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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sheila Fitzpatrick
Sheila Fitzpatrick*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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“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.” So wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam, always a sharp-eyed anthropologist of Soviet everyday life. 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 Russians 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.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 78 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996

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References

1. Mandelstam, Nadezhda, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Hayward, Max (New York: Atheneum, 1970), 93 Google Scholar. 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, e.g. Ludtke, Alf, ed., The History of Everyday Life, trans. Templer, William (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995 Google Scholar, which tends to conflate the subject of “everyday life” with that of resistance to authority.

3. By “ordinary Russians,” I mean the people without official power or position sometimes referred to as subalterns. I have not asked Gayatri Spivak's question, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” ( Grossberg, Larry and Nelson, Cary, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988]Google Scholar), since in the present context, he/she obviously can.

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 mentioned. On petitions in the imperial period: Freeze, Gregory L., From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Google Scholar and Verner, Andrew, “Discursive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasant Petitions from Vladimir Province,” Russian Review 54, no. 1 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Soviet petitions: Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (London: MacMillan & Co., 1958)Google Scholar (esp. chap. 20: “The Right to Petition “) and Mommsen, Margareta, Hilfmir, mein Recht zu jinden: Russische Bittschriften von Iwan dem Schrecklichen bis Gorbatschow (Frankfurt: Propylaen Verlag, 1987 Google Scholar; on Soviet complaints: Lampert, Nicholas, Whistleblowing in the Soviet Union: A Study of Complaints and Abuses under Slate Socialism (New York: Schocken Books, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 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 Sociological Review 17 (1952) and idem., “Critical Letters to the Editors of the Soviet Press: Social Characteristics and Interrelations of Critics and the Criticized,” ibid. 18 (1953); Revuz, C., Ivan Ivanovitch Ecrit a la Pravda (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1980 Google Scholar; Ste-phen White, “Political Communications in the USSR: Letters to the Party, State and Press,” Political Studies 31 (1983); Small Fires: Letters from 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 Comrade Editor: Readers’ Letters to the Soviet Press under Perestroika, trans, and ed. Jim Riordan and Sue Bridger (Blooniington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

5. The data base for this essay are some hundreds of citizens’ letters (usually filed as “Pis'ma trudiashchikhsia” or “Pis'ma rabochikh i krest'ian “) culled from a variety of state and party archives, both central and regional. The most valuable collections of citizen’ letters were found in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF, formerly TsGAOR), particularly f. 5446, op. 81a (Vyshinskii) and op. 82 (Molotov); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE, formerly TsGANKh), particularly f. 396 (Krest'ianskaia gazeta); Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhlDNI, formerly TsPA IM-L, particularly f. 78 (Kalinin) and f. 475 (Glavsevmorput’); Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliulsii i sotsialisticheskogo stroitel'stva goroda Moskvy (TsGAOR g. Moskvy), particular f. 1474 (Rabkrin); Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskoi dohumentsatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA IPD, formerly LPA, the Leningrad party archive), particularly the secret files of the obkom under Zhdanov, f. 24, op. 2v and 2g; Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv goroda Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA S-P, formerly LGA, the Leningrad state archive); Partiinyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (PANO); and Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti (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 years of the 1930s are also likely to be overrepresented.

6. A recent work that has influenced my analysis of letters is Fitzpatrick, David, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

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.

8. Although the communication in public letter-writing went two ways, it would be prudent to avoid the Bakhtinian concept of “dialogism” ( Bakhtin, M.M., The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Holquist, Michael, trans. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981]Google Scholar).

9. I do not use the term “public sphere” in the special sense associated with Habermas, Jiirgen, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991 Google Scholar.

10. For example, Leningrad party and state institutions (probably excluding the NKVD) reportedly received about a thousand letters per day in 1936 (TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 46, 1. 13), and the newspaper Krest'ianskaia gazeta reported a figure almost as high a year earlier (Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 10, 22 and 24 July 1935). As Leningrad obkom secretary, Zhdanov was receiving 150–200 citizens’ letters a 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-1939 the Soviet state prosecutor's office was receiving 1, 500 complaints a day (GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, 1. 17).

11. Thus Foucault's reflections on confession, grounded in its meaning in Christian ritual, do not have particular relevance to the discussion that follows ( Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality, trans. Hurley, Robert [New York: Vintage Books, 1990], vol. 1 Google Scholar).

