WE DID NOT have to wait too long for Comrade Zeitlin’s strategy to reveal itself. The first incident occurred very early on a cold January morning in 1930 while people in our village were still asleep. Fifteen villagers were arrested, and someone said that the Chekists2 had arrived in the village at midnight, and with the cooperation of the village officials, had forced their prisoners into their van and disappeared before the villagers awakened.
The most prominent villagers were among those arrested: a school teacher, who had been working in our village since prerevolutionary times; the clerk of the village soviet (council), an influential and popular figure who gave advice in legal matters; and a store owner. The remainder were ordinary farmers of good reputation. None of us knew for what offense they had been arrested, nor where they had been taken.
This was frightening. Our official leadership had been taken away in one night. The farmers, mostly illiterate and ignorant, were thereby left much more defenseless.
Almost immediately the families of the arrested farmers were evicted from their homes. I witnessed what happened to one such family. We lived not far from one of those arrested, Timish Zaporozhets, whom we children called Uncle Timish. Sometime around noon, a group of the village officials arrived at his house. The official in charge, facing Uncle Timish’s wife, announced that inasmuch as her husband had been arrested as an “enemy of the people,” all his possessions were to be immediately confiscated and declared state property. The woman, confused and upset, tried to argue with the officials. She asked them what treason her husband had committed against the people that he should be proclaimed their enemy. But the officials were in no mood to discuss such a matter. The order to leave the house was repeated. She was also told that she might remove from the house only her own and her children’s personal possessions, such as clothing. Everything else had to be left behind.
By now, she realized that the officials meant business. With tears in her eyes, she begged them to let her stay in the house at least overnight so that she could collect her things. But she pleaded in vain. The order was again repeated; then she fainted and fell to the floor. Her children started to cry. The man in charge ordered her to be picked up and taken out to the sleigh which was standing ready in front of the house. She came to herself at that moment, and sobbingly told the officials that she did not have any place to go. This had been her home for many years. She, with her husband and children, had built the home.
Neither tears nor pleas helped. The officials only urged her to hurry. The man in charge took her by the shoulders. Screaming, she tore herself away from him. The one in charge ordered her to be evicted bodily from her house. When they grabbed her, she struggled and pulled their hair. She was finally dragged out of the house and thrown onto the sleigh. While two men held her, the children were brought out. A few of their possessions were thrown onto the sleigh and it moved off. Still restrained by the two officials, Uncle Timish’s wife and his children, wailing and shouting, disappeared in the winter haze.
We later found out that they were taken to the railroad station and herded into a special freight train headed north. The same fate also befell all the families of the other arrested men. We never heard of them again.
A few days after the arrest of those fifteen villagers and the eviction of their families, we were summoned to a meeting by a messenger. It took place in the former house of the same Timish Zaporozhets. The interior of the house had already been completely changed. The inner walls had been removed, and what had been a three-room house had become a type of hall, furnished with crude benches. Now it became clear to all of us that Timish had been a victim of his own house. The officials had arrested him because they needed a large building.
At this meeting we were told that a new administration was about to be established in our village. This at first did not arouse any suspicion in us. Our village was simply to be divided into units and subunits called Hundreds, Tens, and Fives.
I was only a youth at that time and I certainly was not concerned with the consequences of such a division. But later I realized what an inescapable trap that new system of “Cut your own throat”3 administration was. Through these divisions and subdivisions, the Thousander, with his group of Party functionaries, was able to establish undisputed control over the villagers. Moreover, he was able to detect and destroy any opposition to Party policy and thereby rapidly collectivize the entire village.
Our village comprised about 800 households and 4,000 inhabitants. It was divided into 8 Hundreds, 80 Tens, and 160 Fives, or a total of 248 units. Since each unit had an individual in charge assigned to it by the village soviet (council), our village had 248 subdivisional functionaries or officials. Besides that, a special propagandist4 was assigned to each Hundred, and one agitator5 to each Ten and to each Five. This doubled the number of functionaries to 496. In addition, a so-called Bread Procurement Commission was appointed to each Hundred.
