Blackboards (Soviet policies)

Black boards — synonymous with "boards of infamy", were an element of agitation-propaganda in the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine in the 1930s, coinciding with the Holodomor, the artificial famine imposed by the Soviet regime as part of a policy of repression.

A "Blackboard" published in the newspaper "Under the Flag of Lenin" in January 1933 — a "blacklist" identifying specific kolhozes and their punishment in the Bashtanka Raion, Mykolayiv oblast, Ukraine.

Part of a series on the
Holodomor
Historical background
Famines in Russia and USSR Soviet famine of 1932–33 Kazakhstan famine of 1932–1933
Soviet government
Institutions All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Government of the Soviet Union Secret police (OGPU) Policies First five-year plan Collectivization Dekulakization Law of Spikelets Reversal of Ukrainization policies Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Responsible parties
Soviet Union Joseph Stalin Vyacheslav Molotov Lazar Kaganovich Pavel Postyshev Stanislav Kosior Vlas Chubar NKVD
Investigation and comprehension
1984 International Commission 1985 USA Commission Causes of the Holodomor Denial Genocide question Holodomor in modern politics

The 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 the 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 the Petlyura's generals Khmara, while the village of Karpivtsi (Chudniv Raion) in Volyn was known as one of the Petlyura'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". Each settlement or an administrative unit with black boards was encircled by armed squads and was subjected to complete food requisitioning.

In the end at least 400 collective farms where put on the "Blackboard," more than half of them in Dnepropetrovsk Oblast alone.[1] This oblast is situated right in the middle of traditional lands of the Zaporizhian Cossacks.