Blackboards

Blacklisting, or the system of the synonymous with a "board of infamy", was one of the elements of agitation-propaganda in the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine and the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region in the 1930s, coinciding with the Holodomor. Blacklisting was also used in Soviet Kazakhstan. A blacklisted collective farm, village, or raion (district) had its monetary loans and grain advances called in, stores closed, grain supplies, livestock, and food confiscated as a "penalty", and was cut off from trade. Its Communist Party and collective farm committees were purged and subject to arrest, and their territory was forcibly cordoned off by the OGPU secret police. Although nominally targeting collective farms failing to meet grain quotas and independent farmers with outstanding tax-in-kind, in practice the punishment was applied to all residents of affected villages and raions, including teachers, tradespeople, and children. The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the November 20 decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms", and supplemented in January 1933 by Stalin's "Preventing the Mass Exodus of Peasants who are Starving," banning travel by peasants from affected regions in Ukraine and the Kuban. The blacklist policy was part of the collectivization process and the fight with kulaks (kurkuls). The "black boards" were installed at entrances to a settlement and identified the residents that were accused of counter-revolutionary activity and who were labelled enemies of the people, allegedly trying to undermine the process of collectivization. The fact of nominating of such settlements was published in the oblast newspapers listing the names of collective farms that resisted collectivization and the Soviet regime. However some of the archives reflect that "black boards" were used precisely as a repressive element in the fight not only against the collectivization resistance, but also against the nationality factor of the local population. For example, in 1932 the Vinnytsia Oblast Communist Party Committee suggested the local village of Mazurivka to be nominated to "black boards", because there was born one of Symon Petliura's generals Khmara, while the village of Karpivtsi (Chudniv Raion) in Volyn was known as one of the Petliura's. The village of Turbiv (Lypovets Raion), for example, deserved such a penalty for its "high infestation of the Petlyura element and participation in the Plyskiv affair in spring".