Execution by Hunger (11 page)

The meeting hall was already full when Mother and I arrived. No one spoke. The people looked haggard and worried; their faces showed exhaustion, malnutrition, and weary indifference. Everyone seemed gloomy and serious, and indeed, there was good reason for it. They knew that their future would be decided at this meeting.

Soon the officials arrived. Most of them were strangers to us. Some of them looked urban: well dressed and well fed. They were, no doubt, intellectuals. Some, obviously, were workers from factories, but the rest—the majority of them—were peasants like us: haggard, dressed in rags, and hopelessly sad. Utter silence fell in the hall as they entered. The member of the village soviet who conducted the last meeting in our Hundred and who had survived the riot appeared on the podium and announced that the new Thousander would speak.

“Here is our new Thousander, Comrade Cherepin!” he shouted.

At this time, Comrade Cherepin was already standing at the rostrum, slowly measuring the audience with an indifferent look. He was a short, broad-shouldered man, whose bald head and spectacles made him look professorial. His outward appearance was deceptive, however, as we later learned. Eventually, we came to know him as a sadist who would not hesitate to expropriate the last pound of grain from us, or throw a baby out a window into the snow.

His speech was typical of what was expected from a Communist official addressing a rural audience: his voice was quiet, his tone patronizing, and his language simple. Like the speakers before him, he discussed all the revolutions in the world history, which didn't mean a thing to us. He made references to all the founders of Communism; he described the miserable life in the capitalist countries abroad; and finally, he proclaimed that Paradise was to be found only in the Soviet Union.

“Where else in the world do farmers have free meetings like this one?” he asked. “Nowhere!” he answered his own question quickly. “Only you have this privilege because you live in the Soviet Union!”

He stopped abruptly, as if he had run out of words. Then he changed his voice to a lower key, and continued:

“Some unpleasant things have happened in this village. Are we really to assume that they were done with your approval?”

“No!” he replied, after a pause, during which he seemed to think about something.

“Not all of you approved of what had happened! What happened was the work of enemies of the people—the kurkuls. Yes, indeed, the kurkuls have done this!”

Comrade Cherepin's Ukrainian was intelligible if his strange accent was disregarded. Nevertheless, it was difficult for us to follow the thread of his thoughts. He asked rhetorical questions and he was evasive; he spoke about what had happened without actually saying what did happen. Of course, we knew what he was speaking about, but we wondered why he didn't name the things specifically.

After a while, he became more specific. He told us that because we let the kurkuls influence us, and because we had done what we did, we had lost the right to live! Yes, those who oppose the Communists have no place in this world, but we still had a chance to prove ourselves worthy of living in the Communist society by joining the collective farm. With this statement, he referred to those who had not yet joined. Those who had misappropriated “socialist property,” i.e., taken their animals and implements from the collective farm, should admit their grave mistake and return it all immediately. Those of us who were seriously thinking about leaving the collective farm for good should send a written request to the Board of Managers. He also informed us that only horses and agricultural implements would be collectivized. Members of the collective farm would have the right to retain their dwellings, their cows and small animals such as hogs, goats, sheep, and fowl as their own possessions.

And finally he gave us his warning: “Let it be known once and for all that if anyone raises his hand against the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, his fate is certain death!”

But that was not the end of the meeting. Comrade Cherepin, upon finishing his speech, had one of his propagandists read Stalin's new article, “Reply to Comrade Collective Farmers,” dated April 3, 1930.

According to this article, the permission given to farmers to leave the collective farms was not the sign of abandoning the policy of collectivization. It was merely a matter of tactics. He maintained that, like a shooting war, the war against the class enemies could not be successfully waged without firmly securing the positions already gained, regrouping the forces, providing the front with reserves, and bringing up the rear. Stalin stated that “only dead souls leave the collective farms” also, that those leaving the collective farms are hostile to Communist ideology; but that not all those leaving the collective farms are hostile or dead souls. They are farmers whom the Communist Party failed to convince in the righteousness of the Communist cause “but whom we will, no doubt, convince tomorrow.”

Stalin also announced in this article that the government decided to exempt all the collectivized draft animals from taxation for a period of two years. Cows and small animals such as hogs, goats, sheep and fowl were also exempt from taxation regardless of whether they were in a collective farm or in private possession of collective farmers. That meant that those who had planned to withdraw from the collective farm should think twice before they did it.

