. For example, a Leningrad worker petitioning "comrade Zhdanov" in 1937 addressed him as "leader (vozhd') of the Leningrad bolsheviks [and] comrade-in-arms of the leader of peoples, comrade Stalin."65 On the whole, however, the flattering"courtier's" style is more likely to come from the intelligentsia and the new privileged class than from the lower classes, and to be found in ceremonial collective epistles rather than individual letters.613 "Our dear and beloved Andrei Aleksandrovich," was how the painter Mark Shafran prefaced his request that Zhdanov pose for his portrait;67and a mathematician seeking support for his path-breaking work, Bases ofa New Algebra,not only implored Zhdanov to extend his "personal protection and patronage but also sent in two acrostics that he had (zashchita i pokrovitel'stvo)" composed on the names of Stalin and Kirov.i8 Simpler people used simpler methods of flattery."Knowing your love and care for children .. ." wrote a mother of three to Zhdanov, asking for "material help" (money); "Knowing your exceptional responsiveness (chutkost')... ," wrote a petitioner to Eikhe.i9 The image of the political leader as a benevolent father who protects and pities his children, or as a trusted and understanding friend, is often encountered in the letters. "Be a good father" and protect us from the temptations of appealed to Stalin. "I beg you as a religion, the Leningrad komsomolka father, as a friend of the people," the betrayed wife wrote to Rumiantsev. "My only friend, who deeply understands the human heart," the distraught widower addressed Stalin. "Justice" was regularly invoked by letter-writers."Where is truth and justice?" "Comrades, answer us please where we can find justice... ?" "If there is any justice in Soviet power, punish those people." 7 "Duty" appears equally often but only in one specific context:
the noted 64. PANO, f:3, op. 9, d. 801,1. 209. Despite the familiargreeting, writer thathe was not personallyacquainted withDenisov. 65. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47,1. 237. Women's Day sent to Zhdanov by 66. Congratulatory telegramson Intern-ational were branches of the wives' volunteer movement,Obshchestvennitsa, full of flowery epithetslike "loyal comrade in arms of comrade Stalin" and "leader of the toilersof Leningr-ad oblast"'(TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 2219,11. 185-88). 67. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2219, 1. 1. 68. Ibid.,d. 1544, 11.184-92. 69. Ibid.,op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 2; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 1173. 70. GARF, f, 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4), 1. 30; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 65,11. 212-14; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2,1. 24.

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"I consider it my duty (party duty, duty as a citizen) to inform you . . ." is one of the standard preambles to a denunciation.7' While much research remains to be done on the relationshipbeand prerevolutionary petitions,it is tween Soviet lettersto authority clear that many lettersof the 1930s use conventionsthat predate the Soviet regime. Construingan authority figureas a "beloved father," referenceto law), complainingto higher appealing forjustice (without of about local abuses,writing authority pathetically "the crustof bread" thatwas so oftenlacking-all these are as standardin the repertory of nineteenthcenturypetitionsas in the those of the 1930s.72 In the mid-1920s,a Soviet official categorized citizens'lettersconcerning taxes as follows: 1) typed petitionswrittenby lawyers,citing scribes' petitions laws and administrative instructions; hand-written 2) ("big letterswith curlicues") using emotional rather than legal argumentation;and 3) personal pleas, oftenwithautobiographicaldetails, written dirty on clumsily scraps of paper.73By the 1930s the thirdtype the of letterwas flourishing, firsthad largelydisappeared, while the wherescribes'familiar second survived "curmainlyin thecountryside, licues" decorated some lettersrightup to World War II. to It is not unusual for writers have embellished theirletterswith "The voice of the kolkhoznik away, dies literary historicalreferences. or

a voice crying in the wilderness," wrote a peasant (a comparatively rare Biblical reference). "[They are] driving me to the edge, as the Nicholai I's black band of butchers drove Pushkin," declaimed another. A worker warned that leaders alienated from the masses might meet the fate of "the Greek hero of myths AntXeus[who] severed himself from mother earth and suffocated in the air and his only strength was the mother earth who bore him." 74 Drawing on literary and cinematic sources, Svetlana Boym has recently suggested that grafomaniia-the urge towards pisatel'stvo(writerliness) in those without literary talent-moved out of its nineteenth century intelligentsia home to become an "all-people's" afflictionduring the Soviet period.75 Leaving aside the red herring of literary talent or its absence, the urge to writefor thesake of writingis very marked in popular letter-writingof the 1930s. The letters often convey an exhiliration and delight in the power to use language that reminds the reader how recently some of their writers had acquired literacy. For
71. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 84; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, 1. 97; GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070,1. 4. see Hilf century, Moml-msen, Mir,54, 56, 104-5, and passim; 72. For the nineteenth for Soviet examples, see above ("father,""justice"), and GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 179, 1. f. 170; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, 1474, op. 7, d. 72,1. 121; RGAE, f.396, d. 128, 1.68 ("crust"). 73. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 826, 11.23-24. 74. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 142, 1. 177; ibid.,d. 26, 1. 139; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 48, 1.223. Press, 1994), 200-5. Harvard University
Places: Mythologies Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge: of 75. Svetlana Boym, Common

