«The Right Deviation» in Soviet Land Institutions of Smolensk in the 1928–1929s

In 1929 Smolensk Party has been shaken because of disclosed «Smolensk scandal». «The Disclosure» measures touched almost every Party’s department and Soviet official branch. Considering that main critics of Provincial government concerned violation of the class policy in the village, it is hardly surprising that inspecting institutions observed the situation in land institutions including those located in the centre of the governorate (oblast) – the city of Smolensk. Smolensk Governorate was agrarian region, so it had to keep up the pace of collectivization demonstrating at the same time stable results of growth in cultivation of seed, flax and hemp. However, by 1928 the village faced real evidence of a crisis. The number of people’s migration to farms was dramatic. It led to fragmentation of peasants’ holdings of small size. Such a situation made no chance to succeed in kolkhoz (sovkhoz) formation and consequently in increasing grain procurements As a result of disclosed «Smolensk scandal» and subsequent purge, inspectors turned their attention to the land institutions of the governorate (later – oblast), because facts exposed obvious curvature of the Party’s policy and class approach. At the same time, inspectors had to find out if the curvature was caused by a blind execution of Provincial government commands or it was straight sabotage and a mark of «The Right Deviation» in reality. Even People’s Commissariat for Agriculture turned its attention to the «right cases» taking place at different levels of the land institutions. Purges and inspections of the land institutions of Smolensk have been proceeded in 1928, 1929, and 1930. A closer study of records disclosed widespread abuses.