The tragedy of Mordovian village reflected in peasants’ destinies, dispossessed and deprived of electoral rights during the disposal of the kulaks as a class

The paper explores the tragedy of a village in the Mordovian territory (Krai) in the years of the winding-down of the new economic policy (NEP) and transition to overall collectivisation. A key factor in creating collective farms was the disposal of the kulaks as a class. This problem is considered through the prism of peasants, who incurred such repressive and discriminatory measures, employed by the state in this period, as the dispossession and deprivation of electoral rights. The paper presents the original texts of complaints from peasants-nonvoters, addressed to various election commissions (rural district, regional, Russian Central Executive Committee (RCEC)), in which they describe their lives and explain why they consider unlawful the application of punishment to them. The paper reveals the inspectoral follow-up on peasants’ complaints to electoral commissions. The author gives account of the reasons that caused the curtail of NEP, provides characteristics of the kulak farms, specified in the decree issued by the USSR Council of People’s Commissars in May 21, 1929, elaborates on the reasons of increased number of the dispossessed and deprived-of-rights people in the years of overall collectivisation.