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power" letters come illustrated with cartoons. In one such case, the writerlartistended his letter by requesting a job as a caricaturist with the newspaper.77 An item in Krest'ianskaiagazeta's mail that straddles the boundary and popular art is an essay in fairy-tale(skazka) between letter-writing form under the title "Exploits (podvigi) of the Hooligan Knave S.M. Tychinkin." 78 In the dark littlevillage of M. Kemary .. resounded the name of the
First of August kolkhoz. . Why it grew (sic) communist kolkhozchair-

the historian (and no doubt the original addressee as well), reading such lettersmay be a moving experience. Writinglettersto the authoritiessurelywas, or at least could be, as much a formof popular as culture and an expression of popular creativity the amateur theatricals and balalaika playing that are usually listed under these headand ings. The line between popular letter-writing popular writingin the literary sense is a fineone, and thereare signs thatmanyamateur refusedto draw it.The readerswho deluged Krest'ianskaia gazeta writers with lettersof complaint,denunciation and enquiry were also spontaneously sending the newspaper "artistic" production-drawings, Somepoems,and shortstories-that theyhoped would be published.7" timesthe genre distinction simplymeltsaway:anonymousindictments of Soviet power are crafted in classical quatrains, while "abuse of

Vaseev . . . But for those who were stealing from the kolkhoz,life

man E.E.Vaseev was sent to it with Soviet spirit and a communist heart. Vaseev did not touch strongdrink,and all the masses loved became dreary.Vaseev would not let themsteal fromthe kolkhoz, [so] theythrewthemselveson Vaseev, wantingto force him out, but the stalwartcommunistpushed offthe rascals. Who was the head of the beatings and hooliganism,there is not enough paper to describe all
.

rascals? Tychinkin Stepan Mikhailovich . his tricks ...

. There was no end to the

The collective authors79) asked the newspaper "to publish our note (zametka),"a commonly expressed desire, despite the infrequency of its realization. Many writers to newspapers also indicated their commitment to publication by giving titles to their letters, usually modeled on headings in the Soviet press: "Which of Them Are Class Enemies?" "Take
76. Krest'ianskaia gazeta,10 July1935. In the period 5-8 July,the paper received 90 drawings and 45 poems and short stories. Citizens also sent poems and other secretaries:see, for example, TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, literary compositions to obkom d. 1554, 1. 66. 77. See RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 79 for the quatrains and RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 67, 1. 33, and ibid.,d. 129, unpag., for cartoons. The request for a job is in d. 129. 78. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 26, 11.137-39. [of themselvesas "sympathizers the 79. There were 6 signatories,2 identifying CommunistParty]"and 4 as "kolkhozniks."

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8( Appropriate Measures," "Illegal Business," "Is This Not Wrecking?" feldsher judging byhis elegantscript, (and perhaps, veterinary A kolkhoz a formerscribe), V.V. Smirnov headed his denunciation of a kolkhoz slogans: "A sechairman witha whole arrayof decoratively-inscribed Bol'shesol'skii Viatskiisel'sovet, rious signalfrom'Red Potiagino' kolkhoz, raion,Iaroslavl' oblast'.THERE CAN BE NO MERCY FOR ENEMIES OF THE SOVIET PEOPLE/THEY ARE PROTECTING ENEMIES - - - UNPUNISHED CRIMINALS"8'1 to Even lettersnotwritten newspapers were sometimesgiven titles This bringsus back to an earlier question about the by theirauthors.82

"publicness" of public letter-writing.Given the very small chance of getting a letter published and the much greater chance of evoking official response (investigation of a dispute, punishment of an offender, accelerated access to a scarce good),83 the rational goal of writing letters was not publication but official intervention. Yet many letter-writerspersisted in asserting the contrary. This suggests that the flood of readers' letters to newspapers and journals in the era of gorbachevian glasnost'84 was no accident and that perhaps what Soviet letter-writerswanted all along was to get their letters into print and their opinions into the public sphere. Letter-writersof the Stalin era did their best to master the language of Pravda.85 Soviet epithets, party jargon and rhetorical devices were but used exuberantly and sometimes incongruously: "It is not a kolkhoz a nest of gentryand gendarmes," "A CLUSTER OF FORMER PEOPLE has gathered in the house," "Degenerate elements have wormed their way onto the kolkhozboard," "We are now waging decisive war with grabbers (rvachi),""Revolutionary legality was brazenly violated," "They were deaf to [my] signals," "[He] took the path of terror," "More than once I unmasked [them].., but the district leaders hide my unmaskings under the blanket," "An incorrigible opportunist and hidden trotskyite," "A self-seeker (shkurnik)with a party card," "This handful of

80. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 86,1. 406; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 295; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 142,1. 141; GARF, f. 3316, op. 64, d. 1854,1. 258. 81. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 161,11.24, 29-32. 82. Q.v. the 1936 letterto Rumiantsevheaded "A sel'kor's signal," Smolensk Archive,WKP 355, 219. 83. Of letterssent 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, 11.27-31 [Orgburo resolution "On the situationin Krest'ianskaia gazeta,"12 April 1938]). 84. See Cerf et al., eds., Small Fires (1990) and Riordan and Bridger,eds., Dear Comrade Editor(1992). 85. By "the language of Pravda," I mean the vocabulary,rhetoricaldevices and conventionsof styleand formatcharacteristic the central partynewspaper.This is of not a Foucauldian discourse,on whichsee Michel Foucault, TheArcheologyKnowledge of on and theDiscourse Language, trans.E.M.Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).

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and wreck"Whiteguardists, trotskyites kulak hold-outs (nedobitki),"

ers." 86

the basis of the "model letters" occasionally published in the press.87 A handful of phrases seem to have lodged firmlyin the popular mind. was "Cadres decideeverything" one of them, used both as boilerplate and as a pointed remark from mistreated employees.88 Another was "Life 1ifehas becomemore cheerful"-sometimes used ironihas becomebetter, cally.89But perhaps the most popular of all Stalin's tropes in the late 1930s was a phrase borrowed from Aesop's fables, "wolves in sheep's clothing." 9( "Let them uncover who she is, tear offthe mask ... [from] the wolf in sheep's clothing"; "Those wolves in sheep's clothing are happy to harm our party in the kolkhoz at every turn"; "We need to know how to recognize the enemy in sheep's clothing who is conspicuously showing devotion to Soviet power but thinking like a wolf."9tl) Like memoirists and actors, those who write letters to the authorities are involved in a sort of performance. Many cast themselves in particular roles and draw on established social stereotypes and rhetorical conventions in enacting them. 2 There are many orphans in the Soviet letter files-perhaps even more than there were in real life.t'3 Some writers cited their parentless state and upbringing in an or-

Quotations fromStalin are to be found in the lettersof the 1930s, thoughless often(and more ambiguously)than one mightimagine on

86. RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 158; TsGAOR g. Moskvy,f. 1474, op. 7, d. 79, 1. 86; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206,1. 76; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, 1. 1434; ibid.,op. 11, d. 41, 1. 31; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 161,1. 49; ibid.,d. 87,1. 281; ibid.,d. 86,1. 391; RTsKhIDNI, f 475, op. 1, d. 10, 1. 2; ibid.,d. 9,1. 8; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206,1. 77; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 9,1. 108. 87. For a "model" letterallegedly fromkolkhozniks, headed "Destroy the Enemy withoutMercy,"see Krest'ianskaia gazeta,25January1938, 3. On the treatment Stalin of in Leningrad letters,see Sarah Davies, "The 'Cult' of the Vozhd': Representationsin Lettersfrom1934-1941," forthcoming RussianHistory. in 88. RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2,11. 39-40; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534,11. 176, 183. 89. See TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514,1. 37 for a literaluse (about Leningrad's soccer team);and ibid., 3548,1. 62 (forpopular commentson price increasesreported d. by the NKVD). 90. In his speech to the Februar-y-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 offthem" (I.V.Stalin, Robert H. McNeal, ed. Sochineniia, [Palo Alto: StanfordUniversity Press, 1967], vol. 1 [XIV], 190 [myemphasis]). 91. TsGA IPD, f 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 1; RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128,1. 159; GARF f 3316, op. 64, d. 1854,1. 258. 92. These epistolaryperformancesdiffer importantrespectsfromthe face-toin face interactions described by ErvingGoffman ThePresentation Selfin Everyday in of Life (Garden City:Doubleday & Co., 1959). 93. In seventeenthcenturyRussian petitions,virtuallyall petitionersrefer to themselvesas "orphans" of theirlords (siroty tvoi).See Krest'ianskie chelobitnye v. XVII Iz sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia(Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