12. Tolkovyi slovar' zhivago velikorusskago iazyka Vladimira Dalia, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. 2.

13. E.g. in the Kalinin and Lunacharskiiybnrfs in RTsKhlDNI, the Molotov and Vyshinskii/owrfs in GARF, the Kirov and Zhdanov (obkom) fonds in TsGA IPD and the Eikhe (kraikom) fond in PANO.

14. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1522, 11. 215–18.

15. Smolensk Archive, WKP 386, 91–92.

16. PANO, f. 3, op. 11, d. 41, 11. 172–73. The translation reproduces 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.

20. For an analysis of petitions of this kind for restoration of voting rights, see Golfo Alexopoulos, “The Ritual Lament: Spoiled Identities and Discourses of Rehabilitation 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 from TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 4, II. 3–6. The next most popular categories (in order) were requests for passports and Leningrad residence permits, appeals against judicial sentences, requests for work, appeals from prisoners for amnesty and requests for places in educational institutions.

25. Ibid., d. 64, 161.

26. Ibid., d. 77, 11. 9–10. The writers were Pavel Nilin, Gennadii Fish and Lev Rubinshtein.

27. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 56, 1. 133; ibid., d. 72, 1. 34.

28. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 348, 11. 95, 101–2.

29. Ibid., d. 93, 11. 319, 321, 323–24.

30. For a more detailed discussion of denunciations, see Sheila Fiupatrick, “Signals from Below: Soviet Denunciations of the 1930s,” NCSEER report (1994), an expanded version of which is forthcoming in Journal of Modern History, December 1996.

31. RTsKhlDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, 1. 36.

32. The full title of this non-existent institution was “Gosudarstvennye Arkhivy po okhrane spokoistviia nashei schastlivoi rodiny i stroiashchegosia sotsializma. ”

33. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 14, 1. 84.

34. Occasionly this hope was made explicit: see Tsentral'nyi munitsipial'nyi arkhiv g. Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 1039, op. 2, d. 2140, 1. 6 (courtesy of Viktoriia Tiazhel'nikova).

35. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Q.V., Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Google Scholar, chap. 8.

36. RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 128, 1. 159.

37. Ibid., d. 161, 11.49–51.

38. GARF, f. 5451, op. 14, d. 68 (4), 1. 30.

39. TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, 1. 42.

40. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, II. 248–49.

41. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 1. 144; ibid. op. 81a, d. 24, II. 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, II. 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.

42. PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 10, II. 457–59.

43. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 1. 341; GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 51, 11. 213–23; 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.

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, I. 9, and d. 727, I. 367.

52. Ibid., d. 1518, 11. 1, 14.

53. GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, 1. 148. Ernst Thalman was a German communist leader whose imprisonment by the nazis was the subject of many indignant articles in the Soviet press.

54. GARF, f. 3316, op. 40, d. 14, 1. 100.

55. Ibid., op. 16a, d. 446, 1. 100.

56. The argument in this section does not depend on the Saussurian distinction between langue and parole ( Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics, ed. and trans. Bally, Charles and Sechehaye, Albert [New York: Philosophical Library, (1959)Google Scholar]).

57. E.g. GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 93, 1. 323; TsGA 1PD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2224, 1. 46.

58. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. lb, d. 449, 1. 72 (1932 letter to Kirov from a young workervydvizhenets).

59. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 226, 1. 38.

60. GARF, f. 1235, op. 141, d. 2070, 1. 4.

61. The Russian, retaining the original punctuation and spelling, is “dobry den, tavarichi robotniki. Kvam kolkhoznik.” RGAE f. 396, op. 10, d. 161, 1. 289.

62. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 147.

63. Ibid., d. 48, 1. 223 (my emphasis).

64. PANO, f. 3, op. 9, d. 801, I. 209. Despite the familiar greeting, the writer noted that he was not personally acquainted with Denisov.

65. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2g, d. 47, 1. 237.

66. Congratulatory telegrams on International Women's Day sent to Zhdanov by branches of the wives’ volunteer movement, Obshchestvennitsa, were full of flowery epithets like “loyal comrade in arms of comrade Stalin” and “leader of the toilers of Leningrad 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; RTsKhlDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 24.

