Protest actions & moods of the ural's urban population in the "Great Break" period (1928-1932)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the protest moods and behavior of the urban population in the Ural region during the "Great Break" period of 1928-1932. The authors consider this phenomenon as a special form of interaction between government and society in the conditions of remarkable and harsh changes of the governmental policy on the turn of 1930s. The historiography situation creates a necessity for re-examination of the problem on the base of regional archival data which can help historians to clarify several estimations of early Soviet government's capacity for control of public & individual moods and behavior. The main sources for the research are represented by analytical records created by the special agencies and structures of political control: OGPU (UGPA), Informational Departments of the District's and Regional's All-Union Communist Party's (Bolsheviks) Comities, RKI (Workers' and Peasants' Inspection), records and reports of the public organizations, periodicals, personal documents of different types which have great relevance for the issue. The authors show different forms and representations of the town dwellers' protest moods and behavior in the Urals. They included both legal addressing to the central and local administration and illegal opposition actions such as leaflets, anonymous letters, rhymes, rumors distribution, "anti-Soviet" conversations, producing of self-made "anti-Soviet" literature, etc. The motives of discontent with Bolsheviks' policy which had been expressed in protest actions of the Ural region's urban population were analyzed in the paper. They contained notions about a government course as a betrayal of Revolution's and Lenin's ideals, deteriorating living conditions for the common people, new exploitation and inequality, unjustified privileges of the local authorities, especially communists. Protest actions and notions expressed a deep disappointment among the several segments of the Urals's population in the results and methods of Soviet policy in the situation of social tension escalation on the turn of 1930s. The authors concluded that it was a manifestation of the relatively low effectiveness of mechanisms of social engineering, control and manipulating over public "way of thinking" in 1917-1932s. Despite the marginal character of the active forms of political protest this phenomenon can be estimated as an evidence of acute internal contradictions and tensions within the early Soviet society in the process of its social, economical and political transformation during the crucial period of the "Great Break".