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phanage as evidence of theirimpeccable Soviet values: "vigilance and justice were implanted in my childhood." 4 Others used them as a that must arouse synecdoche for the powerlessnessand vulnerability compassion. The orphaned Churkovsiblings,childrenof deported kulaks, played on this response when petitioningfor the returnof the The presentationof selfas weak,poor, uneducated, powfamily izba.95 a erless was perhaps most typically ploy used by women and children. But it was also used by peasants. "Comrades, help, we appeal to you for help, for mental capacity (sic) . . ." "We are uneducated (malograit motnye), is easy to fool and rob us." 96 wrote as mothers.In many cases, this Women writersfrequently on was because theywere writing theirchildren'sbehalf,asking thata son or daughter be admitted to college, given medical treatmentor released fromprison. Mothersof Red Armymen had a practical pursince a range of special benefits pose for thus identifying themselves, were available to them.'7 Some women cite the factthattheirchildren Komsomol members or vydvizhentsyevidence of were communists, as their worthas Soviet citizens.Women asking for "material help" invariably mention the plight of their children,barefoot and in rags, "withouta crustof bread." A peasant woman writing anonymouslyto condemn cursing and hooliganism in her village signed the letter "Mother."98 Male letter-writers oftenpresented themselvesas patriots.A statementof communistpartymembershipwas one obvious wayof making this claim, but many reinforcedit withreferencesto specificservices to the revolution(forexample,servingin theRed Guards,volunteering for the Red Army, bandits in the fareast or the Caucasus). As fighting an epistolarytrope, shedding blood in the civil war had the greatest resonance. "I am a communistsince 1918 and lost myhealth (an arm) forthe new life." "I have already paid mydebt withblood, fighting on of the fronts the civil war." "[We] did not spare [our] blood and fought
the parasites." 9 In anonimki,a favorite legitimizing device was to sign the letter "Veteran of the Civil War" or (in Siberia) "Red Partisan." 100 There were women patriots, too. One of them, asking Kirov's help on a family matter in 1934, described herself as "a member of the bolshevik party since March 1917" who had been arrested byjunkers in 1917, taken part in the battle of Pulkovo and so on. Three years later, the

94. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534,11.176, 183. 95. Smolensk Archive,WKP 355, 129-32. 96. From lettersto Krest'ianskaia gazetain RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, 1. 289; ibid., d. 128, 11.66-69 (paraphrase). 97. See RGAE, f. 396, 7. d. 26,11.207-8. 98. GARF, f. 3316, op. 41, d. 85,11.41-43. 99. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51,11.248-49; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, 1474, op. 7, d. f. 72,1. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128,1. 159. 100. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 27,1. 172; GANO, f.47, op. 5, d. 179,1. 170; PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 9, 126.

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same woman wrote to Zhdanov asking help in a new familycrisis.It is interesting note thatthistime-no doubt in response to the public to revaluation of the familyassociated withthe debate on abortion and anti-abortionlaw of 1936-she introduced a subtle change into her not self-representation: only a revolutionarypatriot now but also a parent,she appealed to Zhdanov in 1937 "as a memberof thebolshevik "" partysince March 1917 and as themother three of children." Another formof patrioticidentification was as a correspondentfromthe factoryor village (rabkor, thatis a public-spirited sel'kor), citizenwho wrote to the newspaper on a regularbasis, voluntarily and withoutpay, "signaling" local bureaucraticinefficiency and "unmasking"wrongdoers. The rabkorlsel'kor movementof the 1920s had much in common with in thatof Americanwhistleblowers the 1970s,except thatSoviet targets were not corporate executives but anti-Sovietengineers and corrupt kolkhoz chairmen. During collectivization, number of village correa spondents were murderedby "kulaks." Though the formalinstitution was lapsing by the late 1930s, the image of the fearless truth-teller retained its appeal and many peasant authors of "abuse" letters was adopted thesel'kor persona. "I am persecutedas a sel'kor" a familiar The trope of past oppression-prerevolutionary poverty,misery and exploitation-served both as an appeal to compassion and as evidence of pro-Sovietsympathies.Kolkhozniks described themselvesas Old Believers pointed out thatthey formerpoor peasants and batraks; "I they had been persecuted under the tsar.'103 was illegitimate,my in mother worked as a batrachka Tver guberniia," wrote a communist administrator embroiled in a local feud, seeking to establishher credentials as one who had suffered under the old regime."In childhood I experienced great poverty,"noted the wife of an arrested factory manager in her appeal on behalf of her husband in 1937."'4 as Self-identification a workerwas another way of establishingSovietloyalties.In the eyes of "worker"writers, statuscarried special this rights, including the rightto criticizethe regime.Such men expected the authoritiesto listen to them and the archivalrecord suggeststhat theirexpectations werejustified.They announced theirworkeriden"workerSlashchev, tity proudly;forexample,one writer signed himself of Vasilii Fedorovich,memberof the union of rivertransport Bobrovskii creek,employed continuouslyin rivertransportsince 1908 up to
the present day." IOF Of course, the "worker" label was also used manipulatively. Anonymous letter writers frequently signed themselves refrain.10

101. Lettersin TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727,11.335-36; and ibid.,op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 272 (my emphasis). 102. RGAE, f. 396, d. 86,11. 391-92; Sniolensk Archive,WKP 386, 144-47. 103. RGAE, f.396, d. 128, 1. 159; and Smolensk Archive, WKP 190, 26; TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 157. 104. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1514, 1. 23; ibid.,d. 2220, 1. 10. 105. GANO, f. 288, op. 2, d. 902,1. 6.

