Resettlement Policy of the Soviet Government in the UkrSSR in the 1920s

In particular, the resolution of the Council of the People's Commissars of the UkrSSR dated November 13, 1929 `On the resettlement of a socially dangerous element from the border districts of the UkrSSR' Ibid. P. 42. emphasised the desire of the Soviet authorities to “rapidly improve the economic conditions of the border strip of the UkrSSR and facilitate the implementation of reconstruction measures in it”. For this purpose, citizens who were recognised as `socially dangerous' for their further stay in the 22-kilometer strip were `voluntarily' included in the resettlement contingents. According to the resolution of the Council of the People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, separate districts of Korosten, Volyn, Shepetivka, Proskuriv, Kamianets-Podilsk, Mogyliv-Podilsk, Tulchyn and Odesa districts, as well as the Autonomous Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic, were assigned to this zone.

The execution of these tasks was entrusted to the National Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, which immediately created a corresponding commission. It included representatives from the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the UkrSSR, the United State Political Directory and the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Such commissions were secretly created at the district and district land departments of the districts that were part of the border strip. On the ground, such commissions had to include a representative of the local United State Political Directory, the land and administrative departments of the district executive committee. They were supposed to carry out a preliminary study of the issue of resettlement of `socially dangerous elements'. However, not a single document was written that would determine the criteria and grounds for classifying people as `socially dangerous elements'. The final decision on the submission of these local commissions was made by the commission of the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR.

These local commissions formed a contingent, determined the sequence and terms of eviction of socially dangerous persons. These included those suspected of robberies, banditry, horse theft, theft, arson, fraud, hooliganism, as well as persons who had connections with kulaks, families of administrative exiles for criminal offences, and persons who returned from administrative exile. Another category consisted of persons serving sentences for counter-revolutionary crimes; `former people' (landlords, policemen, gendarmes); persons who had relatives abroad; accused of being uncharitable; defectors remaining in the border strip; former `white' officers; members of political gangs and counter-revolutionary organisations, etc Восточный вектор переселенческой политики в СССР: конец 1920-х - конец 1930-х гг.: сборник документов / Российская акад. наук, Сибирское отд-ние, Ин-т истории [и др.] ; [сост. Н.Н. Аблажей и dp.]. Новосибирск: [и др.], 2007. С. 95..

The task of this commission was prescribed in the same resolution. They consisted in the use of direct coercion for resettlement, in particular, the use of measures to `incentivise' these citizens to apply for resettlement, including tax pressure and all other possible actions. In fact, the state began to apply coercion to voluntary and forced migration. The state put pressure on the circumstances and factors of individual decision-making in exactly the way it wanted to see it. Therefore, the annual orders for planned resettlement had to necessarily include a contingent of citizens recognised as `socially dangerous'. In order to control this process, special reports on the work done by the commission of the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the UkrSSR were submitted twice a year to the Council of the People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, which reported to the Kremlin on the state of affairs in this area of Soviet state policy.

Preparatory work on the organisation of the departure of the specified resettlers of the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR began almost immediately with the understanding that these persons had to show a `desire' to resettle voluntarily. However, problems began to arise almost immediately. They were connected with the fact that the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the UkrSSR did not have appropriate clarifications from the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the USSR regarding the practical solution to the preparation of contingents of immigrants and their transfer to the colonisation funds designated for them. The instructions received from the higher Union authorities did not contain a specific plan for the number of displaced persons and the land plots allocated for them. There were also no clear instructions regarding the principles of settling resettled people on union collective funds, setting up new settlements or sub - settlements in already existing ones, organising new collective farms for them or settling them in existing ones Ibid. С. 96.. The issue of material support for the migrants, whose contingent consisted mainly of poor families, was also acute. They needed help from the state for logistics and accommodation in the harsh conditions of the Siberian taiga.

The property that remained after such immigrants could be bought by local collective farms or poor peasants at the expense of a loan provided by Ukrsilbank. Such actions on the part of the state deliberately cut off the opportunity for these displaced persons to return home. The organisation of the arrangement of such forced migrants in a new place, providing them with loans was to be taken care of by the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, and the People's Committee of Finances of the Ukrainian SSR was to issue loans for these purposes RSAE. Fund 5675. List 1. File 23-а. P. 41.. However, the constant lack of funds often left the displaced people alone in moving and settling in a new place.

It is worth emphasising that the migrants from the Ukrainian border strip were sent exclusively to the collective funds in the Siberian taiga. The authorities `worried' about such a contingent of immigrants in advance. By a secret resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, dated October 4, 1929, the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs RSFSR was proposed to carry out all necessary measures to organise the resettlement of socially `dangerous' citizens from the western border strip of the USSR to Siberia. In order to hide the real purpose of resettlement, the designated contingent was to be resettled on a common basis with planned resettlers, but at the settlement sites in Siberia, everything had to be done for the fastest and reliable `acclimatisation' of such resettlers in a new place Восточный вектор переселенческой политики в СССР. С. 88.. The confirmation of this is the resolution superimposed on the Letter of the People's Commissariat of Lands of the RSFSR to the head of the Siberian District Resettlement Administration on the organisation of the resettlement of a `socially dangerous element' from the border areas of the country to Siberia. The resolution convincingly recommended the Siberian District Resettlement Administration together with th e United State Political Directory to determine Tomsk, Achinsk and Krasnoyarsk districts as the settlement areas of such a special contingent. Such migrants were proposed to be placed on a special register and denied the opportunity to return to their previous place of residence. For this, along with receiving a loan, this category of immigrants had to receive a period of residence Ibid. С. 89..

