Babi revolt in Ivanovo, about which the newspapers were silent

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This happened at the end of October 1941 in Ivanovo - the famous "city of brides" and a major center of the textile industry of the USSR. Of course, this event was not reported in the newspapers.

Extremely stingy in those terrible days of October 1941, the reports of the Sovinformburo monotonously and dully reported "intense battles on the Mozhaisk, Maloyaroslavets and Kalinin directions." Nothing was written about the "Ivanovo revolt" in the next six decades. Even today, after the former archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU (now RGASPI, fund 17, inventory 88, file 45) revealed one of its secrets, we cannot reliably say how unique (or, on the contrary, typical) these events were.

In the fall of 1941, after the evacuation of the management of the People's Commissariat of the Textile Industry from Moscow to Ivanovo, this city finally turned into the “textile capital of the country”. But it became very bad with the suitors: the men remained in the city (as it becomes obvious from the documents that will be given below) only among the bosses, ordinary men were almost without exception taken into the army.

In early September (the document does not allow establishing the exact date) instructor Kozlov and the organizer of the organizational and instructing department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Sidorov sent to Moscow a memorandum "On the situation at textile enterprises in the Ivanovo region." The situation was very alarming, in other words, pre-strike:

“… Recently, there have been bagpipes of individual groups of workers who voluntarily quit work before the end of the working day. Such facts took place at three factories of the Vichugsky district … at two factories in the Furmanovsky district. … and at some other enterprises of the Ivanovo region (dots have been replaced by a long list of large factories employing from 7 to 12 thousand people. - MS). The workers express strong discontent and sometimes anti-Soviet sentiments. The usual conversations in factories, passed on to each other, that they went on strike at this or that factory and that their bread ration was increased to a kilogram.

At a meeting of workers of the factory. Nogina's worker Kulakova said: "Hitler didn't take the bread by force, we gave him ourselves, but now they are not giving us, they are taking care of him?" Employee Lobova said the following: “We go hungry, there is no urine to work. The bosses receive in a closed store, they can live. " Pom. craftsmen Sobolev and craftsman Kiselev (these are the only two male surnames, all the other "pipers" are women) said: "If we are taken into the army, we will show the communists how to starve us." An employee of the Bolshevik spinning mill told the communist Agapova: "God save us from the victory of Soviet power, and you, communists, will be outweighed."

Stating the facts of such "unhealthy moods", as well as some of the reasons for such moods ("there is impassable dirt in canteens, most canteens do not have cisterns and mugs … the quality of meals is extremely low, the menu mostly consists of empty cabbage soup (water with cabbage without onions, without any seasoning) and barley porridge cooked in water without any fats "), Kozlov and Sidorov limited themselves to the following proposals:

"Introduce procurement secretaries in the regional committee and city committee … to replace weak secretaries of party organizations … to instruct the leadership of agitation collectives to instruct the responsible workers of the regional committee and city committee … to send a group of qualified lecturers and speakers to help the regional party committee …"

Whether the "group of qualified lecturers" managed to arrive in Ivanovo, whether they managed to explain to the hungry weavers why there was "impassable dirt in the working cafeteria, but the bosses get it in a closed store" is unknown. But something else is known for certain: on October 2, German troops launched a large-scale offensive, and a week later more than 60 Soviet divisions were surrounded in two giant cauldrons - at Vyazma and Bryansk; a week later, the last centers of organized resistance of the encircled were suppressed, on October 16 in Moscow mass panic began, robberies of shops and indiscriminate flight of the population to the east along all accessible roads. In a word, exactly what had begun that preceded the fall of Minsk, Smolensk, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov … It seemed a little more - and the city of Moscow will appear on this tragic list.

In a situation where the breakthrough of the Germans to the Volga, Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod seemed quite real, it was decided to evacuate the Ivanovo enterprises. And then the riot began.

“The Ivanovo Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in addition to telephone messages, considers it necessary to inform the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in more detail about the facts of anti-Soviet protests. Riots took place in the city of Ivanovo at the Melange Combine, at the factories named after Dzerzhinsky, them. Balashov and, to a certain extent, at the Krasnaya Zvezda factory, as well as in the city of Privolzhsk at the Yakovlevsky Flax Mill.

The most characteristic are the events at the Melange Combine. No explanatory work among the workers on evacuation issues was carried out. As a result, on October 18, workers, having come to work at 6 o'clock in the morning, saw part of the disassembled equipment in the shops … There was noise and shouts: “The equipment will be taken away, and we will be left without work. We will not let you disassemble and take away the equipment …

To avoid further disorganization and disorder, a workers' meeting was called. The meeting began at 2 pm. The secretary of the city committee, comrade Taratynov, the secretary of the regional committee, comrade Lukoyanov, the secretary of the Kirovsky district committee, comrade Veseloye, and the director of the plant, comrade Chastukhin (it is worth paying attention to the fact that here and hereafter all the bosses are men). A machine-walker, a member of Buteneva's party, took the floor and said in her speech: “If you feel sorry for the machines, you must first take out the families. We will not let you take out the equipment. A group of active participants in the riots began to break the boxes of equipment with axes and hammers.