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an rooting: "I am a vydvizhenka, orphan." II( It would be misleading, however, to give the impression that all letter-writers presented themselves as embodiments of a few recognizable social types. On the contrary, a distinct sub-group of writers stressed their individuality and the particularity of their experiences."' The repertoire of such writers might include philosophical reflection, irony (as distinct from the sarcasm that was a stock-in-trade of many expose letters), introspection, emotional display and analysis of psychology and motivation. Confession (ispoved') is the genre in which individualized autobiography and uninhibited emotional display are the norm. "I thirsted for boiling, vital activity,"wrote a young Leningrader describing the spiritual odyssey that ended in her resignation from the Komsomol.

"Workerat the Putilovplant," "Productionworker," "Odessa worker," "Old worker"and the like.106 oftenrepresented In the course of the 1930s, writersincreasingly themselvesas achievers. The quintessential achievers of the decade and over-fulfillers norms of were shockworkers (udarniki) stakhanovites, who were singled out forrewardsand public recognition.Three Komprojectadded the somol workersfromthe Moscow metroconstruction to phrase "decorated shockworkers(udarniki-znachkisty)"their signatureson a denunciation of politicians in theirnative south Osetiia.107 initiatorof Another writeridentifiedherselfas "an obshchestvennitsa, personnel in the city the movementof wives of engineering-technical 108 of Leningrad,forwhichI was decorated by the government." To be a vydvizhenets-that someone promoted fromthe lower classes into is, a while-collar administrativeor professional position-constituted described themselvesin achievement,and a number of letter-writers this way.'(9 Usually this conveyed pride in having risen fromhumble origins. But Sedova, the Siberian wronged wife encountered earlier, in twist, perhaps unintentionally, a poignant final gave it a different sentence that made upward mobilityseem just another form of up-

into as I wantedto throw myself an indimyself workso as to forget in to to vidual(kakindividuum),lose countof time, submerge myself I of thatI the worries, joys and excitement the collective. thought collective. from first But the all couldfind that onlyin theKomsomol I was disappointed 112 ...
106. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, 1. 115; TfsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 11. 403-9; ibid.,d. 1518,1. 8. 107. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, 1. 103. 108. TfsGA IPD, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, 11.172-73. 109. Smolensk Archive,WKP 386, 322-3; TsPA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 15, ll. 92-3; ibid.,op. lb, d. 449, 1. 72. 110. PANO f. 3, op. 11, d. 41,11. 172-73. 111. It is not clear, however,thatthisreflects general increase in self-consciousa ness about identitycomparable with that discovered in Elizabethan England by Stephen Greenblatt(Renaissance Self-Fashioning. MoretoShakespeare From [Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1980]). 112. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 772,11.23-24.

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But not all letters about emotional distress belonged to the confessional genre. A communist schoolmaster wrote to Zhdanov in 1934 imploring him to find out the truth about the death of his daughter, an engineer on the Caucasus railway who had died in mysterious circumstances after having endured sexual harrassment from bosses and colleagues. In her grief, the author's wife had become convinced that there had been some kind of cover-up; she would wake him in the middle of the night to ask where their daughter was and whether she had been shut away in a mental hospital. The wife suspected her husband of involvement in the cover-up, even though he had sent letters and petitions in all directions. "Life has become hell," the letter conAnother man's life was hell for differentreasons: 31 years old in 1937, he was an orphan who had worked as a shepherd and agricultural before laborer and had lived on the street as a homeless besprizornyi and the Communist Party in the early 1930s. Despite joining the kolkhoz his lack of education, he was promoted to head a rural soviet and then, in September 1937, to the much more formidable job of chairman of a district soviet. Here, coping with the aftermath of his predecessor's arrest as an enemy of the people, he was completely out of his depth, tormented by his "political and general illiteracy" and the mockery of unnamed people who called him "durak." By his own description, he was wracked by "nervous illness" and unable to eat ("In two and a half months of such a life. . ., I have lost as much as ten kilograms from the weight of the organism"). He begged to be relieved of his position.114 An engineer, who was the daughter of an Armenian father killed in ethnic strifeduring the civil war and a mother who died as a refugee shortly afterwards, described these circumstances and her privileged upbringing in her brother's apartment in the Dom Pravitel'stva in Moscow before outlining her immediate problem: she was about to be fired from her job for consorting with persons now exposed as trotskyites (the year was 1937), even though her association with them was related to her work as an informer for the NKVD.1"5 A woman wrote to Molotov protesting the Moscow soviet's decision to evict her from the apartment she had occupied for twelve years on the grounds that only her former husband had claim to it. This was a true irony of fate, she wrote, because she had just managed to graduate with a degree in animal husbandry, seven years after her husband had left her with the "cruel words" that she was a mere housewife who had "lagged behind political life." 116 An older woman sent Zhdanov an eight-page letter about her troubles at work, dwelling with a touch of wry humor on the conflicts
113. 114. 115. 116. Ibid.,11.248-52. Ibid.,op. 2g, d. 48,11. 197-203. Ibid.,11.5-8. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 64,1. 206. cludes.' 13

