AFTER THE ARREST of my brother and my three uncles and their families, our lives became harsh and grim. We felt lonelier and more afraid than ever before. Previously, we knew we would have the advice and support of our uncles. And there was Serhiy, strong and intelligent, the man of the house. We were now alone, without any relatives.
But we were never left alone by the village officials. We felt their constant presence like a heavy weight. Evening or morning, day or night, they were always with us.
We continually had to visit Hundreds, Tens, and Fives, and listen to long speeches about the merits of collective farms. We had to undergo strenuous interrogations about why we hadn’t joined the collective farm, and about our possessions.
There was no end to the officials’ visits to our home. The Bread Procurement Commission would come almost every day. The propagandist and the agitator would drop in to tell us repeatedly how wonderful life would be on a collective farm. They would also have a word to say about the merit of delivering foodstuff to the state. The official of the Ten would come to plead with us to join the collective farm, for otherwise he would be considered a saboteur. The latter had scarcely left the house, when the Five’s official would visit us with the same plea. With tears in his eyes, he would tell us that if we would not join the collective farm, he might be banished from the village.
Then a group of Pioneers would visit our house. They also had been given the assignment of collectivizing a certain number of households. The Pioneers would be followed by a group of members of the Komsomol, and the latter by a group from the Komnezam. Sometimes a group of teachers or farmers from the neighboring villages would come. And so on without end. All of them had the same task—to collectivize us and take our food away.
One afternoon at the beginning of March 1930, my mother was called to our Hundred. Comrade Khizhniak was there, sitting at the table alone and playing with his gun. He did not greet us or ask us to take a seat.
While we stood in front of him, he slowly and carefully took his gun apart. When this was done, he started cleaning it, wiping it with a piece of cloth. Still we remained standing, not knowing what to do.
After a while, he started to reassemble his gun. Having inserted the last bullet, he finally lifted his head, and smiling, raised the gun and aimed it at my mother.
“Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed, “glad to see you!”
“What is it that you want today?” Mother asked him, ignoring his gun and his laugh. Strangely, she was not alarmed. Neither was I.
Now he became serious. His wrinkled face contorted into an ugly knot. He seemed to be shocked at this question. Slowly he laid his gun on the table.
“My wish is the wish of the Communist Party and the Soviet government! Is that clear?” he shouted.
“Yes, I have never doubted it,” Mother answered.
“Now, my most loyal Soviet citizen,” he continued sarcastically, “I have heard that you haven’t yet joined the collective farm. I just can’t believe that.”
He stopped for a moment, but as soon as Mother started to say something, he went on in a serious tone:
“You aren’t going to wage war against us, are you?”
Then he picked up his gun and again started to play with it. First he looked into its barrel. Then he took out the ejector rod and started to poke it in his ears. After a while, he put it back, and then looked at us.
“We have this kind of thing,” he waved with his gun. “Do you?”
And then he started to laugh again.
“It’s funny—ha, ha, ha,” he laughed. “She wants to fight! Ha, ha, ha!”
Abruptly he became sullen. He gazed at the gun motionlessly. Then he was laughing again. He laughed louder and louder. Then he jumped from his chair and, as if playing Russian roulette, he spun the drum, and put the muzzle to his temple. We watched.
“Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed happily. “Would you like to see me pull the trigger?”
We kept silent—which probably irritated him, for suddenly he stopped laughing.
“If you do not join the collective farm immediately,” he shouted like a madman, “I will kill you with my own gun!”
“With who else’s?” Mother retorted calmly.
This remark enraged him. Keeping his gun in a firing position, he ran out from behind the table and, breathing heavily, stopped in front of us.
“I’ll kill you,” he raved. As if to prove that he meant what he said, he started shooting into the ceiling.
This was quite a show. But somehow we were not afraid. Mother, composed as ever, stood quietly. Comrade Khizhniak was apparently surprised by her calmness and self-control. After firing at the ceiling, he seemed not to know what to do next. At first, he started to pack his gun with new bullets, then he put the gun into the holster. Then he took it out again and laid it on the table. Afterwards he took it off the table, spun the drum, and then counted the bullets. Finally, he put the gun into his holster, and ran out of the room.
