126 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
an open letter published in Pravda> in which officials despatched
to the Turcoman region complained bitterly that they nowhere
obtained the salaries due to them, and nowhere work; people
told them to their faces: "We did not ask for you, we have our
own candidates for these posts." In the long run, however,
resistance is unavailing; and the Moscow emissaries penetrate
everywhere.
For White Russia the deputy to the Moscow Party Congress,
Gikalo, is perhaps the best source of information. According
to him, "the fight for the correct prosecution of Lenin's policy
in dealing with the nationalities as carried on in White Russia
does not differ from that in the Ukraine." Here again the alleged
"machinations of noxious elements" have to be checkmated.
Gikalo praises the resolution of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party adopted in December 1932; a resolution
which for White Russia, too, initiated a change in Moscow's
policy towards the local population. He pointed particularly to
the fact that the resolution contained valuable information about
the "alleged national flag behind which certain counter-revo-
lutionary elements and their counter-revolutionary activities
were hiding." In the capital, Minsk, a complete reorganiza-
tion of the Academy of Science and of other institutions, in
other words an elimination of every endeavour to preserve
national individualism, was carried out, and nationalist elements
were expelled from the Communist Party and the Soviet
institutions. According to Gikalo, "as late as 1933, while the
activity of the party organization was considerable, and the
number of workers was large, counter-revolutionary elements
succeeded in finding a way into the Soviet administration and
even into the party organization." According to him, the fault
is due to a diminishing "Bolshevik watchfulness in the face of
nationalist counter-revolutionary elements" and to "national-
istic errors" which were suffered to exist within the local party
organizations—the familiar catchword. Any manifestation of
White Russian individualism is declared to be inadmissible.