Repressive mechanism of Livestock of confiscation in the Kazakh village(Based on archival documents)

Abstract

The article examines the legal basis of the Soviet repressive policy, which since 1917 used such terms as «terror», «concentration camp», «enemy of the people», was based on the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1927, where 46 articles sentenced to the highest measure of punishment – execution. Archival documents reveal the scale of political repression in the USSR, the punitive system of extrajudicial bodies like the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), «Troikas,» which sentenced people to imprisonment, exile, and execution. In the Kazakh villages, repressions began with the decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of Kazakhstan «On the Confiscation and Eviction of the Largest Bai Farms and Semi-Feudal Lords» of 1928. Archival sources show that large bais were primary subject to confiscation, then followed not so rich people, as well as representatives of different nationalities and other strata of the population, whom the Soviet government considered its political enemies. Archival documents clearly reveal the repressive mechanism that manifested itself not only in the confiscation of livestock, but also land, mosques, mills, houses, yurts, outbuildings, agricultural equipment, personal belongings, household items, eviction to distant regions of Kazakhstan and beyond, expulsion from schools, secondary and higher educational institutions of children of repressed persons, dismissal from work of close relatives, etc. As a result, the policies of confiscation and collectivization led to the forced sedentarization of Kazakh nomads.