We continued standing for a while. Mother finally yielded to my persistent requests to sit down and took a place on the bench. However, as soon as she did so, a stranger entered the room as if he had been waiting for that moment.
No doubt he was a city dweller, and he definitely was not a Ukrainian for he could hardly speak a word of Ukrainian. We did not need to be told that he was a new propagandist. He was tall and well fed, with a pale face.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked my mother almost politely. I started to think that we finally had met a pleasant official.
“You seem to enjoy sitting there…” he said, looking down at Mother, who remained seated. Then, without waiting for Mother’s reply, he suddenly shouted:
“Get up, you dirty muzhichka!15 I’ll teach you how to meet a representative of the Communist Party and government!”
Mother might have been expecting the outburst, because I saw no traces of surprise on her face. Slowly she got up. But in the corners of her eyes, I noticed tears. She had been insulted.
The propagandist sat down at Comrade Khizhniak’s place and crossed his legs. He let us stand. Slowly and deliberately, he lit an expensive cigarette which he took out of his case and stared at us coldly. Then he pulled his revolver out of his holster and put it on the table.
“All right,” he said, looking at us contemptuously. “What do you want?”
This was an unexpected question. We certainly didn’t want anything from him.
“This is what I want to ask you,” Mother said. “You called me here, and I suppose you will tell me what you want from me.”
He jumped to his feet.
“Don’t you know why you were called here?” he shouted.
“How should I know?” was Mother’s answer.
His anger grew into rage. With all his might, he struck the table with his fists. His gun flew into the air from the impact and landed on the floor. He quickly grabbed it, checked it for damage, and then pointed it at Mother.
“I’ll kill you!” he raved like a lunatic.
But we were somehow neither impressed nor scared, probably because in the last few months we had endured so many terrifying experiences that we had grown indifferent to new threats.
For a moment, the propagandist seemed not to know what to do with the gun aimed at Mother. Then he lowered it and fired into the floor. This seemed to calm him down. Without saying a word, he went behind the table and took his previous place. For a moment he was silent. Then he lit another cigarette, and started again the same kind of interrogation as before.
Suddenly the door flew open and my younger brother burst in. He breathlessly told us that the Bread Procurement Commission had entered our house by force and had taken away whatever solid food they could find. Ignoring the propagandist who, of course, tried to stop us, we ran home as fast as we could, but it was too late. When we arrived, the members of the commission were loading the cart with the grain and other food we had had in reserve. It was not much, but it would have been enough for the three of us to survive on until the new harvest. Comrade Khizhniak stood near the door, playing with his gun and smiling. His smile told us that he had outwitted us.
So we were left without food, except for some potatoes and beets buried in the ground, and we would have to wait three more months for the new crop. There was no other source from which we could obtain the necessary food.
A few hours after the commission left us, following the cart containing our grain and other food, the Ten’s official visited us. He said that if we had joined the collective farm earlier, this would never have happened to us. After all, we were not kurkuls. We still would have had our bread.
“Oh, that reminds me,” he said casually, on leaving our house. “The members of the collective farm receive payment for their labor in food.” Saying this, he looked down at his feet, as if he were ashamed of what he was saying. “Therefore, you still have a chance to survive if you join the collective farm.” He was right; there was no other alternative for us.
We did not talk much that evening. As if knowing our decision, the commission woke us up in the middle of the night. The propagandist who had interrogated us the day before was in charge. Without any formalities, he asked Mother whether she wanted to join the collective farm. She said: “Yes.” He then sat down at the table under our icons and wrote the petition for her. As I recall, it said:
Whereas the collective farm has advantages over individual farming; and whereas it is the only way to secure a prosperous and happy life, I voluntarily request the collective farm’s management to accept me as a member of your collective farm.
Signature.
That was all. Mother silently signed it. The propagandist was all smiles while the members of the commission stood huddled in the corner as if they were at a funeral.
The next day, some people arrived in our backyard. Without any explanation, they entered the stable and barn and took away our horse, cow, wagon, plough, and other agricultural implements. Only after the loaded wagon departed, drawn by our own horse and followed by our cow, did a man enter our house. He informed us that we were now registered under the number 168, and that in the future, we should identify ourselves by this number.
Thus we became a mere number—number 168.