Then he repeated the question and changed his order: those who were for the Soviet regime had to move to the left, and those who were against it, to the right.
For a moment, no one moved. Then slowly, one, and then another, and another, got up and moved to the left. The propagandist took a pencil and started to write a list of those who still stood in their places, loudly asking their names. This did the trick. Soon all attempted to move to the left side. This was impossible in the small room, so the propagandist ordered everyone to sit down in their places.
The chairman waved his pencil and paper over his head, saying:
“Now, let’s get it over with! Who’s first?”
No one stirred. The chairman looked angrily at us, and the propagandist stared helplessly. Then a voice from behind filled the vacuum. It was that of an old man, maybe seventy years of age.
“Why such a hurry, comrade-sir?” he shouted. All heads turned towards him, as to a savior. The chairman ordered him to step forward.
“Why such a hurry, comrade-sir?” the old man repeated, after he had reached the official table.
“I am not ‘sir,’” the propagandist interrupted him. “I am ‘comrade.’”
The old man became thoughtful.
“How come? I’ve never seen you in my life! How can you be my comrade?”
Whether the old man was baiting the propagandist or not was not important to us. What bothered us was the question he raised: why did the officials want to destroy, in one evening, a way of life the farmers had so long known?
The chairman and the propagandist answered the old man, using official Party slogans, and ready-made phrases. They replied that we had to join the collective farm immediately because that was what the Party demanded of us.
It was already well past midnight and we were all tired, especially my mother. Probably realizing the futility of continuing the meeting, the officials permitted us to go home, but this was only after the chairman ordered us to come to a meeting the following night.
Thus the new administration was set in motion.
There was still a great deal of mystery about collectivization. Perhaps the collective farms would mean a new kind of serfdom. So far, the only thing clear to us was that we would have to give up our land, which meant life itself to us.
One decade separated us from the Revolution and the Civil War. Most of our villagers had been affected by those events: many had lost their relatives or parents; others had returned home from the fighting crippled. But at least they had all received land. We asked ourselves if the Party really wanted us to give up our land, go to a collective farm, and work like city proletarians. Wasn’t the Revolution for us, the poor farmers? Could it be possible that the Party had decided to return to the large estates? There still was at least one hope; the propagandist had told us that collectivization was voluntary. We were happy on our little farms, and we wanted nothing else but to be left alone. We wouldn’t join the collective farm for any price.
We wondered why the members of the commission and the rest of the officials had joined the collective farm in such a hurry. It turned out that the day before the meeting, our Thousander, Comrade Zeitlin, had called all the functionaries of the village to a secret meeting. Giving them instructions about collectivization, he ordered them to declare their willingness to join the collective farm at the Hundred meeting with no hesitation. As the overwhelming majority of those functionaries were farmers, there was strong opposition to the Thousander’s order. Comrade Zeitlin had a solution to this problem. He proposed a pretended joining of the collective farm by the functionaries. Those who were still not ready to join the collective farm would be registered on a special list which later would be destroyed. This was to set an example for the rest of the villagers. Whether they agreed with this plan gladly or not, we did not know. After that meeting at which we had seen the functionaries accepted as collective farm members, Comrade Zeitlin refused to admit that he had suggested a fake registration. On the next day, the collective farmers visited their houses and took away horses, cows, and whatever else could be taken to the collective farm. In one night, Comrade Zeitlin collectivized almost twenty percent of our villagers, and also turned some of those farmer-functionaries into ferocious executors of the Party policy in the village. Having lost their own farms, they could only cling to what they had left, their official position, and so they exercised their newfound power whenever possible.
CHAPTER 4
ONE FEBRUARY morning in 1930, we heard an artillery barrage. Soon the crash of all kinds of weapon fire reverberated through the air. The sound was coming from the fields.
By noon, our village was overrun by regular army units. First, a cavalry detachment bolted through at full gallop. Then a brass band struck up a march on the village square, and the troops poured in.
As the companies marched, one after another, dogs howled and our anxiety increased. Soon we realized that we had become involuntary hosts. Without asking permission, fully armed soldiers entered our homes.
The soldiers were armed with propaganda materials and Party and government instructions for conducting a collectivization campaign. As soon as they were settled, the propaganda activities began but nothing new was said, since the instructions were the same as those presented by the civilian propagandists. The key difference was that the soldiers were more persistent.
The next day, as if in support of the propaganda, the army continued the exercises. But now they were different. Cannon had been placed in the fields within range of our village. Farmers and their families were still sleeping when the big guns began to roar. The whistling shells whipped over our village and exploded in the river on the other side.
Shooting and shouting began within the village. The cavalry again galloped through the streets. Confined to our homes, we were forced to remain spectators.
In the evening, arms were again exchanged for leaflets, and the villagers had to read and listen. And so it was every day: firing over our heads during the day, propaganda reading at night.
This military spectacle lasted about a week. Then, accompanied by band music and shell bursts, the army left in the direction of a neighboring village.
The shooting had not yet faded away when we all became the targets of another bombardment, this time by a so-called propaganda brigade. A few hundred people from neighboring cities marched in orderly columns, like soldiers. The brigade included ordinary industrial workers, students, office clerks, and others who had been taken from their jobs, given instructions concerning the nature of their task, and ordered to join the propaganda brigade.
Just as the entry of the army was intended to show the strength of the government, this brigade had its political purpose. It was supposed to demonstrate unanimity between the village and the city. This was in keeping with the Soviet attempt to do away with differences between city and rural people. Its main purpose, however, was to show the farmers that the policy of collectivization and the confiscation of grain had the support of the industrial populace. Thus, the farmers were to be convinced that their resistance to collectivization would be overcome by the unity of the entire country.
The propagandists, like the soldiers, were assigned to the homes of the farmers without their consent.
Some aspects of this propaganda brigade resembled an annual fair or market or a circus. The brigade started its activities the very moment it arrived in our village—on a Saturday afternoon. A terrible unceasing noise was its trademark.