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 knocking 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 commissar11 took his place on it. A hush came over the villagers as he began speaking.
What the commissar said was again repetitious. He declared that the governments of the capitalist countries did not care for poor farmers; farmers all over the world in the capitalist countries were being ruthlessly exploited; the farmers in those countries were working with primitive implements. Only in the Soviet Union were farmers taken care of: they were happy; they were embarking on the socialist way of production (he said this as if it were an accepted fact); and they were supplied with the best agricultural machinery.
“Look here,” he said, pointing with both hands at the tractor. “Where else, but in the Soviet Union, do poor farmers like you have tractors of their own? Nowhere! Only you have this advantage!”
I was standing close to the tractor and, bored with the speech, I began to examine it as well as I could from my place. On the tractor’s exhaust pipe, I noticed the trademark “International,” cast in Latin characters.