220. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, IV: 390–402 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 138, l. 68–91). Yakov Yakovlev, head of the CC agriculture department, gave the report on the new model statute the first day; Mikhail Chernov, the new USSR land commissar and chairman of the commission, reported on Feb. 17 with the Stalin-corrected version. II vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 225–32. The 1935 statute defined “land as state property owned by the whole people, and assigned to artels for permanent use.” Land was “not subject to either purchase-sale or leasing.” Nomad households in Kazakhstan were allowed 8–10 cows and their calves, 100–150 sheep/goats, 10 horses, and 5–8 camels. Izvestiia, Feb. 18, 1935; Sobranie zakonov, 1935, art. 82; “Soviet Legislation (XIII): Selection of Decrees and Documents,” Slavonic and East European Review 14, no. 40 (1935): 188–99.
221. Women made up 30.5 percent of the delegates (more than double the number at the first congress in 1933). Pravda, Feb. 16, 1935. According to the Soviet press, more than 7,000 women served as collective farm chairmen (up from just 1,290 in 1931), 8.1 percent of the total. Women made up 49.2 percent of managers of livestock units. Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie, March 7, 1935; II vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 247–97.
222. Yakovlev, in a report to party activists, summarized Stalin’s remarks: Pravda, March 13, 1935; Sotsialisticheskie zemledelie, March 13, 1935; Sotsialisticheskaia rekonstruktsiia sel’skogo khoziaistva, 1935, no. 2–3: 8–30. See also Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 122 (quoting Krestian’skaia pravda, Feb. 27, 1935: 2).
223. Whitman, “Kolkhoz Market,” 393. Rural laborers’ market sales fed regime coffers in the form of taxes, but the household plots and the direct marketing absorbed time from collective farm duties, and the opportunities for marketing further reinforced rural laborers’ deep commitment to the plots.
224. Maslov, Kolkhoznaia Rossiia, 198, 227–8.
225. Remuneration was calculated by a system known as the “labor day” (time plus skill, so that the chairman’s work time was worth more than the field hand’s). But only about 10 percent of the collective farmers’ cash income came from collective farm work; more than half came from sales at market or to state contractors. Seasonal labor at factories and construction sites provided significant cash income as well. Vyltsan, Zavershchaiushchii etap, 101 (citing GRAE, f. 4372, op. 36, d. 356, l. 18), 203–4; Kolkhozy vo vtoroi, 37; 20 let sovetskoi vlasti, 48.
226. Pravda, March 13, 1935 (Yakovlev). New members were to be admitted even if they had no animals or implements to contribute, a bitter pill for those who had had to yield up their property. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 124–7, citing Krest’ainskaia pravda, Feb. 28, 1935; II vsesoiuznyi s”ezd kolkhoznikov-udarnikov, 17–8, 85.
227. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 139–42. Collective farmers “could shout, fume, curse,” wrote the eyewitness Hindus, “but they could not dodge the challenge the kolkhoz had thrust upon them.” Hindus, Red Bread, 210.
228. Peterson (b. 1897), an ethnic Latvian who had commanded Trotsky’s civil war train in 1919, since 1920 served as a punctilious Kremlin commandant, earning high praise and two Orders of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 158 (citing AVKVS RF, op. 64, d. 776, l. 1–4); Zhukov, Inoi Stalin, 141–3.
229. “We were sitting together, Avdeyeva, Zhalybina-Bykova, and I on the first floor of the government building in a small room drinking tea,” one woman, E. S. Mishakova, testified. “Avdeyeva started to talk about how we lived badly, how our bosses drank, ate well, and we eat poorly. And I said to her that I live better now than before.” Then Avdeyeva supposedly started to say that Stalin was not a Russian, divorced his first wife [sic], and the second had shot herself. “I said that this is not true, we do not know. On this note the conversation ended and we returned to work.” For her part, A. E. Avdeyeva, a twenty-two-year-old cleaning lady in the central executive committee school, claimed “all that was said by [M. S.] Zhalybina.” Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 599–600 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 231, l. 1, 14).
