Verification of the party's loyalty - re-registration of members of the VKP (B) in the Bryukhovetsky and Kropotkinsky districts of the Krasnodar krai. 1943–1944

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to study and more fully disclose the activities of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) party organizations in Kuban during the Great Patriotic War, during and after the liberation of the Krasnodar Territory from the German occupiers from January 1943 to August 1944, which is, in fact, the relevance of this article. One of the tasks was the restoration or reorganization of the structure of party organizations in entire cities and districts destroyed by the enemy. District committees of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), party organizations at district executive committees, cells in organizations, institutions, enterprises, collective farms, village councils, primary party organizations in the regional departments of the NKGB and the regional department of the NKVD, etc., resumed their work. The source material for this article is unpublished archival documents from 1943–1944, stored in the Center for Documentation of Contemporary History of the Krasnodar Territory (TsDNIKHK). These are information summaries, minutes of meetings of district committees of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and materials from checks of communists who, in late July and early August 1942, when German troops began their offensive into the Kuban region, did not evacuate to the Soviet rear. The communists' stay under occupation was a difficult and painful ordeal. They concealed their affiliation with the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from the Germans and destroyed their party cards. Many of them, in order to earn money, found work on collective farms and at enterprises controlled by the German occupation administration. After the expulsion of German troops and the restoration of Soviet and party power structures, they underwent re-registration and checks of party membership. They were required to provide information about their stay and occupation in the occupied territory, and they were expelled from the party en masse for acts of cowardice (for refusing evacuation to the Soviet rear) and the loss (or deliberate destruction) of their party cards. Most of those who underwent checks and re-registration were innocent of any real guilt.