The case of a counter-revolutionary organization: the implementation of the kulak operation in the Komi-Perm district in the 1930s

The article is devoted to the local episode of political repressions in the 1930s. The scenario, mechanisms and results of the Kulak Operation, implemented on the territory of the Komi-Perm district in 1937-1938, in the framework of the operational order of the NKVD № 00447 «About the operation on repression of former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements» are under research. The author investigates the plan of the Kulak operation, reconstructs the logic and the chronology of its implementation; specifies that the rebel organization which had allegedly existed in the Komi-Perm district and was invented by the NKVD officers Dmitriev and Boyarski was built on a military basis. The lists were very important in the case of the counter-revolution organization. Previously the researchers who were involved in the implementation of the Kulak operation found information about the existence of a list of the members of the rebel organization. The author has found a list of workers and Stakhanovites, which the NKVD officers transformed into the list of the rebel organization’s members. The author reveals such main feature of the operation as its close connection with the arrests of the district’s party leadership (the executive secretary of the Komi-Perm committee of the party A.I. Blagonravov and his deputy I. Golik). This, in turn, resulted in an open trial, held in Kudymkar in November 1937, with the participation of public prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses. The secretary of the Komi-Permy region committee of the party Alexander Ivanovich Blagonravov, the head of the district land office Sergei Isakov, deputy director of the Kochevo MTS responsible for calculations Alexey Vasilievich Gladikov, the chairman of Proninskij kolkhoz Stepan Sidorovich Chetin, the head of the milk farm of Starikovskij kolkhoz Mikhail Petrovich Starikov were the defendants at that trial. The NKVD people gave the texts to be presented in the court to the witnesses and to the accused persons. As a result, only Starikov was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment, and other defendants were sentenced to the highest measure of punishment.