OPPOSITIONAL SENTIMENTS AND FORMS OF RESISTANCE OF THE SOUTHWESTERN RAILWAYS’ WORKERS DURING THE HOLODOMOR

Abstract

In the article, the author analyzed the specific features and causes of resistance and anti-Soviet sentiments that prevailed among employees of the South-Western Railways in 1932–1933. A key feature that determined the social status of the workers of these sphere in the 1920s and 1930s, especially low-skilled ones, was their close connection with the countryside. Their way of life was not too different from that of farmers – they had homesteads, and members of their families worked in collective farms. Despite the efforts of the Soviet government to “proletarianize” the railway workers, it mostly failed to do so. Similarly, propaganda did not succeed in turning the railway workers against the farmers, in particular against the “kurkuls”. On the contrary, as evidenced by the reports of the GPU, during the Holodomor, the railway workers showed solidarity with the farmers and sympathized with them. Witnessing the confiscations of grain and the deportation of “dekurkulized” families, they understood the artificial nature of the famine and blamed the authorities for its organization. Anti-Soviet sentiments among the workers were caused primarily by a lack of food supplies and delays in the payment of wages, and, as a result, starvation. They were unenthusiastic about the regime's campaigns in the countryside, including grain procurements, in which they were sometimes involved. The railway workers also compared the current situation with the past and noted the injustice of the Communist Party's policy. Typical forms of everyday resistance on the railways were “anti-Soviet conversations”, rumors about the possible start of the war, leaving the workplace (individual and collective), refusal to do “striking work”, intentional damage to railway property and creation of emergency situations. All these types of resistance did not require serious planning and coordination of actions. Instead, active, planned and well-organized forms of resistance were infrequent.