The meeting broke up shortly before midnight. It was raining outside and very cold. On the way home, we made the decision to remain in the collective farm. There was no other choice.

Contrary to our expectations and the promises given by the Party representative at that meeting, no serious changes for the better took place in our lives after the riot. The forcible collectivization was renewed and intensified, and the taxation in kind and money continued with new zeal and vigor.

Our village was completely collectivized sometime at the beginning of 1931. But this early completion of collectivization did not mean that our villagers accepted the system of collectivized agriculture willingly. They never did. Our village was half ruined; more than one third of our entire population was physically exterminated or banished from the village. Any food we had was confiscated. By the end of 1931 we faced mass starvation. There was no way to survive but to stay in the collective farm where we had been promised some food for our daily work.

Yet the struggle of the farmers against collectivization did not terminate with our forced joining of the collectives. On the contrary, we became even more stubborn in the following years. During the harvest of 1930 and 1931, the government used the newly organized collective farms to expropriate as much of the grain and other agricultural products as it wanted. There was talk in our village that more than three quarters of the total crop of 1931 had been taken by the government. We heard that in some neighboring villages the whole crop had been taken. It was easily done, without any opposition. There was no bargaining over the price. It was the government who set the prices, not the farmers.

As one would expect under such circumstances, our villagers had no interest in working in the collective farm. Consequently, the crop acreage was greatly reduced, and besides that, a large portion of the crops—both grain and vegetable—went unharvested.

The fate of those animals who found themselves in the collective farms was not to be envied either. The Communist officials expropriated them without first preparing a proper place to house them, or enough forage to feed them. Consequently, many of them died from lack of food and gross neglect.

Besides this, small animals like pigs, sheep, and goats, as well as fowl, were stolen, or found their way to the dinner tables of the almighty Communist officials.

The horses especially were in a sorry predicament at that time. Communist propaganda did its best to convince everybody that horses would soon be replaced by tractors. Thus the horses suddenly became unwanted at the collective farm as useless eaters. It seemed that in the fall of 1930, nobody knew what to do with them. Finally, somebody made the decision to free them from the confines of the collective farm which could not feed or care for them. They were turned loose in the open fields and woods to roam and search for food. Soon a disease struck. The combination of sickness and lack of proper care caused the death of hundreds of horses in our village. The pattern was the same throughout Ukraine. Carcasses dotted the fields and woods. This tremendous loss posed a serious problem for the officials of the collective farms, for horsepower still determined agricultural production.

I
N THE collective farm, our personal existence became completely dependent upon the dictates of the Communist Party, and on the whims of the local officials. Every detail of our life was supervised. Our daily routine was subject to the strictest regimentation. We had to obey orders without any protest, and without giving any thought as to their sense or purpose. A vast system of secret police, spies, and
agents provocateurs
watched our every move.

We were always suspected of treason. Even sadness or happiness were causes for suspicion. Sadness was thought of as an indication of dissatisfaction with our life, while happiness, regardless of how sporadic, spontaneous, or fleeting, was considered to be a dangerous phenomenon that could destroy the devotion to the Communist cause. You had to be cautious about the display of feelings at all times, and in every place. We were all made to understand that we would be allowed to live only as long as we followed the Party line, both in our private and social lives.

By this time—after only two years of compulsory collectivization—normal human relations had broken down completely. Neighbors had been made to spy on neighbors; friends had been forced to betray friends; children had been coached to denounce their parents; and even family members avoided meeting each other. The warm traditional hospitality of the villagers had disappeared, to be replaced by mistrust and suspicion. Fear became our constant companion: it was an awesome dread of standing helplessly and hopelessly alone before the monstrous power of the State.

The Communist Party organization, the general membership meeting, and the Board of Managers were the collective farm's governing bodies. The Auditorial Commission and the kolhosp court carried the auxiliary functions of controlling and punishing. The Komsomol and Komnezam (this organization of poor farmers continued its existence even after collectivization) gave organizational support to the Party. Other organizations, duplicating village-wide ones, as well as all kinds of secret and nonsecret agents, agitators, propagandists, and activists, were used by the governing bodies to check the pulse of the members of the collective farm.

The local policy on the collective farm was determined by the leader of the Party organization. All other kolhosp officials were merely executors of that policy. The Party leader was a local dictator, holding a position similar to that of political commissar of a Red Army unit. The chairman of the kolhosp Board of Managers could not issue any directive without the approval of the Party leader, as the commanding officer could not issue any order without the approval of the political commissar.

