Black Board / Blacklist System

Origin

The term 'black board' (чорна дошка) originated in the schoolrooms of Imperial Russia: the names of exceptionally bad students were posted on a black board, while excellent students were listed on a red board. From 1920, Bolshevik authorities in Ukraine designated villages that resisted grain requisitioning as 'black-flag' settlements, and the practice of stigmatising villages and enterprises that opposed collectivisation as 'backward' was revived during the procurement campaigns of 1928–1929.

Institutionalisation

In autumn 1932, after the harvest had been collected and other food sources had dried up, the party-state tightened the repressive screw. The 18 November 1932 resolution of the CP(b)U Central Committee, 'On Measures to Intensify Grain Procurement,' first codified the black-board regime: removal of all manufactured goods from the area and a ban on further deliveries; early recall of all credits and prohibition of new loans; unconditional collection of agricultural tax, state loans, and insurance payments; a meat penalty in kind; and confiscation of all grain from residents, carried out with the help of handpicked 'conscientious' kolkhozniks. The 20 November decree of the UkrSSR Council of People's Commissars, 'On the Struggle against Kulak Influence in Collective Farms,' and the joint CP(b)U Central Committee–Sovnarkom decree of 6 December, 'On Blacklisting Villages That Maliciously Sabotage Grain Procurement,' reinforced these measures, adding suspension of MTS services, a ban on milling, OGPU cordons, and purges of 'counter-revolutionary elements.' The 6 December decree placed the first six villages on the all-Ukraine black board: Verbka, Havrylivka, Liutenka, Kamiani Potoky, Sviatotroitske, and Pisky.

Implementation

Blacklisting considered not only grain-quota performance but political history. Villages that had produced Petliurite activists during the Ukrainian People's Republic, that had participated in anti-Bolshevik uprisings of 1920–1921, or that had been reluctant during collectivisation and dekulakisation were singled out. The Vinnytsia Oblast Party Committee proposed blacklisting Mazurivka because it was the birthplace of Petliura general Khmara, and Turbiv for its 'high infestation of the Petliura element.' Lazar Kaganovich, dispatched to the Kuban in November 1932, ordered three to five stanitsas placed on the black board and instructed local activists to spread rumours that 'diligent peasants from the North' would be resettled onto Kuban land.

Scale and Consequences

According to historian Heorhii Papakin, at least 996 administrative and economic units (villages, rural soviets, collective farms) were blacklisted across 252 of Ukraine's 405 districts. Thirty-seven entire districts and roughly 400 collective farms were directly targeted. Mortality in blacklisted areas could run two to three times higher than neighbouring regions; in parts of Kharkiv Oblast it exceeded 40%. In January 1933, Stalin issued a directive prohibiting peasants from leaving famine-stricken regions, effectively converting blacklisted villages into sealed starvation reserves. The last black board was lifted from Kamiani Potoky on 17 October 1933.

Related Concept

The mirror image of the black board was the 'red board' (червона дошка): kolkhozes and villages that overfulfilled quotas were publicly honoured in the press. This binary was a classic device of Soviet agitation-propaganda (агитпроп), repeated in the socialist competition campaigns and the Stakhanovite movement in industry.