“The purges” among grain procurement staff in the Soviet Far East in the late 1920's

The article is the first study undertaken in Russian historiography which examines repressive policy of the Soviet leadership toward the staff working on grain market for state-run and cooperative institutions during the New Economic Policy in Russia’s Far East. The author uses archival documents which are completely new to scientific discourse to show how the “purges” among this personnel tightened as grain procurement campaigns were increasingly running into crises in 1927-1928. The study offers a detailed analysis of economic, social and administrative effects of the purges. The author concludes that the staff discharged from grain procurement jobs were as a rule professionally competent and the reasons they were fired were purely political and social ones. What the Bolsheviks aimed at executing purges among people involved in grain procurement was to set a complete control over grain supplies. Thus, the “purges” as a form of repression was part and parcel of the state policy of monopolizing the agrarian market. They never stopped even at moments of temporary political thaws which would occur in the country.