However, soon the Resettlement Department of the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the RSFSR had to send an additional explanation to the leadership of the Siberian Police Service regarding the reception of resettled people from the western border areas. The Russian People's Commissariat understood two categories of immigrants by `socially dangerous elements'. The first category included persons who were deported by judicial authorities and the United State Political Directory authorities to a specific address (Narym, Solovki), without granting them any rights and benefits that were established for planned immigrants. The second category included `socially dangerous' elements of the border strip who resettled `voluntarily'. They were mostly poor or poor peasants. Their `social danger' consisted only in the fact that they lived in the border zone and had relatives abroad. The main goal of the resettlement of such categories of people was the effort to send them away from the border and imprison them in such places where “...the social danger of these displaced persons. will come to nothing” Ibid. С. 90..

An interesting solution to the question of the fate of border lands vacated in the course of these sweeps. One thing was clear that no one would be allowed to settle there. The solution was found at the end of the 1920s and consisted in the organisation along the borders of the USSR of the so-called `Red Army collective farms', which were formed from demobilised Red Army soldiers and their family members. These collective farms were a symbolic form of manifestation of `Soviet xenophobia' Полян П. Не по своей воле. С. 54..

The activity of the higher authorities of the RSFSR in the matter of cleaning the western border strip from `politically unsavoury elements' continued in the following years. In particular, by the resolution of the People's Commissariat of the USSR dated August 6, 1930, all management of special colonisation from the territory of Ukraine was transferred to the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the RSFSR RSAE. Fund 5675. List 1. File 23-а. P. 60.. In the `Service Memo' of the All-Union Resettlement Administration, addressed under the seal `secretly' to the People's Committees of the RSFSR and the UkrSSR on the issue of resettlement of `socially dangerous elements' from the border strip of the UkrSSR in the 1930/31 economic year, it was emphasised that this proposal came precisely from the Ukrainian government Ibid. P. 58. Copy.. The direction of such resettlement of Ukrainians in Moscow was determined only in the regions of the Siberian taiga. For this purpose, the special sector for resettlement under the People's Commissariat for Land Affairs of the RSFSR instructed the Siberian District Resettlement Administration to map out the areas of resettlement of special resettlement contingents from the UkrSSR and determine the cost estimate for housing the first thousand of such resettlement in the 1930/31 economic year.

Thus, the voluntary resettlement of the peasantry ceased to exist in the late 1920s. During the period of mass collectivisation, resettlement bodies became a part of the repressive system. On the basis of the resolution of the Central Committee of the AllUnion Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB) `On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivisation' dated January 30, 1930, and a joint resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR `On measures to strengthen socialist agriculture in areas of complete collectivisation and the fight against kulakism' from February 1, 1930, resettlement authorities began to involve `Kurkul families' in forced evictions Кузьмина Л.Ф., Полетаев В.Е., Томашевич Ю.У. (Тост.). Коллективизация сельского хозяйства: важнейшие постановления Коммунистической партии и Советского правительства 1927-1935. Москва: Изд-во Акад. наук СССР, 1957. С. 267.. Evictions of families of wealthy Ukrainian peasants turned into punitive measures by the United State Political Directory. These families were deprived of all rights and left to fend for themselves. The outlined measures did not fit into the term `resettlement' in any way, they cannot be qualified as `voluntary change of residence', although elements of planning still remained here, as economic factors continued to dominate political ones for some time.

resettlement policy soviet ukraine

Conclusions

The migration of Ukrainian peasants in the 1920s to colonisation funds and sparsely populated areas was a reaction to the decline in their financial situation. It was based on socio-economic and demographic factors, as well as the poor socioeconomic policy of the Soviet government. In the resettlement of the 1920s two stages can be clearly traced, characterised by the level of state intervention in this process. For the first half of the 1920s, self-resettlement was more characteristic, as well as the efforts of the Soviet state authorities to give this process organisation and control. In the middle and second half of the 1920s the Soviet authorities made attempts to direct the resettlement movement in the direction of the state program of measures, to clearly control the resettlement areas, based on economic expediency. However, the declaration of material support for the displaced people did not receive adequate funding.

At the end of the 1920s there was severe state intervention in migration processes. These measures of the Soviet government can be characterised not as help from the state in solving socio-economic problems, but as an obstacle to the voluntary departure of peasants and the organisation of forced resettlement of `inconvenient' elements, especially from the western border strip. Therefore, we can state with confidence that the resettlement policy of the Soviet government in the 1920s was the first step towards the beginning of mass deportations. Voluntary and forced resettlement of Ukrainians, which took place in the first decade of Soviet power in Ukraine, became test steps to clarify the reaction of society to the openly antiUkrainian policy of the Bolsheviks.

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