Execution by Hunger

by Miron Dolot

Suddenly a voice called from the back: “Join it! We don’t want to stay here all night long!” That was a good chance for Shevchenko to get off the hook.

  “If you are that eager, come here and sign it yourself!” he shouted back and quickly went to his place, disregarding the chairman’s order to stay where he was.

  The chairman at first insisted that Shevchenko return to the official table. Then he angrily urged all who were present at the meeting to come up and sign for the collective farm. But we remained adamant. No one moved.

  The officials were not discouraged by our silent opposition. They seemed to have been well instructed in what to do in such a case. As the farmers continued to keep their silence, and the situation was becoming embarrassing, Comrade Professor offered a suggestion. He thought it would be appropriate to celebrate such a “highly patriotic and happy occasion” by sending telegrams to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, to the Soviet government, and to Comrade Stalin. And, without waiting for our consent, Comrade Professor produced a piece of paper out of his pocket and started to read. This was a telegram which stated that, after having attentively listened to the “highly patriotic and educational” speech of the district representative,[10] and after having realized what advantages a socialist agricultural system had over that of an individual one, the farmers of the First Hundred (it was our good fortune to belong to the First Hundred, and we were often called upon by officials to prove ourselves worthy of being Number One) solemnly promised to achieve one hundred percent collectivization by the first of May.

  This was a ridiculous promise, as far as we were concerned, but none of us dared to criticize the telegram. It was adopted unanimously.

  The chairman then returned to his previous business. He tried to smile this time.

  “Well, since we agreed upon, and promised to achieve, a hundred percent collectivization,” he said casually, “there is no point in wasting time, eh?”

  He waved his pencil and paper over his head.

  “Come and sign up, eh?”

  We all stayed in our places.

  “Come on! It’s late,” he urged us. “The sooner you sign in, the sooner you go home.”

  No one moved. All sat silently. The chairman, bewildered and nervous, whispered something in the propagandist’s ear. The latter got up briskly and reminded us, as if we were kindergarten children, that it was not nice to break a promise, especially one given to Comrade Stalin. Since we had promised to join the collective farm, we had to do it now. But his fatherly admonishment did not move us. We kept our silence. This irritated the officials, especially the chairman. A moment after the propagandist finished his admonishment, the chairman rushed from behind the table, grabbed the first man before him, and shook him hard.

  “You…you, enemy of the people!” he shouted, his voice choking with rage. “What are you waiting for? Maybe Petliura?” Petliura had been a Ukrainian leader during the war for independence a decade before. All his followers were later persecuted in one way or another, and now the label “Petliura” meant death. But the farmer remained calm.

  “Take it easy,” the farmer said composedly. “The telegram says that we must join the collective farm by May first, doesn’t it? It’s February now, isn’t it? Why hurry?”

  This seemed to have disarmed the chairman completely. He had not expected this turn of events, nor had any of us. Probably every farmer in the house was trying to find some way out of the trap set by the telegram, and here was the solution. We still had plenty of time!

  The chairman hesitated for a second or two, then he took his hands from the man’s shoulders, and went back to the table. There he conferred with the propagandist. As we watched them talking, we saw the propagandist take a paper out of his pocket and correct something on it. It was obvious that they were preparing some other trick.

  “Before this meeting adjourns,” started the propagandist, “it is only appropriate that we adopt a resolution.” Then he started reading from the paper he held in his hand. The resolution was quite similar to the telegram, but with one difference: the word “May” was replaced by the word “immediately.”

  “Those who are against this resolution, raise your hands,” announced the chairman. The officials knew that not many would vote for it. On the other hand, they were sure that no one would dare vote against it. As expected, no hand rose against it. Then, the chairman announced that the resolution had been accepted by all members of the First Hundred. Immediately he raised his pencil and paper again.

  “Who’s next?” he asked, pushing the pencil and paper to the opposite edge of the table.

  Silence. The farmers stared ahead, unmoving. The chairman, drumming on the table with his fingers, looked down. Two militiamen stood at the doorway, barring the way out.

  The silence was interrupted by Comrade Professor. He got up and glowered at the audience.

  “What does this mean?” he hissed. “Is this a silent rebellion?” And then, after a deliberate pause, he told us that the Communist Party had given us an opportunity to join the collective farm voluntarily, but we, ignorant farmers, had misused this chance and had stubbornly defied the Party’s policy. We had to join the collective farm now! If we did not, we would be considered “enemies of the people” who would be exterminated as a “social class.” Having said this, he sat down.

  It made no sense to us, for the words “voluntarily” and “must” did not mesh. We knew he meant what he said, however. Still, no one responded to his threats.

  Both of them, propagandist and chairman, seemed exhausted. They looked at us in silence. We were silent also.

  This state of affairs could not last for long. With so many people packed in a small room, something was bound to happen, and soon it did. A man asked to leave the room. The chairman said no, he could not leave the room as long as he refused to join the collective farm. For that matter, no one could leave the room. Only those individuals who had already joined the collective farm could go out. The propagandist whispered something in the chairman’s ear, then announced:

  “Yes, all those comrades who have already joined the collective farm must go home!”

  We noticed that he said: “must go,” not “may go.” All the functionaries, except for the progagandist and the chairman, started to leave the room. Some of them did it reluctantly, for as we knew, they did not want to be different from the rest of us.

  The man who had asked to go outside still stood like a schoolboy before the teacher.

  “But I must go!” he insisted. It was obvious he had to go to relieve his bladder.

  “Take him outside, and bring him back immediately!” the chairman ordered one of the two militiamen.

  So the man left the room under escort, like a prisoner, leaving us behind with the embarrassing thought that he would have to do his business under the watchful eyes of a Party man. Then, like mischievous schoolboys, other farmers asked to go outside. We were curious to see how the chairman would solve this problem with just one militiaman left.

  “Nobody is going outside!” he shouted. “And that’s that!” Some brave souls tried to insist on their right to answer the call of nature without official interference, but the chairman said those wanting to go outside were “enemies of the people” who wanted to undermine the meeting.

  Having overcome this “toilet rebellion,” the chairman and propagandist again conferred with one another.

  “Whoever is for the Soviet regime and collectivization, raise your hands,” the chairman ordered.

  The farmers hesitated.

  “You mean you are against the Soviet regime?” the propagandist hissed. “Isn’t that an open rebellion? You mean, you would dare to do that?”

  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.

  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 k
nocking 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.