Albina Alekseevna Kozhaeva,
undergraduate student, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Escape to the Cities as a Tactic of the Struggle of the “Deprived” for the Restoration of Voting Rights in 1928–1936 (Based on the Materials of the Maslyaninsky and Iskitimsky Districts of Western Siberia)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-4-3
The article is devoted to the study of the escape to the cities as a tactic of the struggle of the “deprived” for the restoration of rights. Based on the analysis of petitions for the restoration of the voting rights of the “deprived” in the Iskitim and Maslyaninsky districts of Western Siberia, the behavioral practices of the “deprived” in the process of forced migration to cities are reconstructed. The discriminatory policy of the Soviet leadership in the Siberian countryside in the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s led to the outflow of rural population to large cities, as well as to the destruction of social structure of Siberia with peasants being the dominant group in the population. Organized recruitment did not produce significant results due to a number of reasons as opposed to spontaneous migration. At the same time, forced migration was considered by the “deprived” as a way to avoid the economic difficulties associated with running their own economy, as well as to escape from further repression (confiscation of property and expulsion). The “deprived” used various strategies wen specifying cities in their petitions, but in most cases the very fact that they worked at a factory in the city was considered by the discriminated as proof of loyalty to the Soviet government. Besides, the children of the “deprived” used the fact of moving to the city as proof of a break with their family. The retreat to the cities was one of the tactics of the struggle of the “deprived” for the restoration of their rights. The evaluation of the effectiveness of this tactic showed that the “deprived” achieved their goal in most cases only when a significant evidence base was attached to the petitions.
Publishing: 28/08/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 26.04.2021
How to cite: Kozhaeva A.A. Escape to the Cities as a Tactic of the Struggle of the “Deprived” for the Restoration of Voting Rights in 1928–1936 (Based on the Materials of the Maslyaninsky and Iskitimsky Districts of Western Siberia) // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 4 (18), pp. 27–37. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-4-03.pdf
Links: Issue 4 2021
Keywords: “deprived”; peasantry; migrations; discrimination; escape to the cities; marginality; Siberia