"Anti-Soviet elements revived": diary of collective farm practice of students of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West. Spring 1930

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-2-550-565

For citation

Tikhomirov, Nikita V. (2024),”"Anti-Soviet elements revived": a collective farm practice diary of students of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West. Spring 1930”, Herald of an Archivist, no.2, pp. 550-565. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-2-550-565

Tikhomirov, Nikita V., Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia

"Anti-Soviet elements revived": diary of collective farm practice of students of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West. Spring 1930

Abstract

The subject of the article is the activity of students of the Leningrad branch of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West (LB CUNMW) in strengthening the collective farm system during the first Soviet five-year plan. Despite the high interest of researchers in the problems of collectivization, the contribution of activists who carried out the socialist restructuring of the village remains insufficiently studied. In particular, the role of students of communist universities in the cause of collective farm construction is poorly covered. As a source we have attracted the diary of the students of LB CUNMW who practiced in the spring of 1930 in one of the districts of the Leningrad region. These records were intended to be reporting documents. At the same time, they have the features of documents of personal origin, having expressed features of subjective perception of reality. They contain observations and impressions characterizing from different sides the village life in the north-east of Russia of the period under consideration. The language of the diary is devoid of the formalism inherent in office documentation, which allows us to better see certain aspects of rural life, understand the mindset of the peasants and the trainees themselves. The source highlights the events related to the growing acuteness of socio-economic contradictions in the village, caused by the criticism of the former approach to collectivization by the top leadership of the USSR. The collapse of the newly established collective farms, the attempts of the kulaks to restore their influence in the village, and the growing distrust of Soviet power were the main challenges for young communists. The aim of the publication is to reveal the informational potential of student practice diaries as a historical source, to show their cognitive potential. The study of these materials can be carried out through various methods, both historical and interdisciplinary (content analysis, discourse analysis and others). The inclusion of the report diaries of the students of LB CUNMW in the scientific turnover opens up opportunities to expand and clarify the picture of perceptions of collectivization in the USSR. The documents help to examine collectivization activists as subjects of the historical process in a new way, to understand more deeply their motivations and logic of their actions, to define more precisely their place in the general context of events. The records made by students in the course of their work not only highlight private aspects of peasant life, but also contribute to revealing the inner world of their authors, which becomes accessible to the modern historian.

Keywords

Historical source, liquidation of kulakism as a class, Komsomol members, youth commune, diaries, history of everyday life, collectivization, collective farm, collective peasantry, communist university, microhistory

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About the authors

Nikita V. Tikhomirov, PhD in History, Russian State University for the Humanities, Institute of History and Archives, Department of Archival and Document Studies, Department of Source Studies, Associate Professor, Moscow, Russia, +7-909-962-15-59, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

ORCID 0000-0002-2808-3763

The article was received in the editorial office on 4.12.2023, recommended for publication on 20.03.2024.