Halbstadt is a village in Russia’s Altai Krai, the administrative center of the German National District and the rural settlement of the Halbstadt Village Council. It is located 430 km west of Barnaul.
It was founded in 1908 by German settlers from the Black Sea region. It was named after the Molotschna colony of Halbstadt. Until 1917, it was a Mennonite village within the Barnaul Uyezd of Tomsk Governorate (the Orlovskaya and Khortitskaya volosts). The Shumanovka–Kleefeld Mennonite community (registered on February 8, 1912). Before the revolution, the village had a steam mill and a Mennonite school. It was closed along with other Mennonite schools of Barnaul Uyezd in early 1915 as “officially unregistered.” At the end of 1914, by decision of the authorities, the settlement was renamed Polgorod.
On July 4, 1927, by a decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), the Oktyabrsky (German) District was created, uniting 57 German settlements, with its center in Halbstadt. During the years of collectivization, the kolkhoz “Unsere Wirtschaft” was organized. On July 2, 1930, amid a wave of spontaneous protest against collectivization, a mass Mennonite uprising took place in Halbstadt.
In December 1927, the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) set a course toward collectivization. At the same time, it spoke out against any measures of administrative pressure and coercion toward the peasantry. In the spirit of the congress decisions, the offensive against the kulaks was to consist of consistent and systematic restriction of the kulaks’ exploitative opportunities and aspirations, and their displacement by economic methods. The task was set to achieve a relative reduction of capitalist elements in town and countryside with a “possible continued absolute growth.”
In April 1929, speaking at a plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), J. Stalin said: “...It is necessary... that within the peasantry a mass movement for collective farms be created, so that the peasantry would not fear collective farms, but would itself go into collective farms, becoming convinced by experience of the advantages of collective farms over individual farming. And this is a serious matter, requiring a certain amount of time.”
“However,” notes L. Malinovsky, “a smooth transition from cooperation to collective farms did not work out here—cooperation was declared harmful and bourgeois, since it was based on preserving the peasant’s private household; the Mennonite agricultural union was liquidated back in 1928, although as early as 1926 party bodies recognized the expediency of its existence. Between cooperation and collectivization a gap formed, which was filled by urgent measures to accelerate collectivization in the style of the notorious ‘emergency regime.’”
The Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) considered its most important task for the next two years in restructuring agriculture to be organizing the “complete transition of the region’s main areas from small individual farming to large-scale collective farming; on the basis of the alliance of the working class and the poor with the middle peasant we must carry out total collectivization of the region’s main areas by spring 1932.”
Speaking at a party activists’ meeting on January 27, 1930, the secretary of the Siberian Regional Committee R. I. Eikhe said: “We must press our apparatus decisively so that... the time needed to complete total collectivization is reduced to a minimum.”
Considering the plan for collective construction for 1929, the bureau of the Slavgorod District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a decision: “Taking into account the large percentage of cooperation in the German District, on the one hand, and the possibility of supplying collective farms with selected seed grain, on the other, consider it possible to cover the farms of the German District by collectivization and production cooperation to 100 percent, decisively not allowing the penetration of kulak elements into collective associations.”
The economic condition and performance of collective farms dominated by the poor could not be successful without loans, benefits, and other external support. Therefore, the main share of credit went to collective farms and communes; they also enjoyed tax benefits and were better supplied with machinery and agricultural implements. However, these collective farms remained economically weak and could not serve as a model of farming or of the way of life of their members. The leaders of these farms, themselves poor peasants or farm laborers, did not know how to run large-scale farming.
At the same time, the individual farms of most peasants were prospering. Failures and disorder in the first collective farms and communes discouraged most peasants from collectivization. According to the German District Kolkhoz Union as of March 10, 1930, there were 15 collective farms in the district.
However, despite all resolutions of the regional and district party and Soviet bodies, forced and accelerated collectivization in 1929–1930 misfired. German peasants, including the poor, for the most part preferred emigration to America over collectivization. In private conversations, peasants expressed the opinion that “a kolkhoz is serfdom,” that “innocent people are exiled, and the rest are driven into the created kolkhozes, where... they will have to work for the lazy.”