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.

72. For the nineteenth century, see Mommsen, HilfMir, 54, 56, 104–5, and passim; for Soviet examples, see above ( “father,” “justice “), and GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 179, 1. 170; TsGAOR g. Moskvy, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 72, 1. 121; RGAE, f. 396, d. 128, 1. 68 ( “crust “).

73. RTsKhlDNl, 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.

75. Boym, Svetlana, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 200–5.Google Scholar

76. Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 10 July 1935. In the period 5–8July, the paper received 90 drawings and 45 poems and short stories. Citizens also sent poems and other literary compositions to obkom secretaries: see, for example, TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1554, 1. 66.

77. See RTsKhlDNI, 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.

79. There were 6 signatories, 2 identifying themselves as “sympathizers [of the Communist Party]” and 4 as “kolkhozniks. “

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 letter to Rumiantsev headed “A sel'kor's signal,” Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 219.

83. Of letters sent 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% (RTsKhlDNI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 857, 11. 27–31 [Orgburo resolution “On the situation in 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, rhetorical devices and conventions of style and format characteristic of the central party newspaper. This is not a Foucauldian discourse, on which see Foucault, Michel, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. Sheridan Smith, E.M. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982)Google Scholar.

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; RTsKhlDNl, f. 475, op. 1, d. 10, 1. 2; ibid., A. 9, 1. 8; GANO, f. 47, op. 5, d. 206, 1. 77; RTsKhlDNl, f. 475, op. 1, d. 9, 1. 108.

87. For a “model” letter allegedly from kolkhozniks, headed “Destroy the Enemy without Mercy,” see Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 25January 1938, 3. On the treatment of Stalin in Leningrad letters, see Sarah Davies, “The ‘Cult’ of the Vozhd': Representations in Letters from 1934–1941,” forthcoming in Russian History.

88. RTsKhlDNl, 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 literal use (about Leningrad's soccer team); and ibid., d. 3548, 1. 62 (for popular comments on price increases reported by the NKVD).

90. In his speech to the February-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 off them” ( Stalin, I.V., McNeal, Robert H., ed. Sochineniia, [Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1967], vol. 1 [XIV], 190 Google Scholar [my emphasis]).

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 epistolary performances differ in important respects from the face-toface interactions described by Goffman, Erving in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1959 Google Scholar).

93. In seventeenth century Russian petitions, virtually all petitioners refer to themselves as “orphans” of their lords (siroty tvoi). See Krest'ianskie chelobitnye XVII v. h sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

94. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1534, 11. 176, 183.

95. Smolensk Archive, WKP 355, 129–32.

96. From letters to Krest'ianskaia gazeta in 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, f. 1474, op. 7, d. 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.

101. Letters in TsGA 1PD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 727, 11. 335–36; and ibid., op. 2g, d. 47, I. 272 (my emphasis).

102. RGAE, f. 396, d. 86, 11. 391–92; Smolensk 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.

106. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 42, 1. 115; TsGA 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. TsGA 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, 11. 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, that this reflects a general increase in self-consciousness about identity comparable with that discovered in Elizabethan England by Stephen Greenblatt (Renaissance Self-Fashioning. From More to Shakespeare [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980]).

112. TsGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v. d. 772, 11. 23–24.

113. Ibid., 11. 248–52.

114. Ibid., op. 2g, d. 48, 11. 197–203.

115. Ibid., 11. 5–8.

116. GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 64, 1. 206.

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.

120. The discussion that follows is not framed in terms of response theory and it should be clear from my analysis so far that 1 do not share the view that a text has no meaning apart than that which the reader imparts to it (see Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Inlerpelive Communities [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980]Google Scholar). 1 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.

121. For examples, see RGAE, f. 396, op. 10, d. 64, 1. 165; ibid., d. 68, 11. 77–78; ibid., d. 143, I. 211.

122. L. Sosnovskii, “Letter from the Editorial Board,” lzvestiia, 5 May 1936, 4.

123. The cases I know best are those of Eikhe in Novosibirsk (from PANO files), Kirov and Zhdanov in Leningrad (TsGA IPD) and Rumiantsev in the western oblast’ (Smolensk archive).

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 Colfo 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, II. 137–39; RTsKhlDNI, f. 475, op. 1, d. 16, II. 182.