80 years ago, Ogonyok talked about the oldest drummer of the Soviet Union - a centenarian resident of the Urals, Malafey Stepanovich Permyakov

80 years ago, Ogonyok talked about the oldest drummer of the Soviet Union - a centenarian resident of the Urals, Malafey Stepanovich Permyakov. The story of getting to know him began with his letter to the editor of the magazine. He described his career path: for most of his life Permyakov was a farm laborer, but in his old age he became a collective farmer, and “bright days came” for him. The century-old man, who joined the ranks of the builders of communism, turned out to be a hero of modern times. The second five-year plan had just started, and its main objectives were the complete completion of collectivization of peasant farms and increasing labor productivity. Malafey Stepanovich, with his experience of pre-collective farm and collective farm life, became a guide to the “correct” attitudes for rural youth.

By the beginning of the second five-year plan, they were looking for new labor heroes throughout the country, but found them in the Ural outback
Photo: L. Smirnov / Ogonyok

“I lived in this world for many years. I worked all the time, I had no rest, I lived poorly,” Permyakov told Ogonyok correspondents who came on the instructions of the editors to visit an old shock worker in the Ural outback. “I worked for Popov’s kulak for 18 years, I didn’t like it, I paid it off. I went to work for the merchant Utkin; I sowed grain, mowed it, reaped it, and paid for it, and went to Siberia. on an individual farm." According to Permyakov, “during the civil war, the whites took his horse and harness - the most valuable thing he had, and, after pushing around for several more years, he decided to leave the foreign side for his homeland, back to the Urals, where he entered the collective farm.” “The collective farmers take care of me. They try to give me easy work: weaving bast shoes, twisting ropes, and at night guarding the potatoes on guard,” Malafey Stepanovich praised his new life. “But I keep asking for work in the field. When I had to reap rye, they gave me, and I sting." In his native collective farm, Ogonyok reported, a hundred-year-old shock worker for 151 workdays worked was set as an example (“Lagging behind, follow the example of old Permyakov!”), awarded the badge of “Stalin’s campaign for the Bolshevik harvest” and given a bonus - 12 days in the collective farm rest house. Malafey Stepanovich was pleased: “I didn’t hesitate, I could lie on a clean, soft bed all day, I gained three kilos.”

Dates – Ogonyok No. 25 (5331) from 06/30/2014