At meetings, peasants stated: “We do not need any collectivization... Soviet power oppresses religion, put all preachers in prison, and ruined honest workers (kulaks) who work day and night.” These statements were not far from the truth. One of the most destructive consequences of collectivization was a significant reduction in skilled peasants on whom the villages depended. In one review of the collective-farm countryside of the German District, the Slavgorod District Party Committee notes that “poor, and in places criminal, leadership of the Soviets over collective farms, lack of proper attention to the condition of collective farms on the part of district organizations, extremely one-sided ‘development’ of the economy (grain), absence of any agronomic assistance, striking lack of culture, trachoma and filth, absence of piece-rate pay and the dominance of day labor,... all this does not create a solid foundation for the economy and it was and remains entirely at the mercy of all sorts of ‘accidents.’
Such ‘accidents’ as crop failure or enormous indebtedness, vile actions by the leadership of some collective farms, the presence of an eternally drunk instructor-collectivist and an agronomist-collective farmer who understands nothing, the absence of production meetings and cultural-educational work, of course only undermined rather than strengthened the economic foundations of the associations... As a result, the material situation of members, especially the farm-laborer and poor-peasant part, is extremely difficult. Rags instead of boots and felt boots, tatters instead of a sheepskin coat, shirts not changed for months, ‘prips’ (a drink made from roasted barley or wheat.—A. Fast) with only bread all year round... Earnings are small and even those are not paid for years.”
Naturally, such a state of affairs could not attract an individual farmer into a kolkhoz. Confirmation that the district’s kolkhozes failed to show the advantage of collective labor over individual farming can be clearly demonstrated by the example of the Budyonny Commune of the Orlovsky Village Soviet, declared in March 1930, according to a government decision, “exemplary.” Although, as reported to the regional party committee by the head of the West Siberian Regional Land Administration Yalukhin after an inspection trip to the German District, “in the commune named after ‘Budyonny,’ declared exemplary—‘in fact, the хозяйство is run so badly that it is an ‘example’ of how not to run a farm.””
It was one of the first communes in the German District, organized back in 1924. By the beginning of 1930, despite the presence of a large party cell of 14 people, it was the “worst commune, both in financial condition, in the organization of labor, and in its mood.” A significant part of its members took an active part in the emigration movement, which, as the conclusions of one inspection commission stated, “affected the state of labor discipline, which at that time was declining; as a result there was neglect of livestock and failure to carry out a number of jobs,” and, simply put, dozens of hectares of unharvested grain went under the snow. As a result, in the first two months of 1930, 24 cows, 52 calves, 37 pigs, 5 horses, and 3 sheep died in the commune.
A negative role in the collectivization of peasants was also played by the “unhealthy desire of Soviet authorities to jump from individual peasant farming directly into a commune,” which sometimes resulted in the socialization of all living and non-living property, down to the last chicken. “...All these gross distortions by the party and the authorities,” says one act of surveying the German District, “in the absence of mass work among the Germans, gave the kulaks and preachers the opportunity to keep the poor and middle-peasant masses under their influence and, at the moment of an intensified socialist offensive against capitalist elements, to trigger a mass emigration movement.”
From February through July 1930, both open and underground meetings were held in all villages of the German District, demanding that the authorities abandon collectivization and stop the struggle against religion. Suffice it to say that in Nopo-Romshyunks alone in the first half of 1930 there were 22 such meetings-assemblies. The countryside was seething. At meetings peasants stated: “...Soviet power is robbing us through taxes, self-taxation, and loans. Religion is being oppressed. They want to register everyone into kolkhozes. Believers are deprived of voting rights.” There were also statements such as: “...If we were not forced to go into kolkhozes, we would not leave Russia.” A “new form of counterrevolutionary character” also appeared: sending anonymous letters to responsible officials.
On April 8, 1930, a similar anonymous note addressed to the chairman of the District Executive Committee (RIK), Shnegelberger, was found in the mailbox of the Halbstadt post office. “A purge is going on now,” it said, “...of all workers (meaning the purge in party organizations); we peasants give our proposal, we demand that all communists be thrown out of the Soviet apparatus; they are saboteurs and cursed for the peasantry; down with communism; let Soviet power belong to peasant and worker deputies. Down with collectivization, down with communism, long live freedom for all, long live the individual farmer!” and the signature “the peasant masses.”