According to the kolhosp statutes, the general membership meeting was supposed to be the highest organ of kolhosp self-administration. In reality, it was only an organ through which the Party organization could pipe its policy and decisions on all important questions.

The visible executive organ of the collective farm was the managing board. It was elected by the membership meeting for a two-year term. There were nine board members, including the chairman. Personal merit, knowledge, and farming experience were to be the qualifications of the candidates, but in practice democratic principles were circumvented. Only one candidate was permitted per office, and he was chosen from among either Communist Party members or trustworthy Party followers. Since votes were taken by a show of hands, and any open opposition to the Party would mean persecution of the voter, it was not difficult to secure the managing board for the Party.

The prerequisite for the chairmanship of the board was membership or candidacy in the Communist Party. Professional qualifications for this post were not considered, for most of the appointees were city dwellers who could not distinguish rye from wheat, or the harrow from the plough. Loyalty to the Party and to its policy in dealing with the farmers were valid enough recommendations for this office. In our village, a native was never appointed kolhosp chairman, although quite a few of them were appointed to such positions in other villages.

The election of the chairman was the model for the election of the members of the managing board and all other officials. The candidates for board membership did not have to be members of the Party, but they had to be “non-Party Communists,” that is, faithful followers of the Communist Party ideology. They were also known as “activists.”

The other supposedly independent institutions within the kolhosp framework were the Auditorial Commission and kolhosp court. The former, consisting of the members of the collective farm elected at the annual membership meeting, controlled the functions of the board and thus determined its policy. It also controlled the fiscal policy of the board, including budget, production, distribution, and annual income. However, all the reports to the members of the collective farm sent by this commission had to be scrutinized and approved by the Party organization prior to the meeting.

The kolhosp court, although called a comradely court, became in reality a dreaded punitive institution.

The Komsomol organization occupied the most powerful niche in the kolhosp structure, with the exception of the Party itself. Its members occupied positions comparable to that of full-fledged Communists. But the Komsomol also served as a trusted and reliable force for initiating new policies. If the Party was planning a certain campaign or a propaganda move, the Komsomol was the starting point or switch. When the switch was turned on, it put the entire political machine in motion.

All members of the collective farm were assigned to Brigades and Links. These were meant to be for work purposes only, but we soon felt their impact on every aspect of our lives.

There were eight Brigades in our collective farm. At first, they were organized on territorial principles, and thus one brigade might have corresponded roughly to one village Hundred. The members of the First Brigade, for instance, belonged to the First Hundred. Each Brigade of that time was comprised of approximately one hundred households, or about two hundred able workers.

The Links could be compared to the Tens. Each Link within a particular brigade was made up of ten or fifteen households, or from eight to thirty able workers, the number depending on the type of work it was assigned to do.

The labor tasks on the farm were therefore distributed among brigades, and the latter, in turn, allocated certain jobs to each link. The nature of work on the farm, of course, depended on the agricultural seasons.

Theoretically, the brigade leader was to be elected from among the brigade members, and every competent farmer, according to the statutes, had the right to be elected to this position. But, in reality, the Board of Managers made appointments which were in fact suggested or approved by the Party organization. Many of these brigade leaders were not native villagers, but were sent to our village by the county government. Link leaders usually were native villagers. They were appointed by the brigade leaders, but the lists of the prospective candidates were approved by the Party organization and by the Board of Managers.

The brigade leaders became the most important link between the higher officials and the people, and consequently, they gradually assumed unlimited power over the members of their brigades. The members of his brigade could not leave the village or use their time as they wished without the leader's knowledge and permission. The members of the brigade, for example, could not plan a wedding or any other kind of special occasion without the leader's consent. Every move had to be agreed upon and coordinated in accordance with his wishes.

The link leaders were trustworthy helpers of the brigade leaders. Character or skill were not requirements for such a position: personal loyalty was the only quality that counted.

As members of the collective farm, we found ourselves under a dual government. The village government continued its functions. The Hundreds, Tens, and Fives with their commissions, propagandists, agitators, and all kinds of other functionaries, continued their activities. They were occupied, as previously, with collectivization of those villagers who still remained outside of the collective farms, and with the collection of food for the state. The Sunday and evening meetings were still called regularly, and although we were now members of the collective farm, we still had to attend them. The commission never left us alone; it visited us regularly under one pretext or another. We still received visits from the officials, the propagandists, and agitators, and from Komsomol, Pioneer, and Komnezam delegations. We were still told to deliver food, to pay various taxes and dues, and to “voluntarily” buy state bonds; and we still were asked to contribute “voluntarily” to many state funds plus a multitude of international funds that helped Communist Parties abroad.

