“Damn them all!” he shouted, finishing his propaganda harangue. “Damn every single kurkul! Damn every member of their families!”
After he had cried out these slogans, the officials on the tribune, the soldiers, the militiamen, and the children responded to his speech with long and loud applause.
But the farmers just glanced at each other and did not applaud. Clapping of the hands as an expression of excitement and satisfaction was a novel city custom, but we were farmers so we refrained from this show of enthusiasm.
Seeing this indifference, the officials seemed to be confused, but the situation was saved by the commissar of the GPU. As soon as the applause was over, he took the speaker’s place. He spoke in short, clear sentences.
“Comrades,” he started, sending his cold look out upon the farmers. “Comrades, it was a great pleasure to hear such a beautiful and truthful speech from our dear Comrade Commissar. But it is a horrible thing to see that these highly patriotic words of our beloved commissar are ignored and boycotted by the enemies of the people.”
The farmers glanced at each other with apprehension. The commissar, after a deliberate pause, continued:
“What has happened now is the best proof of the presence of the enemy of the people among us. Comrade Commissar spoke in behalf of our beloved Communist Party and our people’s government. He spoke in behalf of our great leader, Comrade—”
An explosion of applause interrupted him. He stopped. The applause grew louder. The farmers also applauded more energetically this time. They understood him very well. As soon as it was quiet again, the commissar continued:
“Comrades, the words of the commissar were the words of the Party—” Somebody started to applaud again, but the commissar ignored it, and went on: “But, comrades, you met those words with silence, and thus, with opposition.” He paused for a moment.
“To me, as your GPU commissar, it means that among you are those who act like the enemy of the people—kurkuls—that capitalist element to whom those words are not sympathetic and who would be willing to strangle Comrade Commissar rather than greet him with joyous applause.”
Checking the effect of his words on his listeners, he stopped for a few minutes, looking at the audience. Then, speaking through his teeth, he gave a warning:
“We’ll have to take the bull by the horns,” he said angrily. “I am forced to warn you that even the smallest attempt to oppose the measures of our beloved Communist Party and the people’s government will be suppressed ruthlessly. We’ll crush you like detestable vermin!”
With those words, he finished his speech. Loud applause echoed through the square. The farmers, looking shamefully around, beat their hands more quickly, and then all became abruptly quiet.
The farmers gazed straight at the platform. In front of them, on the church ruins, they saw the machine gun. The service men stood watchfully around the square.
The silence was interrupted by the chairman of the village soviet as he called for other speakers. One after another, all the officials on the platform spoke. Even a few farmers took the stand, most of them well-known members of the Komnezam and active supporters of the Communist regime in our village.
But we did not listen any more. We clapped our hands after every speech, though our minds were elsewhere. The officials had made it clear that the villagers had to join the collective farm or be banished to Siberia or other cold Russian regions. They talked about destroying kurkuls as if they were speaking of destroying some agricultural vermin or animal pest. We too were to participate in destroying them, they told us. We were not instructed how, but we were given to understand that any way or means would be justified.
Although I was still a young boy at that time, many questions plagued me after those speeches. Who were those kurkuls? Who could be labeled a kurkul? I asked myself: is my neighbor a kurkul also? And what about my family and relatives? Are we all kurkuls?
Someone shouted, “What does kurkul mean?”
The Party Commissar answered: “Kurkuls are exploiters of the poor; they are the remnants of the old regime, and they must be liquidated as such. Also those who oppose the policy of the Party and Government will be considered kurkuls. They will also be liquidated.” This explanation suggested that anyone could be labeled a kurkul.
As the winter sun set behind the ruins of the church, Comrade Zeitlin proposed that the villagers send a telegram to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and to the Soviet government, expressing thanks for the prosperous and happy life of the Soviet villagers, and particularly for the introduction of the collective farms. As at the Hundred meeting, there was only one question: “Who is against it?” Since no one dared object, the telegram was approved by acclamation.
When the applause ended, the chairman of the meeting read the inevitable resolution. It stated that the farmers were happy to join the collective farms, and that they had promised the Party and government to complete the collectivization of the village by the first of May. Again, since not a single voice was raised against it, the resolution was adopted, and the meeting adjourned.
CHAPTER 6
THE CHAIRMAN of the First Hundred’s Bread Procurement Commission was Ivan Khizhniak. He had once been our neighbor. Comrade Khizhniak was about forty, short and heavy, and semiliterate. His face was lined with deep wrinkles, and his thick dirty-blond hair and cold, dull-green eyes half-covered with wrinkled eyelids and bristly eyelashes gave him a porcine look.
This was the man who was in charge of the Bread Procurement Commission in our Hundred. His physical ugliness seemed to shape his mind and his morality. He was cruel, rough, and embittered. His manner of speaking was sarcastic and vulgar, or limited to pat, official phrases. Sometimes he would try to speak in an urbane manner which he had picked up somewhere during his absence from our village, but even then he would insert the foulest profanity into his language.
Comrade Khizhniak was the only known Communist in our village when the October Revolution began. During the Revolution, as chairman of the Committee of Poor Peasants (the Komnezam), he was one of the most eager and active organizers of the local revolutionary government. After the Revolution, he remained a loyal executor of the Communist policy in the village. Indeed, he became a powerful village politician, and as such, he caused the death of many prominent villagers.
Shortly after the Revolution, when one of the frequent Communist policy shifts had gone into effect, he disappeared from the village, leaving a tangle of loose ends behind. No one knew where he had gone or what he was doing. The villagers began to forget about him, but when the collectivization started, Khizhniak reappeared.
In organizing the Hundred’s Bread Procurement Commission, Comrade Zeitlin and his Party and government assistants seemed to have drawn mainly on the degenerate elements of our village for their workers. Khizhniak’s commission serves as a vivid example of this. True, there were honest and industrious villagers whom we knew and respected among the members of the commission, but its core was composed of individuals with sadistic impulses. Besides Comrade Khizhniak, one of the other members that I knew was the vicious Vasil Khomenko, a man whose sadism made him infamous in our village.
The other commission members were not so notorious as Khizhniak or Khomenko; nevertheless, they still belonged to that troublesome group that made the villagers’ lives insecure and miserable.
Ivan Bondar, or “Comrade Judas,” was another member. He came to our Hundred a few days after the church was destroyed. As our Hundred happened to bear the number “One,” the village officials wanted to make it a model for the other Hundreds. Therefore, they staffed it with the most trusted individuals. Comrade Judas soon found perfect accord with Comrades Khizhniak and Khomenko.