On the morning of October 19, events at the plant began to take on a more acute character. At about 9 am, the same group of weavers began to break the boxes of equipment again. Attempts to counteract, undertaken by the leaders of the plant, did not lead to anything. Many female workers began to quit their jobs.

About 150 people broke into the office of the head of the spinning mill, Rastrigin, who ran away from them and hid in the sorting under a tarp. The head of the weaving factory, Nikolayev, also fled home, frightened of threats to kill him for being rude to the workers. The secretaries of the regional committee, comrade T.

More than 1000 workers, mostly women, gathered in the yard of the plant. The Secretary of the Regional Committee, Comrade Paltsev, who spoke here, announced the termination of dismantling the equipment (underlined by me - MS) and gave the order to start assembling the already dismantled machines. Many of those present greeted this statement with approval … Some of the workers started working on the night shift, and on October 20, the entire plant started working.

The beginning of the dismantling of the equipment was used to provoke riots at the factory. Dzerzhinsky and at the Dmitrievskaya manufactory named after Balashova … October 19, secretary of the party bureau of the factory. Dzerzhinsky Filippov began to explain to the workers why the equipment was being evacuated, but one of the workers shouted: "Let the equipment remain in place, and if Hitler comes, we will work for him." Then Filippov said: "We will not leave anything to Hitler, we will destroy it with our own hands, we will blow up the factory." This statement was immediately picked up by the provocateurs. Shouts and commotion began. A group of unidentified persons began to arm themselves with spools and machine parts and rushed to beat Filippov and the secretary of the party bureau Graboch-kin …

The weavers, incited by the provocateurs, made the following demands: “We will not go to the labor front! Add 100 grams of bread to your dinner! Give for free.

manufactory! " Party activists, workers of the district committee and city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks explained to the workers the incorrectness of the rumors spread by the provocateurs. In response to this, shouts were heard from the crowd: “Do not listen to them, they themselves do not know anything, they have been deceiving us for 23 years. They themselves evacuated their families, and they sprinkle us on the labor front."

The riots in the city of Privolzhsk were caused by the decision to mobilize 4,000 people to build a defensive belt in the area of Ivanovo. At the factories of the flax plant, without any explanatory work, they began to draw up lists of mobilized persons, including adolescents of 16 years old, old people and mothers with many children, which caused the discontent of the workers … On the morning of October 20, a group of workers from the Rogachev factory quit their jobs and went out to the factory yard. Factory managers were confused, Party Bureau secretary Vasiliev ran away from the workers from the yard to the spinning department … A group of 200-300 people walked along the city streets to the Yakovlevskaya and Vasilievskaya factories in order to bring the workers of these enterprises out into the street. In the crowd, shouts were heard: "We will not go to the labor front!"

What's next? But nothing. Further - silence, as the Danish prince Hamlet used to say. With a shouting noise, the crowds of exhausted, hungry women dispersed to their homes. Somewhere on the same day, somewhere on the second or third. And they did not expect any "Hitler's father", but at some point even their endless, world-famous patience of a Russian woman simply burst. They were tired of the 10-hour working day, of the constant lies of well-fed men-bosses, of the exhausting, inescapable fear for the husbands who went to the front, of the crying of hungry and undressed children. But even in their “fury of despair”, the Ivanovo weavers did not go beyond the demand for “100 grams of bread for dinner” and the guaranteed right every day at 6 a.m. factories. The little women made a noise, threw off their evil on the secretary of the Party bureau, comrade Filippov, who had fallen under the hot hand, and dispersed.

But not everyone was allowed to go home so easily. The authorities crawled out from under the "tarpaulin in sorting", recovered from the first fright and took up their usual business - to punish.

“The regional department of the NKVD is taking appropriate measures to isolate anti-Soviet elements … The military tribunal has already considered the cases of a group of active participants in the riots at the Melange Combine and sentenced S, E., S, G., Ya. To 10 years in prison, each with disqualification for 5 years, and D. sentenced to capital punishment - execution. The authorities of the court and the prosecutor's office have also intensified the prosecution for the dissemination of provocative rumors …"

And the last thing. You, of course, ask - what did you do with the secretary of the regional committee, Comrade Paltsev, who thwarted the execution of the GKO decree on the evacuation of the factory? Nothing was done to him, moreover, it was he, Comrade Paltsev, who wrote the entire above report to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. And this is understandable and somewhere even correct. The responsible comrades did not need the machines, but the submissiveness of the workers, who are attached to these machines. What humility comrade. Fingers and provided, deftly knocking down the wave of riot with a promise to stop dismantling the equipment …