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provoked by her pricklyand zealous character,and with sadness on her personal isolation and over-dependenceon the companionship of the workplace."7 A man whose wifehad been arrestedas a spy wrote to Molotov explaining that this was somethingof which she was just temperamentally incapable: not ... She is nota complex person, someonewhohidesthings With I be that somemisfortune mycharacter,might able to concealthefact very had happenedto me.She couldnot.She "unloaded"everything weretoo transindeedwords wereunnecessary-her feelings quickly, I looking. parentnot to see themeven if you werenot particularly undera cannotbelievethatshe washidingsomekindof darksecret
. mask of simplicity .18

The most remarkableand extended epistolaryautobiography(six gazeta) was penned in 1938 pages, in the copy typed by Kresttianskaia " A.I. bya Voronezh' peasant in his earlyfifties, Poluektov.1 Poluektov's conletterhas an "abuse of power" theme,but it disdains the stylistic ventional of the genre, beginning instead with a shrewd sociological and discussion of its leadership problems.Then analysisof his kolkhoz it gets down to the heart of the matter:"Now I will say what kind of and person I am (chtoia za chelovek) how I ended up in Losevo in the Dzerzhinskiikolkhoz." Poluektov was the son of a peasant withaspirawhichhe inherited.Before the revolutionboth tions to betterhimself, fatherand son tried the paths of self-betterment were then availthat able: consolidation of family land under the Stolypinreformand, for the son, apprenticeship to a merchant in the neighboring town of subscribingto a Pavlovsk. "I ... began to studycommercial matters, business (tovarovedenie) journal and also enrolling in bookkeeping courses . . . My fatheralwaysdiscouraged me fromgoing into agriculture..." The family'sstatus as "Stolypin" peasants and the generally capitalisttrendof theirprewaraspirationswere to cause themtrouble and in the Soviet period. "Even now theycall my fathera stolypinite some kolkhozniki, whom I have raked over the coals formisbehaviorin even threatento 'teach the newspaper or at a general [kolkhoz] meeting, me a lesson' ..." Called up in 1916, Poluektov became a junior NCO who "tried to get promoted to the senior ranks" until the February revolution devalued that avenue of advancement.AfterFebruaryhe was elected to his local armycommittee, began to read revolutionary literature and made a militant public speech againstthewar thatnearly His got him arrestedby the kerenskyites. unit "dissolved into bolshevism"just before the October revolutionand he returnedto Losevo, "where myfirst was wherehe was quicklyelected to various offices, act to confiscatethe propertyof my [former] master."Still withone foot in the town and one in the village, he held low-leveladministrative
117. Ibid.,op. 2v, d. 1534,11.176-83. 118. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56,11. 13-16. 119. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 19,11.200-6.

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positions in Pavlovsk and participated in organizing the first Losevo kolkhoz during the civil war. In 1922, to his lastingchagrin,he muffed his chance of joining the Communist Party:"I wrote an application for admission to the Partybut my comrade withwhom I shared digs [in Pavlovsk]smashed mydesire so badly thatI toreup the application, but later it turned out that they dekulakized that comrade and sent him to Karaganda." When he tried to join the Partylater,he was rejected aftersomeone objected thathe was the son of a Stolypinpeasant. Poluektovcame back to the village forgood Making the best of things, in his late forties, workingas accountant in the kolkhoz and the village co-op aftercollectivization, while his sons acquired the more glamorAt ous statusof tractor-drivers. the time of writing, combined the he withthatof kolkhoz persona of model citizen and Kulturtraiger gadfly. A pillar of the kolkhoz drama circle, choir, ham radio group, literacy and civil defence societies, and the InternationalSociety for Aid to Political Prisoners,he indubitablyenjoyed tweakingthe noses of kolkhozleaders in his dual capacityas guardian of financialprobity(as a member of the kolkhoz sel'kor. auditing commission)and muckraking it Since lettersare textsthatare read as well as written, remains to consider the question of response.'2"The degree and kind of response is thatcould be expected fromthe authorities obviouslycrucial to one's If understandingof the phenomenon of popular letter-writing. letters are written withoutany reasonable expectationof response,thisis onein way communicationthatpresumablyhas littlesignificance the general picture of state/society relations. If, on the other hand, citizens reasonably (on the basis of experience) expect a response to theirletand the public significance the of ters,the communicationis two-way process is much enhanced. information the on We have only incomplete and non-systematic responses of the authoritiesto citizens' letters.A stream of official to instructions throughoutthe 1930s ordered all institutions respond to citizens' letters in a timelyand conscientious manner. Unfortunote thatmanyauthoritiesfailed to do nately,these same instructions this.By a rough estimatebased on my work in various archives,perhaps 15-30 percent of the lettersthat have been preserved received
120. 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 Textin thisClass? TheAuthority Interpetive of Communities [Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1980]). I 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.

