ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how reports and pressure from the Kirov regions contributed to the onset of mass repression in 1937 and its evolution. It shows ways in which local issues and state concerns overlapped, while raising questions about popular involvement. Anxiety about class enemies and their potential to exercise the new rights that the 1936 Constitution gave them intensified as the preparations for local elections at the end of 1936 and the 1937 elections to the Supreme Soviet unfolded. Most of the perceived anti-Soviet incidents recorded in the Kirov region were statements or suggestions made during discussion meetings. Reports from the Kirov region in early 1937, undoubtedly issued in response to a central directive, consistently noted anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary incidents following the ratification of the Constitution and the extension of citizenship rights to the formerly disenfranchised. In Ziuzdinskii district, the District Party Committee reported that harmful elements prepared for the elections to the Supreme Soviet and the lower soviet organs.