The issue of violent collectivization was particularly acute at the joint meeting of peasants of the German District held on June 19, 1930 in the settlement of Aleksandrovka. The minutes contain the following entry: “Because of mistakes (of Soviet power) made over 12 years, we have become so impoverished that we had nothing to eat and saw starving death before us, since in the month of June we were refused a ration (bread) ..., despite the fact that the state took all our food grain. We, as religious people, can never agree with the policy of Soviet power in the reconstruction of сель, agriculture, and we will not go for it.”
Driven to despair, “not agreeing with the policy of Soviet power on the question of collectivization, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and anti-religious propaganda...,” peasants demanded permission to leave the country.
On June 27, 1930, peasants from all villages of the district gathered in the district center of Halbstadt, where at a general district meeting they again put forward demands to stop forced collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.
A major political mistake of the Communist Party and the Soviet government was that, starting in 1929, instead of putting into action the economic levers of gradual reform of agriculture on the basis of diverse forms of cooperation, as planned by the 15th Congress, they decided to accelerate collectivization as much as possible and, guided by the thesis that the transition to socialism is possible only by overcoming the resistance of dying classes, moved from a policy of restricting and displacing the kulak to eliminating it as a class. Stalin asserted that only right-wing opportunists could dream of the peaceful growing-in of the kulak into socialism.
However, soon the Central Committee was forced to acknowledge that forced collectivization and its accelerated tempo led to a number of “distortions of party policy in collective-farm construction,” expressed in an incorrect approach to the middle peasant, violation of Lenin’s principle of voluntariness in building collective farms, skipping over the artel to the commune, etc. All this forced Stalin on March 2, 1930 to publish in Pravda the article “Dizzy with Success,” and on March 14 the Central Committee adopted the resolution “On the struggle against distortions of the party line in the collective-farm movement.”
Throughout the spring after the publication of these documents, there was a mass exit of Germans from kolkhozes, “under the pretext of forced involvement” in 1929. Specific examples of this coercion are very telling: threats of early collection of loans, inclusion in kulak lists and deportation to the Arctic Ocean, arrests (8 middle peasants in Dvorskoye), confiscations of property (in Podsosnovo from 11 middle peasants), and many other testimonies of lawlessness and arbitrariness. In the “communes” and kolkhozes organized by such methods, as already said, mismanagement and apathy reigned; they merely “consumed” state funds and were generally considered a “scarecrow of collectivization.”
In the winter of 1929–1930, grain in communes rotted in the field, and during threshing 30% of the grain went into the straw. Protesting forced collectivization and the ban on leaving the country, most peasant households refused to sow, although by early April seeds intended for distribution had been delivered to the German District. Urgently, 31 tractors were shipped at high speed from Novorossiysk for the Halbstadt Machine-Tractor Station (MTS), and by the start of sowing it was to have a total of 33 tractors. An order was also given to purchase 3,000 horses in the Barabinsky District and other areas adjacent to Slavgorod, and 150,000 rubles in credits were allocated for the Slavgorod District. With such powerful support, the authorities believed the district would be able to sow 52,000 hectares of land. However, the Germans refused to take the offered seed loan for cash payment with a 15% contribution of its value, citing lack of money and widespread hunger, and also because, as one report of the Slavgorod District Party Committee says, for the pure-grade seeds surrendered in 1929 to the Field-Crop Union, the Germans still cannot receive payment.
As a result, the 1930 sowing campaign in the German District was essentially disrupted. During the investigation, Heinrich Abramovich Dik said: “In 1930 I did not carry out sowing for the reason that in our settlement of Polevoye all peasants were non-sowers and sold off their property in order to emigrate abroad to America. I also did not want to lag behind them and prepared to leave for America.” On May 22, Kononchuk telegraphed Eikhe that “the overwhelming majority of Germans categorically refuse to sow... In some villages the pretext for refusal to sow is the non-issuance of seeds to kulaks.” As a result, by May 30, despite the fact that “the most brutal measures were taken,” everyone was sent into the districts—some institutions were locked up, two chairmen of district executive committees were removed from work... in the German District there turned out to be 1,200 “non-sowers” households (more than 1/3)... As a result, in the German District the sowing plan was fulfilled only by 36%, and overall in the district—by 40%.
