In the 1920s and 1930s, many peasants in the Olenevka village community were deprived of their voting right or dispossessed. Those who suffered that in the first instance were well-off peasants, merchants, peasants possessing agricultural implements and hiring labor, different security officers, village constables, churchwardens, acolytes. In 1926 in the village of Olenevka, which was the volost center, there numbered 21 people deprived of civil rights; many of them were subjected to dispossession during the period of collectivization. Among those in Olenevka there was Dmitry Ivanovich Remezov, Pavel Ivanovich Vasiliev, Grigory Nikolaevich Remezov, Semyon Nikiforovich Kirilin; in Solovtsovka – deacon Fedor Ivanovich Kondrashin, Pavel Andrianovich Karpov; in Kolyupanovka – the Frolovs, the Filippovs, three families of Melnikov. Here are some examples of their life description and relevant documents.
A resident of Degterevka (that is part of Solovtsovka) Grigory Nikolaevich Remezov was born on August 10, 1893. He belonged to the Olenevka community of the Old Believers.
His first wife Paraskeva Alekseevna gave birth to two children; on October 3, 1918, their first daughter Lidia was born and in 1912, Alexandra. Alexandra Grigorievna Remezova (Kayukova) was the one who wrote memories about Olenevka. On April 1922, after his wife’s death Grigory Nikolayevich married for the second time to a young widow Olga Nikolaevna Serova.
One of the documents dated 1934 said that Grigory Nikolaevich lived in the village of Olenevka with his mother. As a well-off peasant he had farm laborers, an oil mill, and an orchard of 250 trees. Remezov was deprived of voting right in 1931, because of his economic status.
In 1935, Olga Serova applied to the village council for provision of estate and a garden taken from her second husband Gregory Nikolayevich Remezov, who had been deprived of his voting rights and dispossessed on January 31, 1934 (due to a rather large farm).
In her petition Olga described her life, said that she was deprived of voting right, divorced her husband in 1925, but had been living with him in the same house until 1934. She joined the collective farm named after Stalin. She had children by her first husband and by Remezov. Having considered the petition, the DEC (district executive committee) of Kondol passed the following resolution: to restore Serov-Remezov’s rights as she was wrongly deprived of those, but to refuse a request of Remezov’s estate return.
In 1931, another resident of Olenevka, a peasant Semyon Nikiforovich Kirilin was subjected to dispossession. He lived on the main street in Degterevka. Kirilin was known as a calm and even-tempered person, a church member; he was engaged in agriculture.
In the 30s, when the church in Olenevka was no longer functioning, he drove the village elder Ioann to the church service in Solovtsovka. Semyon Nikiforovich and his wife Anna Petrovna were deprived of their voting right and in September 1931, the family was thrown out of the house. This happened despite the fact that Semyon had been a collective farm member since its foundation. Besides, when he joined the collective farm he handed over two horses, a foal, two sets of harness, a thresher, two plows, a harrow, everything worth 895 rubles. The Kirilins had five children: Grigory, Alexei, Viktor, Ivan and Nadezhda.
In the early 1930s, a native of Solovtsovka Pavel Andrianovich Karpov was deprived of his civil rights. His father, Karpov Andrian Vasilievich was a large landowner in Solovtsovka; he served as the head of the Trinity Church and died shortly before the revolution. In 1935 Pavel Karpov was living in Penza and applied to the prosecutor of the Teleginsky District Executive Committee with a petition:
“In October, 1934, I applied to the Penza City Council for the restoration of my civil rights. It’s nearly several months since that time and I haven’t got any answer so far because the Teleginsky DEC submitted no materials despite the fact that the Penza City Council had already made an inquiry for the fifth time.
I am a citizen of Solovtsovka and belong to Olenevsky council of Teleginsky district. My father owned some land and livestock before the revolution. In 1919 I became an owner a medium-sized farm: a house, two horses, a cow. I cultivated the land with the help of my family. In 1929 I was dispossessed and exiled to northern labor camps. I spent in exile 3, 5 years. In March 1933, I was released and permitted to reside in any city. Now I work all the time in Penza as a watchman. I have children now and because of the fact that my civil rights had not been restored my son, who was born in 1912, is not allowed to join the Red Army and cannot get employed. My daughters have worked at school for five and six years. And yet, despite their long working experience and good reputation they have low standing as daughters of a person who was deprived of his civil rights.
I appeal to you, comrade prosecutor, to expedite the provision of documents from the Teleginsky DEC that is necessary for handling our case. The documents should be sent to the following address: the city of Penza, the City Council, the Desk for the dispossessed of civil rights. Date: 21.3.35. Karpov “.
Unluckily, before the revolution P.A. Karpov had 500 hectares of land in Solovtsovka, a horse nursery with 30 heads, a forest plot of 100 hectares, a pig farm with 100 heads and hired up to 25 permanent workers, so he was denied his rights restoration, despite the fact that his farm in January 1920 was recognized as not using hired labor.