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some kind of response, thatis, provoked some kindof bureaucratic in risesto 70 percent somearchives actionor orderto act.The figure if we expand the meaningof "response"to include a bureaucrat's instruction a secretary typeout a handwritten to to letter. Whatproin of survives thearchives of course, unknown. portion all letters is, For all thedeficiencies thedata,however, is clearthatletterit of writing indeed a form two-way was of communication. Writers could and had the right to reasonably hope fora responseto theirletters were supposedto respond complainif theyreceivednone. Officials to and could be reprimanded failing do so. Of course, for therewere or manyforms possibleresponse. of Responsescould be perfunctory involve seriousinvestigations citizens' of complaints. Theycould supportpetitions denythem. or Theycouldpunishthetarget a denunof ciationletter on occasion,punishthedenouncer. or, One can get a sense of the rangeof responsesby surveying the of earlierin thisarticle.I disposition some of the cases mentioned The grieving widower shall start withpositiveoutcomes. trappedin thelonelyforest givena job in Leningrad; tormented was the komsowas for from schoolthe molka sentto a sanatorium a rest;theletter of to master father was forwarded the Caucasus forelucidation the death.The kolkhoznitsa's to "Save circumstances his daughter's of plea to our kolkhoz" forwarded Krest'ianskaia was by gazeta regionalauthorities,whoseinvestigation to the firing the kolkhoz led of accountant; letter forwarded though thiscase thereis was in and Poluektov's too, no signthat investigation an resulted. Two ofthethree members young of theWriters' Union whoaskedMolotovforhousing received and it; Zhdanovwas sufficiently mathematician impressed thesycophantic by for to call "urgently" a "serious"reporton his Basesofa NewAlgebra. in The Churkov arouseda sympathetic orphans response Rumiantsev's for his wroteto office ("Fix things the kids [ustroi detishek]," assistant as thelocal soviet chairman), although, itturned out,eventhiswasnot enough to get themtheirizba back once local bosses had got their hands on it. Vyshinskii to respondedconscientiously the appeals he did from even though responses not his received prisoners' relatives, In victims. theErmancase,he called fora review usuallyhelp the by thechiefmilitary and to the wifewith prosecutor thenwrote Erman's newsthattheeight-year sentence had been upheld.He triedto follow in thesameprocedure thebeekeeper's came case,butwhenthereport it showedthatthemanhad been summarily in Saratovin executed in, 1937. Perhapsunderstandably, left Vyshinskii the appeal of the beekeeper'swifeunanswered. Shafran's was with requestto paintZhdanov'sportrait dismissed the curtnotation "File (Archiv)," thereis no signof anyreplyto and of theoutpourings thedistraught and vydvizhenka thewronged wives, thecryof distress from vydvizhenets the promoted beyondhis abilities, or the letters opinion fromthe angryengineerand the Litvinov of In critic. general, received But is opinionletters rarely replies. that not to say they wereignored. Newspapers regularly compiledsummaries

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(svodki)of correspondence received on various topics for the information of government and partyleaders. The letterabout overflowing jails, forexample,was included in a 1936 summary sentbyKrest'ianskaia gazetato the constitutional commission. Letterscould make troublefortheirauthors.The student'senquiry about the possibility building communismprovoked an immediate of police investigation trotskyite of influence in his school (though the himself writer was thought naive ratherthandangerous).The feldsher's denunciation was investigated and found to be groundless;moreover, the reportnoted ominously, writer the himself had "a lot of disgraceful things(bezobraziia) and abuses" to answer for.With "abuse of power" letters,there was always the possibilitythat the denunciation would backfireand damage the author. Sometimes it was the denouncers ratherthan their intended victimswho ended up in prison or under From this range of responses, it is evident not only that popular in letter-writing the Stalin period was a two-way transactionbut also thatit could be a bit of a gamble forthe initiator. But only some kinds of letterscarried a real risk,just as only some kinds of letterswere likelyto bring theirwriterstangible benefits.To understand the distributionof outcomes,it is useful to thinkof letter-writers termsof in two major categories,"supplicants" and "citizens."These two typesof letter-writer seem to inhabit different worlds,though theirletterslie side by side in the archivesand the writers themselves mighthave been neighbors.The supplicantwas implicitly subjectratherthana citizen. a He sent his privatecomplaints,requests,petitionsand confessionsto an authority figureimagined as a benevolent father(or father-confessor) or a patron.Women letter-writers were oftensupplicants,as were peasants. Supplicants' lettersmightask forjustice as well as mercy, but theydid not invokerights. They portrayedtheirauthorsas victims and dwelt on their miseries and misfortunes. Supplicants' letters,though sent to public figuresand requestingthem to act in their officialcapacity,dealt withprivateand personal concerns.Anotherkind of supplicant letterwas part of a transactionbetween client and patron,the client normallybelonging to the cultural and scientific elite, and the patron to the communistpolitical leadership.Elite supplicantstended to be conspicuouslydeferential and generouswithflattery. Patronslike Molotov responded to theirclients'requests in a routine,businesslike manner that implied acceptance of the premise of patronage systems thatthe patron'sabilityto look afterhis clientsis an index everywhere: as well as a prerogativeof power. For supplicants,letter-writing was since the worstof the likelyoutcomes was not a risk-taking enterprise, that their letterwould be ignored. Writinga supplicant's letter was somethinglike buying a ticketin the state lottery(another popular
121. For examples, see RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 64, 1. 165; ibid.,d. 68, 11.77-78; ibid.,d. 143,1. 211.