“For the sake of fairness,” writes L. Belkovets, “it must be said that the sowing campaign in the Slavgorod District went ‘absolutely terribly’ not only among the Germans. Because dekulakization was in full swing, matters were no better in other districts either. The district experienced a general economic crisis provoked by collectivization. OGPU reports say that for sowing ‘there are not enough seeds, poverty interferes, since households are ruined, in a number of districts begging is becoming массовый in character,’ ‘there are cases of eating treated seeds, dead animals,’ ‘suicide attempts due to hunger,’ ‘mothers poisoning their children with arsenic,’ ‘horses emaciated from lack of feed cannot pull the plow; in most districts they are infected with glanders, foot-and-mouth disease, mange and other diseases; in some villages 5–7 head fall every day. In other places, because of the exhaustion of horses they are harnessed to the plow 3–4 at a time; sowing is mainly done by hand; all straw roofs have been torn off and fed to livestock. The tractors turned out to be unfit for work, since they stand unrepaired.’”
Back in early December 1929, a memorandum of the regional committee stated that “the situation of those who returned from Moscow is difficult,” that “due to cold and lack of warm clothing, illnesses and deaths among children are observed.” “The material damage caused by emigration to the German peasantry is so great that special means are needed to organize assistance not only production-related, but in a number of cases also consumer-related.” Assistance from the center was provided in the amount of 3,000 poods of хлеб from the garnets levy, at 8 kg per re-emigrant per month. But already at the first distribution the set 8 kg norm was not maintained, and since the bread was issued to “almost the entire population,” the re-emigrants received only 8 to 20 pounds per month per eater. Moreover, this bread was issued episodically: in the first days before the sowing and harvest, and to those who were involved “in harvesting in the kolkhoz sector.” According to the conclusions of the Slavgorod District Control Commission, in the Slavgorod District there is “criminal squandering of bread not for its intended purpose,” as a result of which “the bread supply of returned emigrants is not fully carried out, despite the fact that the district executive committee has long had from the village councils the necessary data on the need for fodder bread,” that even the “poor part” of them is not provided with the “norm of bread per eater,” that “there are cases of hunger among the poor and departures for this reason to other places of the Union.”
The food shortage was the reason for the breaking open of barns with seed grain in the settlements of Orlovo, Markovka, Ravnopolye, Mirnoye, Malenkiy, Yasnoye, Aleksandrovka, Chistoye, Podsnezhnoye, Kusak, Khortitsa, Degtyarka, and others in early April 1930. In a number of places, the break-ins were preceded by meetings where decisions were made to take and distribute the “inviolable fund” if there was no bread by the 10th. The district prosecutor who led the investigation agreed with the peasants’ arguments that the issued food ration of 20 pounds per eater was little, that bread was not issued to “kulaks,” who also want to eat and should share even such a small ration, but most importantly, that the bread essentially belongs to the peasants. It had been purchased in the autumn by the District Field-Crop Union, and purchased at a ridiculous price—1 ruble 01 kopeck per pood, while in spring at the market the same pood already cost 20–25 rubles. Nevertheless, the case of the break-ins, or as it was formalized, the “case of pogroms” of barns, was blown up.
The OGPU believed that the facts of looting seed funds should be regarded “as a special protest” by Mennonites, “among whom, as a rule, unauthorized acts (thefts, murders, violence) were not practiced in the past.” In Halbstadt, a show trial was organized in the case of 9 participants of the pogrom; they sentenced the “organizer and most active kulak” Petr Genrikhovich Gedert (age 22) to execution, and two other kulaks, Genrikh Genrikhovich Gedert (age 55) and Daniil Davidovich Tsakharias (age 46), to 5 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property and subsequent exile. One year of forced labor was given to “poor peasants” Ivan Petrovich Bergen (age 20) and Abram Petrovich Friesen (age 21); 2 years suspended—to Gertruda Petrovna Bergen (age 29). Kazdorf Olga Genrikhovna (age 24)—a poor peasant woman who showed the most active participation, intransigence, and hostility toward representatives of Soviet power—received 2 years of imprisonment. This first death sentence shocked the district’s residents.
