Almost absolute power was given to these Party and government functionaries. Their abilities were measured by the amount of foodstuff they could extract from the farmers and by the number of farmers they could collectivize in the shortest amount of time. They used whatever methods were effective in accomplishing their task. The Communist dictums that the end justifies the means, and that the winner is always right, were the credos of the day.
There is a Ukrainian proverb that says that a master is not as cruel as a servant would be in his place. Comrade Khizhniak and his lieutenants, all farmers themselves, promoted to official positions, became drunk with power; they used their officialdom to exert a ruthlessness and cruelty unheard of in our village. There seemed no limitation to their arbitrariness and vanity. The activity of the commission was carefully planned and coordinated. Comrade Khizhniak, the propagandist, and a few other members of the commission presided at the court in the Hundred’s headquarters. They would summon those farmers who had shown themselves to be stubborn or suspicious and would “work” on them individually. Comrades Khomenko and Judas, with the rest of the Hundred’s functionaries, worked through the Tens and Fives, also individually. However, they concentrated their efforts on conducting meetings of members of those units. We had to attend one meeting or another practically every day, Sundays included. The Sunday meetings would usually start early in the morning and last all day long.
The commission functionaries of our Hundred, as well as those of all the others, used strictly prescribed methods in dealing with us. One method, unsophisticated but effective, was “path treading,” as the functionaries termed it. A farmer would be called to his Hundred and the usual interrogation would follow. Why had he not joined the collective farm? This same question would be asked repeatedly. The Hundred’s officials would tell him that only an “enemy of the people” opposed the Communist policy of collectivization. Since there was no place for an “enemy of the people” in the Soviet Union, there would be no choice for him: he either had to join the collective farm, or be eliminated. Finally, they would give him a pencil to sign the application and thus avoid all trouble. Some did sign, but the majority refused, using various excuses and pretexts.
At this point, the “path-treading” method would be used. The official would tell the farmer to take some message to the neighboring Hundred, say to the Second Hundred. Since no one could refuse to accept an official assignment, the man would take the message, whatever it was, and start his trip through the village. When he had arrived at the Hundred to which he had been assigned, he found that they had been expecting him there. Immediately, the farmer was subjected to another interrogation. Again he had to explain why he was not yet a member of the collective farm; again he would be told to join immediately. If he still refused to join, he was sent to the next Hundred, and from there to the next, and so on. After the last Hundred, he would be sent to the village soviet office where Comrade Zeitlin was in charge. Here again he went through the same long, complicated interrogation.
It was winter and the cold was severe. The paths and the roads of the village were snowbound. The victim had to walk through the night across the village, leaving behind a trail in the deep snow; hence, the name “path treading.” This method was used by the officials in accordance with an obviously prearranged schedule. About five farmers of our Hundred had to go on this “path-treading” walk every night; and as many as forty or more farmers from other Hundreds visited our Hundred. A panorama of our village on one of these nights would have shown about forty wretched farmers, shivering from cold and exhaustion, slowly moving through the darkness and waist-deep snow.
At dawn, the path treader would return home from his night-long walk, only to find a new summons from the Hundred for the next night. The program for the next night was somewhat different. First, he would be kept waiting for a few hours, and then be subjected to the usual interrogation. Had he changed his mind? Was he going to join the collective farm now? Some said yes, but the majority repeated their “no!” As before, the farmers tried to find some excuses, but now the officials refused to listen to them; they had no time. Would the farmer wait for a while? Of course, he had to wait, but not in the house; it was overcrowded. The shed was empty—well, almost! There were only five or six other farmers there, and so the victim would suddenly find himself in a cold shed that was locked from the outside as soon as he entered.
This kind of persuasion became known as the “cooling off” method. Cold, humiliated, and exhausted from lack of sleep and from harassment, the farmers would wait for hours. In the cold darkness of the shed, some would begin to realize the hopelessness of their resistance.
A few hours would pass, and the functionaries would bring the farmers, one by one, into the office and tell them to sign the application. The majority still refused. So, singly—they could not go in a group—they would again be sent “path treading.” This would be repeated the next day, and the day after that until the men, exhausted physically and broken in spirit, would submit to the officials’ demand. Every victim’s place in the shed and on the “path treading” would then be taken by another villager.
The inhabitants in some other Hundreds experienced still another method of persuasion. One day we heard a story about events taking place in the Second Hundred. The Party functionaries of that Hundred had entered into “socialist competition” with Hundred Seven for the speedy fulfillment of the collectivization quota. During a meeting at which the farmers still stubbornly opposed the collective farm, the chairman of the Hundred ordered a fire to be lit in the building’s stove. Then he ordered the stove damper closed. He posted a guard at the door and left the hall. After a while, a few farmers dropped to the floor semiconscious. Finally, someone broke the window.
Whether that chairman finally met his quota is unknown. But the man who broke the window was later tried in the People’s Court for “interfering with an official’s duty,” and for “inflicting damage upon socialist property.” He was sentenced to a hard labor camp for ten years and was not heard from again.
Evening and Sunday meetings were extremely humiliating and torturous experiences in our lives. They had undoubtedly been designed not only for the purpose of political and ideological brainwashing, but also as a means of breaking the farmers’ spirit of independence. The meetings were to be channels through which the Party could direct farmers towards collaboration with the Party officials in fulfilling the task of collectivization. Party propaganda termed these meetings “mass participation in socialist government.”
These meetings played a crucial role in driving the farmers into the collective farms. The meeting would usually start with a long speech about the methods of collectivization. There would follow short speeches, after which some time was allotted to questions and answers. The meeting chairman would then announce that a debate would follow. Of course, these debates were nothing more than small speeches by functionaries and other activists, for no villager would take part in them. We had no choice but to listen until we became stupefied.
Finally, the chairman would announce the next point on the meeting’s agenda. This was the summary of the “socialist competition” during the previous week. Every adult was forced to take part in the competition for speedy fulfillment of the collectivization quota.
Our village as a whole competed with a neighboring village. Our Hundred competed with Hundred Eight and also with its own counterpart in the neighboring village. All functionaries competed among themselves as officials and as individuals, and all villagers were also supposed to compete among themselves.