These commissions were set up in all villages throughout Ukraine. At first there was one commission for the entire village. Now, at the beginning of collectivization, such a commission was attached to each village subunit, as for example, to each Hundred. Controlled by the Communist Party, these commissions and brigades were organized with the single purpose of securing the collection of grain quotas. Later, when total collectivization and the policy of “liquidation of the kurkuls6 as a social class” was announced, these commissions became the major force in organizing collective farms and in expropriating kurkuls. In fact, they became the arbitrary rulers of the countryside.
This new bread commission consisted of ten or more members, increasing the number of village subdivisional functionaries by eighty to 576. Finally, there were three permanent vykonavtsi, locally appointed militia deputies, for each Hundred, or twenty-four in all. The permanent vykonavtsi were important officials because they actually performed the function of the local militia, the Soviet police. They could make arrests without any legal formalities. This made 600 subdivisional functionaries, or 75 functionaries for each Hundred. Thus, each unit of a hundred households was controlled by 75 persons. This number could be increased if one included the 35 members of the village soviet and the 17 kolhosp7 officials. Actually, there were 652 active functionaries for the entire village. In other words, there was one functionary for every six villagers.
The majority of appointees to these subdivisional positions were selected from among the ordinary farmers, and as such, they found themselves in a precarious situation. There was nothing they hated as much as collective farming, yet they became the instrument for its implementation. They were appointed to tasks as soldiers are. There was no choice but to do as they were ordered. The individuals with any function in such organizations or institutions were looked upon as officials, no matter whether they were government employees or not. This title of “official” meant a great deal, for it secured almost unlimited power for those who bore it. Indeed, a representative of an administrative organ or organization was given unlimited rights to command and to demand. Thus, anything with the slightest ring of officialdom became dreaded by the ordinary villager, while the attainment of it gave this same person a tremendous advantage.
An ordinary farmer would become an official as soon as he was assigned to a commission, committee, or some type of brigade or group established for an official purpose.
According to the Communist concept, to be a Soviet official was an honor. Refusal to accept this honor would mean disloyalty to the Soviet regime—an intolerable offense. Anyone who refused to accept an official appointment, or who opposed an official’s activity, incurred a severe penalty as a suspected enemy of the people. This policy had been carried out with such rigidity that few dared to refuse an appointment or to show opposition.
In order to be able to demand of his charges the fulfillment of certain obligations to the state, an official had to meet them himself and set an example. Failure would lead to an accusation of refusal to obey Party and government. Since the task of these officials was collectivizing and gathering foodstuffs, they thus had to collectivize themselves and deliver their quotas.
Previously, there had been one authority in the village, the Village Soviet, elected at the village general meeting, which chose the executive committee with its chairman and clerk. At that time, political organizations such as the Communist Party and the Komsomol did not yet play any important roles within the village administrative system, for membership in these organizations was a rarity in our village.
This kind of self-government was, however, abolished with the start of total collectivization. Both the village general meeting and the village soviet lost their power to the Communist Party, the membership of which was increasing rapidly among our villagers. The Communist Party organization, while replacing the village soviet in all its initiative functions, became master of the village by dictating its will to the village general meeting. As a result, the general meeting became merely a puppet for the Communist Party. So it was with the village soviet. Only Party or Komsomol members or persons of unquestionable loyalty to the Party and the government could be elected or appointed to its executive offices.
About the time of the Thousander’s arrival, two institutions were introduced into our village: the Special Section and the Workers and Peasants Inspection. Both became horrors in our lives.
The Special Section was a branch of the GPU,8 the political secret police. Officially, the Special Section was represented by only one man who occupied an office in the building of the village soviet, and always wore a full dress GPU uniform. The recruiting that went on behind his doors, and the identity of his secret agents, remained a mystery. However, it was generally believed that one agent was planted in each Hundred to inform the GPU of the activities of each villager in that particular Hundred.