A thoughtful analysis of the causes of the events of “the second of July” and of the entire emigration movement in the Siberian village in spring and summer 1930, conducted by the special authorized representative of the Central Executive Committee, Butsenko, together with sober-minded employees of regional authorities, to some extent moved forward the matter of providing material aid to ruined peasants. In his memorandum to the regional party committee, Butsenko once again emphasized the complete apathy of local authorities (the district executive committee and village councils), which “did no work among the German population.” Moreover, they sometimes did not know that some settlements had been abandoned by the Germans altogether, and that they themselves had scattered around the district in search of means of existence, since the last food aid had been provided to them in April, before the sowing. Their houses now are a heap of ruins. During this time, the consequences of discriminatory tax policy were not annulled, when in German villages only 14% of the poor were exempted from self-taxation, whereas in surrounding Russian and Ukrainian villages—32%. The increase in sown area was not exempted from tax as was done in other villages, the “overcharge” under the Unified Agricultural Tax and money for foreign passports were not returned, self-taxation funds continued to be used not for their intended purpose. The school network was recognized as completely collapsed...
Nor was the construction promised by the government carried out, including the MTS in the German District. “The cooperative network works very poorly, in which scarce goods (and this includes salt, tea, sugar, clothing, and обувь) are squandered.” It proved very difficult to find traces of special credits opened since December for work and productive livestock, for building three cattle yards, a pigsty, and other needs. As it turned out, part of them, allocated to help poor and middle peasants affected by emigration, the “Kraiselbank distributed for other needs.” According to the District Kolkhoz Union, by April only 1/4 of the planned credit of 475,000 rubles had reached the German District. It also turned out that credits for purchasing livestock were not allocated in the necessary amount even by August, and what was received was distributed “recklessly” and “with a wild markup,” when they “skinned” the individual farmer, taking 150 rubles for a horse instead of the announced 107.
Finally, the decisive actions of the new district party secretary, Buksman, who kept knocking on the doors of regional bodies, moved the matter off dead center. By September 1930, according to the report of the Siberian Regional Executive Committee, the Siberian Field-Crop Union allocated to the German District a planned production credit of 187,923 rubles, as well as additional credits for machine supply and the purchase of livestock, totaling more than 280,000 rubles. But all credits were intended for kolkhozes. Any deviations from this order were strictly punished. Thus, Losin, chairman of the German District Executive Committee, for having “illegally” issued credits to part of individual хозяйства, was removed from his job.
At the end of July, the Slavgorod District Executive Committee adopted a decision to exempt Germans who did not carry out sowing from the Unified Agricultural Tax; the remaining households were taxed not by last year’s sowing, but by its actual area.
In October, another report on the state of affairs in the district notes that scarce goods are being delivered to the German District; a radio broadcasting node has been installed and is operating; a mobile cinema unit; in the village of Podsosnovo a boarding school for 50 children has been opened; in Orlovo, cutting-and-sewing courses have opened; in Halbstadt a bakery and a canteen have opened.
The final stage of collectivization. Thanks to the measures taken for food, production, and other assistance, mass political work, as well as the actions of the OGPU against counterrevolutionary forces, by winter the authorities broke the resistance of German peasants to collectivization. Already in early autumn they began repairing houses and cleaning courtyards, began requesting help with plowing fallow fields, autumn plowing, etc. Review No. 22 of political and criminal crimes for the German District by the district administrative department and the district criminal investigation department dated July 21, 1930 states: “As a result of a комплекс of measures (mass общественная work, removal of kulaks) a turning point occurred in the emigration sentiments of the population of the German District. On July 7 of this year (on July 2 mass arrests of participants in the Halbstadt uprising began) in the settlement of Kusak, on the initiative of the population itself, without the participation of representatives of local organizations, a general meeting took place, which resolved to stop all talk about emigration, immediately begin plowing fallow land and haymaking, and ask the district executive committee to ensure food supply (the population of the district was severely starving).”