In the Russian language and culture, "former people" () are people who lost their high social status. The expression went into a wide circulation in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

after the 1897 short story of

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...

, ''Byvshiye lyudi'' (Бывшие люди), translated in English as '' Creatures That Once Were Men'', about people fallen from prosperity into an abyss of misery. At that time, at the end of the 19th century, for Gorky, "former people" were objects of pity and compassion, but with the establishment of Soviet power, "former people" in a new sense became the target of various forms of persecution. After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, the expression referred to people who lost their social status after the revolution: aristocracy, imperial military, bureaucracy, clergy, etc.

"Former people" in Soviet Russia

Ivan Vladimirov former-tsar-s-officials-on-forced-labor

While the "former people" of Gorky were the object of pity and compassion, from the very first days of the

Soviet power The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the C ...

, the "former people" in the new meaning had become a target of severe persecution of various kinds. In fact, during the wave of repressions after the assassination of

Sergey Kirov Sergei Mironovich Kirov (born Kostrikov; 27 March 1886 – 1 December 1934) was a Russian and Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary. Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russ ...

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

carried out Operation "Former People", in the course of which during March 1935 over 11,000 of "former people" were arrested or deported from

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

(whose Communist Party organization Kirov headed and where he was killed), according to Directive No. 29 of February 27, 1935, "On the eviction of a counter-revolutionary element from Leningrad and suburban areas to remote areas of the country.". In April, NKVD chief

Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. A ...

expanded the scope of the operation to cleanse the border region of

Leningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast (, ; ; ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). The oblast has an area of and a population of 2,000,997 (2021 Russian census, 2021 Census); up from 1,716,868 recorded in the 2010 Russian census ...

and Karelian ASSR from further 22,000 "formers". Further 8,000 were deported from the area during the so-called "passport operations". During the peak of the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

, the cleansing of the country from the "former people" was explained by the necessity to eliminate the "insurgence base" in the case of a war. The 1939 NKVD Order No. 001223, which established the detailed bureaucratic procedures for keeping track of "

anti-Soviet Anti-Sovietism or anti-Soviet sentiment are activities that were actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union. Three common uses of the term include the following: * Anti-Sovietism in inter ...

and socially alien elements", defined the category of "former people" as follows: "former tsarist and

White Army The White Army, also known as the White Guard, the White Guardsmen, or simply the Whites, was a common collective name for the armed formations of the White movement and Anti-Sovietism, anti-Bolshevik governments during the Russian Civil War. T ...

administration, former '' dvoryans'' ussian nobility ''pomeshchiks'' (noble landowners), merchants and petty merchants, those who employ hired labor, industrialists, and others". The number of "former people" was in the millions. According to various estimates, in 1913 in Russia, there were between 22 and 35 million relatively wealthy people, counting both urban and rural population. Historian Douglas Smith's book, ''Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy'', traces the calamities of two representative aristocratic families, the Golitsyns and the Sheremetevs. Additionally, Amor Towles' novel '' A Gentleman in Moscow'' chronicles the tale of a former person imprisoned in the Moscow hotel Metropol for much of his adult life.

"Former people" in Soviet Russia

See also

References

Further reading