«Партийная работа «заброшена»: кризисные явления в партийных организациях РКП(б) Вятской губернии в конце 1918–первой половине 1919 г. По архивным материалам

Abstract

The article draws on archival materials of the State Archive of the Kirov Region and those of the State Archive of Social and Political History of the Kirov Region to examine the development of uezd organizations of the ARCP (B) in the Vyatka gubernia in late 1918 and the first half of 1919. In late 1918 the Vyatka gubernia became the Civil War battleground. When Perm was taken, the White Guard began to threaten Vyatka. Meanwhile, the political situation in the gubernia was tense; peasants, townspeople, and workers had their grievances against the Bolshevik policies. The existing uezd organizations of the ARCP (B) were unprepared to work in the immediate battle area. Fearing for the fate of the Eastern front, the Central Committee of the party sent a commission to Vyatka headed by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. It was to carry out a wide range of measures to reorganize party and Soviet work. The power was taken by the Military Revolutionary Committee. The novelty of the study is in the fact that archival materials are used to assess the circumstances of the ARCP (B) organizations. These circumstances can be defined as those of a permanent crisis; the party organizations were ill-adapted to the extraordinary conditions of the Civil War. The narrowing of the party’s social base caused, first of all, by food policies forced the gubernia committee to cleanse party organizations and staff them up with well trusted personnel. The author has introduced into scientific use some previously unknown facts. The analysis of archival material allows to conclude that party work lapsed because party organizations seemed ineffective in the days of the anti-Soviet uprisings of summer and autumn of 1918 and while the Civil War raged. Conflicts, squabbles, intra-party struggles became an everyday occurrence. Party organizations constantly faced infiltration of persons with opposing views who sought to avoid mobilization or improve their financial situation.