The fate of the Solovtsovska church acolyte Fedor Ivanovich Kondrashin (born in 1885) is a very common one. On May 27, 1934, after returning from exile, he applied for his civil rights restoration. That is what he wrote about himself: “Being a son of a peasant I, Kondrashin, worked with my father in agriculture since childhood up to 15 years of age; my father possessed allotment land and was engaged in arable farming, but he did not have any enterprises. When I turned 15 I left my father to become a carpenter apprentice and worked from 1900 to 1914; then I was recruited to the Russian-German war. I was in the war till the revolution and during the revolution I was sent to work according to my profession to Penza Airplane factory [1] and worked there until 1918. In 1918, I came home to my village and began to farm; I worked at my home place until January 1930.
In January 1930, I was arrested and deprived of the voting right for agitation against collectivization and by the decision of O.G.P.U. Troika (a commission of three) I was sentenced to a settlement and imprisonment in Correctional Labor Camps (from 1930 to 1935 – S.Z.). Now I have served the term of sentence and returned to my homeland. Therefore I ask the district commission to restore my civil rights, since I want to work to support my family with five young children. I ask you not to deny my request and to inform me about the result of the case through the village council. Here I put my signature under what I have written. Kondrashin June 27, 1934 ».
However, certain authorities considered the tone of this appeal unconvincing and apparently Kondrashin was offered to write a petition in a different manner, full of repentance for the “sins of the past”:
“I ask Olenevsky village council to restore my voting rights. Here are the facts I can offer about myself: I was born in Solovtsovka in 1885. My father’s farm was poor; he did not have his own cow but there was a so-called “used” cow. There was a common practice in those days when a well-to-do peasant gave a poor man a female calf to feed and care after until it grows up and calves. Then the owner took back the young cow and left the litter to the person who fed his cow. That was the way my father’s family lived. Due to poverty I actually did not have the opportunity to finish even a rural school and still remain semi-literate. Since the family was on the breadline I had to start training to be a carpenter. My father sent me to Penza to be an apprentice at the carpentry workshop. When at this workshop, I was advised by some workmen to join a church choir as I had a naturally beautiful voice. Other workmen who had good voice also sang in the church, because they just could not make any other kind of singers. So I joined the church choir and was taught to sing. I could only have my singing lessons on holidays and on Sundays, because I spent all weekdays from morning till night in a carpentry workshop. I had been working as a carpenter until the imperialist war. Then I was taken to the old army where I served in the ranks. After demobilization, I was given a job as a carpenter for the Airplane plant in Penza, where I worked until 1919.
In 1918 there was an accident in Solovtsovka, which in the future caused so much grief and troubles to me. It was at this time that alcohol was drained into the Ardym River from the former Selivanov’s plant, as it then was done at all plants. All people of Solovtsovka rushed to collect the alcohol from ditches and pits near the plant. The psalmist of Solovtsovka church fell greedily upon the alcohol and got lit up to death.
At this time, the elective principle was introduced even into the church. Therefore, a new psalmist had to be elected. Being a good singer and a fellow villager of Solovtsovska residents, I was called from a factory in Penza and chosen a psalmist in the Solovtsovska church. The higher clergy did not want to appoint to this post a person without appropriate education and of low origin, and who, on the top of that, was not a clergyman. But they were not able to outface the pressure of the public and in 1919, I got a position of a psalmist.
In 1929, I gave up this “trade of a psalmist” and got engaged in agriculture. In 1930, that was the period of excesses in collectivization in our locality, I was sent into exile for 5 years. I was serving my time in Temnikov camps in the middle Volga region and at the construction of the White Sea canal. For my honest work in the camps and at the construction of the White Sea canal, I was released before time with the permission to live without any supervision in any part of the USSR (released in 1934 – author’s note).
If I had not been a semi-literate person but an educated or well-informed one, it would have never happened to me that being a carpenter who comes from a poor peasant family, I found myself among the priests. This is a stain I want to erase with honest work. Therefore I ask the council for my rights restoration, so that I can live the rest of my life to correct that serious mistake I had made because of lack of political consciousness, namely, I left the plant and became a person useless to the working people, even though I did it by the wish of my fellow villagers.
Once again I ask you not to deny my request, since I have never considered myself an enemy of the Soviet Government. To this put my signature: F. Kondrashin “.
This time, due to such a convincing statement, Fyodor Ivanovich had his civil rights restored.
*volost – a peasant community consisting of several villages
Sources: GAPO, f. p-39, op. 1a, d. 39; f. p-212/439, op. 3, d. 499; f. p-516, op. 1, d. 20; f. p-1139, op. 3, d. 233, p. 5; f. p-66/516, op. 3, d. 110, d. 125. Archive UFSB for the Penza region., No. 10137-p.
[1] Was on the basis of the modern plant “Era”. From 1916 to 1923 he specialized in aircraft construction.