investigation by the NKVD.'2'

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pastime in Stalin's Russia): it cost little,carried no obligations and offered the chance, howeverremote,of a big win. Supplicant letter-writing, thoughwidespread,was almostnever disA instructions. rare exception was a cussed in Soviet media or official 1936 article by the veteran partyjournalist, Lev Sosnovskii, urging newspapersand otherrecipientsof such lettersto be more responsive to the problemsof the littleman, while expressingthe hope thatlittle men would learn to approach the agencies of Soviet power "not like 122 timid supplicants but like masters." Obviously many supplicants' letterswere ignored but there were also many thatwere not. My own 123 impressionfromthe archivesis thatobkom secretaries, in particular, were oftenquite responsiveto appeals fromordinarypeople-indeed, thatharkingto the pleas of widows and orphans was one of the more reassurance thatSoviet power reallywas on the side of the poor and humble,and leaving a glow of conscious virtue. The citizen was a more "modern" figurethan the supplicant. Citizens wrote lettersto the editor or the Politburo to state opinions, blow the whistleon corrupt criticizepolicies, suggestimprovements, officials, point out miscarriagesof justice and denounce wrongdoers as their"dutyas a citizen."They acted, or claimed to act, in the public interest;if theyhad privatemotivesforwriting, theyconcealed them. They used the language of rightsand among the rightstheyimplicitly claimed was the rightto be heard. Citizens oftenaddressed partyleaders as "comrade" and were willingto remind themof the promises of the revolution. (This was particularlytrue of urban workers in the of "citizen"category.) The majority citizenletter-writers male and were was a recogurban, but the rural citizen,in the person of the sel'kor, nizable figure.Though lettersof citizenswere filed as "secret" in the archives, they were essentiallypublic communications in form and reiterated content-and also in aspiration,judging by the stubbornly unlike supplicants,were takinga risk hope of publication.Yet citizens, when theywrote theirletters.They were more gamblersthan buyers of lottery tickets.Many citizens'lettershad no possibilityof a pay-off thatwould directly benefittheirauthors.Others mightbring indirect chairbenefits(e.g. by gettingrid of a corruptboss or abusive kolkhoz if of man), but could also damage the writers the targets denunciatory them."Opinion" lettersmightmake lettersfound out who had written an impact via being included in a "public opinion" summarysent up to the Politburo;but theymightalso bringtrouble to the author if the The NKVD made opinions expressed offendedsomeone in authority. a practice of tryingto discover identitiesof the authors of anonimki
satisfyingaspects of a senior communist administrator's job, providing

122. L. Sosnovskii,"Letter fromthe Editorial Board," Izvestiia, May 1936, 4. 5 123. The cases I know best are those of Eikhe in Novosibirsk(fromPANO files), Kirov and Zhdanov in Leningrad (TsGA IPD) and Rumiantsevin the westernoblast' (Smolensk archive).

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and that could spell trouble for those who put theiranti-soviet opinions on paper. Behind the supplicant and the citizen are discernible other less distinctfigures:the conman, assuming the persona of supplicant or citizen for his own nefarious ends;'24 the would-be informer, using a denunciation as a scarf to trail in frontof the secret police;'25 the memoirist;the grafoman But these shadowyfiguresmust await an... To other interpreter. borrow some conventionalclosing phrases from the letters,"there is no end" to the richnessof the subject,"there is not enough paper to describe it." "It is only one tenthof whatI could 126 say . . . But I am tired of writing."
124. 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. 125. For more on this topic, see Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below," loc. cit. 126. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 26,11. 137-39; RTsKhIDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, 11. 182.