The Workers and Peasants Inspection was a local branch of a commissariat9 of the same name. Today it is known as the Commission of State Control. It was in charge of checking practices of the government agencies, and the loyalty and efficiency of officials. With the decree of total collectivization, the Party and government delegated the commissariat to control the fulfillment of this policy.
The Workers and Peasants Inspection was also represented in our village by one man. He was an outsider, of course. A commission of five local people was appointed to assist him. He also maintained his own secret agents who spied on the local officials. When he found “discrepancies,” he assumed the role of both arbiter and judge. His decisions were final.
To implement the policy of collectivization, the Party and government mobilized all their central and local forces; namely, the entire Party propaganda machinery, the armed forces, the secret and civil police force, and actually, all institutions and organizations. Such political organizations as the Komsomol, the Pioneers, and Komnezams were the most active and effective forces in the hands of the local communists.
Komsomol is an acronym for the Young Communist League, established in 1918. Young people between fourteen and twenty-six years of age may be members of this organization, which is considered to be the future of the Communist Party, and thus is accorded second place in the Soviet political hierarchy. Directed by the Communists, these youths proved to be most vigorous and effective in our village. Their responsibilities and positions were second only to the Communists themselves. The leader of the Komsomol organization was a Party candidate sent to the village by the county center.
The Pioneers was a political organization for school children between the ages of eight and fourteen. Members of this children’s organization served in double capacity as messengers and agents. The well-known case of Pavlik Morozov serves as an example of how the Communist Party and the government used children in their scheme. The son of a poor farmer, Pavlik lived in a village somewhere beyond the Urals in Siberia. This fourteen-year-old schoolboy became the most celebrated individual in the Soviet Union overnight by denouncing his father and some of his neighbors for hiding food from the state. The accused and his father, were arrested and disappeared without a trace. Pavlik was killed by the enraged villagers, including his uncle. The entire Soviet propaganda machine eulogized him. He became a national hero; his name was given to a multitude of villages, organizations, streets, and military units and his story was prominent in encyclopedias and dictionaries.
Thus, the Party encouraged children, especially those who belonged to the Pioneer organization, to spy on their parents and to denounce them, and anybody else, for that matter, who defied the Party. Such denunciation was considered a heroic deed, the best expression of Soviet patriotism.
Komnezam is an acronym for the Ukrainian Komitet nezamozhnych selian (Committee of Poor Peasants). Such committees were first set up in Russia in the summer of 1918 by the local Party organizations from agricultural laborers and poor farmers, and there they were known by the Russian acronym Kombedy. In Ukraine, on the other hand, these committees, the Komnezams, were introduced in May 1920, when the Communists invaded the Ukraine for the third time. Whereas in Russia the Kombedy were soon dissolved (in November 1918, by the decision of the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, November 6–9, 1918), in Ukraine, these Committees of Poor Peasants lasted until 1933 and became the most effective instruments of aggressive Communist policy in the Ukrainian countryside. The Komnezam was an important feature of every Ukrainian village. Its purpose was twofold: to introduce the Revolution into the village, and to assist in the enforcement of food deliveries to the state. In Ukraine, the Communists used these committees also as instruments in the collectivization of agriculture. In general, they became known as organs of proletarian dictatorship in the Ukrainian countryside.
Thus this monstrous machine of collectivization was set in motion. It ground, it pulled, it pushed, and it kicked. It was run by human beings, and it worked on human beings. It was merciless and insatiable. Once it was started, it could not be stopped, and it consumed more and more victims. The Hundreds, Tens, and Fives with their commissions, propagandists, agitators, and executors: the Komsomol, Pioneer, and Komnezam organizations; and the village general meeting, the village soviet, and the village executive committee became cogwheels in an ugly machine, and the Party its skillful operator.