In the evening, propaganda films were shown in the school buildings and also outdoors. In an improvised theater, a group of dancers twirled on stage, as did a merry-go-round brought by the brigade.
In spite of all these attractions, the villagers were in no hurry to meet the brigade members. Most of them stayed at home. To be sure, the children, the young boys and girls, the members of Komsomol and the Komnezam went to the square, but that was not what the county Party and government officials had in mind. They were interested in the adult farmers; those whom they had orders to collectivize.
Even though the officials might have been disappointed, they were not discouraged. They had to go ahead with their plan no matter how the villagers reacted. And so, within a few hours after their arrival in the village square, the propagandists were knocking at the doors of our homes. Some didn’t bother to knock—they just walked in. Armed with all kinds of propaganda materials, they intruded into our houses and told us that individual farming was evil; that the way to paradise was through collective farms. The villagers listened to this new propaganda barrage, but the ready-made quotations, speeches, and explanations failed to convince them. Nothing could yet move them.
The propagandists also had orders to bring the farmers to the square the next Sunday morning. At least one family member had to go. Since there was no choice, many villagers obediently appeared in the square. I went there, too, perhaps more from curiosity than anything else.
When I arrived, there were already many people around. The villagers—men, women, and children—could not hide their anxiety. They were nervous, tired, and gloomy. The fast-talking city dwellers, the propagandists, tried to mingle with the villagers. With smiles and airs of simplicity, they approached us and even tried to joke with us. However, there was no response from us and our passivity only increased their hostility.
The atmosphere in the square then became tense. Suddenly, we heard the heavy din of a machine. The din almost immediately subsided into a smooth clanking, and soon we saw its source.
“A tractor!” somebody shouted. “Look over there! A tractor is coming!” Everyone turned toward the store, and there we saw it for the first time. It moved slowly from behind the village store in our direction. A tractor was a thing unknown in our village, although we recognized it from pictures we had seen. It was quite an impressive show, and the officials knew it.
The machine moved ahead. A big red flag was flying on its front. The driver, holding the steering wheel with both hands, looked straight ahead. He became an instant hero to the young boys and girls watching him.
On arriving at an apparently previously prescribed place, the tractor stopped, and became silent. Village and county officials appeared as if from nowhere, gathered around the tractor, and the county Party commissar[11] took his place on it. A hush came over the villagers as he began speaking.
What the commissar said was again repetitious. He declared that the governments of the capitalist countries did not care for poor farmers; farmers all over the world in the capitalist countries were being ruthlessly exploited; the farmers in those countries were working with primitive implements. Only in the Soviet Union were farmers taken care of: they were happy; they were embarking on the socialist way of production (he said this as if it were an accepted fact); and they were supplied with the best agricultural machinery.
“Look here,” he said, pointing with both hands at the tractor. “Where else, but in the Soviet Union, do poor farmers like you have tractors of their own? Nowhere! Only you have this advantage!”
I was standing close to the tractor and, bored with the speech, I began to examine it as well as I could from my place. On the tractor’s exhaust pipe, I noticed the trademark “International,” cast in Latin characters.
CHAPTER 5
“ONLY YOU, in our beloved country, have tractors, the mighty machines that will work for you…. But the enemies of the people are conspiring against our beloved Party and people’s government,” the commissar shouted. He raised his hands. And, as if on cue, the church bells began to ring. The bells pealed more and more loudly. The crowd grew silent. All looked at the church.
No one knew who gave the signal or order, but when the Comrade Commissar raised his hands to point at the church, saying that the ringing of the bells was purposely instigated by the enemies of the people in order to sabotage his speech, the propagandists broke loose. The entire assemblage stirred with agitation. A voice near the tractor shouted:
“Down with the church!”
Another voice seconded this, and then it was repeated from one end of the square to the other.
“Down with the church! Down with the church! Down with the church!”
Suddenly posters appeared around the square, painted in white on red cloth. The posters read: “Down with the Church!” “Long live the Collective Farms!” “Long live the Communist Party!”
“Let’s go!” a voice roared.
“Let’s go!” some other voice seconded.
Shouting “hurrah,” like soldiers before hand-to-hand combat, the crowd ran toward the church in a stampede. Arriving there, they threw stones, bottles, and sticks, smashing windows and doors.
Long ladders appeared at the church wall, and dozens of propagandists quickly reached the cupolas. Then long ropes were tied around the crosses. And, amid shouting, laughter, and cursing, the propagandists yanked on the ropes until the crosses fell, smashing the roof. Then the bells were taken down, and the cupolas destroyed.
While this was happening on the roof, another group of propagandists was working inside the church. The interior was demolished. What had been a beautiful church, the pride of our village for many years, was reduced to ruins within a few minutes.
The villagers were unable to defend their place of worship. When the stampede started, some of them went home, but the majority of them stood silent, with bared heads lowered, and prayed.
We realized that this political orgy actually had been carefully planned and executed. The tractor was the focal point, and the Party Commissar, no doubt, was in command of the entire operation. We were sure that the pealing of the bells during the commissar’s speech was a part of the plan, for a propagandist rang them. We realized that the slogans had been carefully composed, and the posters painted long before being brought to our village.
The church, or what was left of it, was converted into a village theater. That very evening the propagandists danced on the place where the altar had stood.
No one knew where our priest had been during the attack on the church. It was Sunday morning, and he should have been there, but he wasn’t. Later we learned that he had actually been a collaborator of the propaganda brigade. His name was Ivan Bondar.
Bondar possessed that talent of assessing situations and using them to his advantage. Only the previous year, he had served in the church as deacon. He was tall and handsome, with a powerful voice. He could read and write, and was considered an educated man. Many of the villagers thought he would be a good priest. No doubt he himself had hopes of becoming a priest some day, for he even started to grow his hair long, a privilege reserved for Orthodox clergy. Then came collectivization, and the government stepped up the campaign against the church. Bondar suddenly disappeared from the village.
There was speculation about his disappearance. Some thought that he had been abducted by the secret police. Others thought that he had sensed the coming danger and had disappeared to some faraway region, leaving his family in the village. But shortly before the coming of the Propaganda Brigade, he reappeared in our village with long hair and pretensions of being a holy man.
11
Commissar was the designation for high-ranking government officials in the USSR. The most important of these were the people’s commissars, who in 1946 were renamed ministers. The title “commissar” was also widely used by high-ranking county officials.