All these claims and demands on us doubled and intensified when we joined the collective farm, for, in addition to the all-village government, the kolhosp administration was, in reality, another local government. When there were no village or Hundred or Ten or Five meetings, we could expect a kolhosp membership meeting, or a brigade meeting, or a link meeting. At such meetings, the village officials would be replaced by the kolhosp officials. Almost every day we would have some kind of meeting or political indoctrination lecture in the field during the working hours. The agendas of the kolhosp meetings were almost identical to those of the village meetings. As a consequence, certain problems discussed at the Hundred meetings in the evening would be brought up the next day at the brigade meeting in the field.

We had to study the speeches of Party and government leaders, as well as new legislative enactments or executive measures. For example, when a speech of a prominent leader was delivered, it was officially sent through channels from the All-Union Center, through the Union-Republic governments down to the localities. As soon as it reached the village, it went down to the villagers through a dual channel: through the village government and the kolhosp administration. This speech would then be read and studied at the village subdivisions in the evenings and on Sunday, and then again read and explained at the brigade and link meetings in the field. This was the procedure with everything the central or local government wanted us to do or know.

 

The kolhosp court in our village was one of the innovations that came with the new order. Previously, all cases had been tried at the county center. Now, our village was to have its own court.

The officials called it the comradely court. In the beginning, it did not have any impressive or offensive punitive power. Its activities were limited to disciplinary action. It could only impose small fines or forced labor of not more than a week on the farm or at the communal works.

But this court soon began to try all cases, including those of criminal, civil, and political nature. In the hands of the Communists, the court became an inquisitive organ. It was given jurisdiction over all the villagers.

The judge of this court served at the pleasure of the Party. During a court session, the judge was flanked by the village Party leader, and the chairmen of the village soviet and the Kolhosp. The activity of the court, therefore, was directed by these officials until the concluding statements were prepared. At that time, the hitherto ignored members of the court read the verdict.

Among the matters which came before the court were insults to officials, jokes or anecdotes about members of the regime, damage to farm implements, thefts of farm property, absences from meetings and propaganda gatherings, delays in paying taxes, and the like. The verdict of the court depended largely on how much damage had been done to Party policy.

The punishments handed down by the court were harsh. Failure to arrive at work on time was punishable by a forced labor sentence of one to three months. More severe sentences were imposed on those whose “offenses” were of a political nature. Opposition to Party policy and insulting its executors were considered high treason. The kolhosp court usually submitted such cases to the Superior Court, or the state security organs, or both, with recommendation of a death sentence or a term in a “corrective labor camp,” as the concentration camps were known. Such recommendations were, no doubt, wholeheartedly accepted because those charged with such offenses never returned to the village.

Sessions of the kolhosp court were held almost every Sunday evening, with each session dealing with four or five cases. Court attendance by all villagers was obligatory. As it was impossible to accommodate all villagers at the court session at the same time, a schedule of court attendance by Hundreds was established. Usually, inhabitants of three Hundreds would be ordered to each session; punishment for failure to attend was a fine in money, or forced labor. The Court also tried those who failed to attend its own sessions.

I witnessed many of these court sessions. I still remember one in particular: it was on an evening in the spring of 1931. The setting was the former church. The organizers of the kolhosp court insisted on ceremony. The Thousander, Comrade Cherepin, was the first to appear on stage. After a pause for silence, he solemnly announced:

“Comrades, the kolhosp court!”

A hush came over the audience. Three farmers whom we all knew appeared on the stage: the judge was Sydir Kovalenko, a poor farmer who could hardly read or write. Two people's assessors
¹⁶
followed; no prosecutor or defense counsel appeared. How these individuals became members of this court was a mystery to us all. They were just ordinary poor farmers without any Communist Party or Komsomol affiliations whatsoever.

When the members of the court had taken their places, the chairmen of the village soviet and the kolhosp appeared on the stage.

As soon as these officials sat down, the judge announced the first case. Two defendants appeared, each escorted by a militiaman. The judge began the reading of the indictment, and from it we learned that the defendants had been accused on three counts. The charges were agitation against the Soviet regime, attempting to undermine the authority of Party and government officials, and the spreading of Ukrainian nationalism.