Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust

CHAPTER 6

THE CHAIRMAN of the First Hundred’s Bread Procurement Commission was Ivan Khizhniak. He had once been our neighbor. Comrade Khizhniak was about forty, short and heavy, and semiliterate. His face was lined with deep wrinkles, and his thick dirty-blond hair and cold, dull-green eyes half-covered with wrinkled eyelids and bristly eyelashes gave him a porcine look.

This was the man who was in charge of the Bread Procurement Commission in our Hundred. His physical ugliness seemed to shape his mind and his morality. He was cruel, rough, and embittered. His manner of speaking was sarcastic and vulgar, or limited to pat, official phrases. Sometimes he would try to speak in an urbane manner which he had picked up somewhere during his absence from our village, but even then he would insert the foulest profanity into his language.

Comrade Khizhniak was the only known Communist in our village when the October Revolution began. During the Revolution, as chairman of the Committee of Poor Peasants (the Komnezam), he was one of the most eager and active organizers of the local revolutionary government. After the Revolution, he remained a loyal executor of the Communist policy in the village. Indeed, he became a powerful village politician, and as such, he caused the death of many prominent villagers.

Shortly after the Revolution, when one of the frequent Communist policy shifts had gone into effect, he disappeared from the village, leaving a tangle of loose ends behind. No one knew where he had gone or what he was doing. The villagers began to forget about him, but when the collectivization started, Khizhniak reappeared.

In organizing the Hundred’s Bread Procurement Commission, Comrade Zeitlin and his Party and government assistants seemed to have drawn mainly on the degenerate elements of our village for their workers. Khizhniak’s commission serves as a vivid example of this. True, there were honest and industrious villagers whom we knew and respected among the members of the commission, but its core was composed of individuals with sadistic impulses. Besides Comrade Khizhniak, one of the other members that I knew was the vicious Vasil Khomenko, a man whose sadism made him infamous in our village.

The other commission members were not so notorious as Khizhniak or Khomenko; nevertheless, they still belonged to that troublesome group that made the villagers’ lives insecure and miserable.

Ivan Bondar, or “Comrade Judas,” was another member. He came to our Hundred a few days after the church was destroyed. As our Hundred happened to bear the number “One,” the village officials wanted to make it a model for the other Hundreds. Therefore, they staffed it with the most trusted individuals. Comrade Judas soon found perfect accord with Comrades Khizhniak and Khomenko.

Almost absolute power was given to these Party and government functionaries. Their abilities were measured by the amount of foodstuff they could extract from the farmers and by the number of farmers they could collectivize in the shortest amount of time. They used whatever methods were effective in accomplishing their task. The Communist dictums that the end justifies the means, and that the winner is always right, were the credos of the day.

There is a Ukrainian proverb that says that a master is not as cruel as a servant would be in his place. Comrade Khizhniak and his lieutenants, all farmers themselves, promoted to official positions, became drunk with power; they used their officialdom to exert a ruthlessness and cruelty unheard of in our village. There seemed no limitation to their arbitrariness and vanity. The activity of the commission was carefully planned and coordinated. Comrade Khizhniak, the propagandist, and a few other members of the commission presided at the court in the Hundred’s headquarters. They would summon those farmers who had shown themselves to be stubborn or suspicious and would “work” on them individually. Comrades Khomenko and Judas, with the rest of the Hundred’s functionaries, worked through the Tens and Fives, also individually. However, they concentrated their efforts on conducting meetings of members of those units. We had to attend one meeting or another practically every day, Sundays included. The Sunday meetings would usually start early in the morning and last all day long.

The commission functionaries of our Hundred, as well as those of all the others, used strictly prescribed methods in dealing with us. One method, unsophisticated but effective, was “path treading,” as the functionaries termed it. A farmer would be called to his Hundred and the usual interrogation would follow. Why had he not joined the collective farm? This same question would be asked repeatedly. The Hundred’s officials would tell him that only an “enemy of the people” opposed the Communist policy of collectivization. Since there was no place for an “enemy of the people” in the Soviet Union, there would be no choice for him: he either had to join the collective farm, or be eliminated. Finally, they would give him a pencil to sign the application and thus avoid all trouble. Some did sign, but the majority refused, using various excuses and pretexts.

At this point, the “path-treading” method would be used. The official would tell the farmer to take some message to the neighboring Hundred, say to the Second Hundred. Since no one could refuse to accept an official assignment, the man would take the message, whatever it was, and start his trip through the village. When he had arrived at the Hundred to which he had been assigned, he found that they had been expecting him there. Immediately, the farmer was subjected to another interrogation. Again he had to explain why he was not yet a member of the collective farm; again he would be told to join immediately. If he still refused to join, he was sent to the next Hundred, and from there to the next, and so on. After the last Hundred, he would be sent to the village soviet office where Comrade Zeitlin was in charge. Here again he went through the same long, complicated interrogation.

It was winter and the cold was severe. The paths and the roads of the village were snowbound. The victim had to walk through the night across the village, leaving behind a trail in the deep snow; hence, the name “path treading.” This method was used by the officials in accordance with an obviously prearranged schedule. About five farmers of our Hundred had to go on this “path-treading” walk every night; and as many as forty or more farmers from other Hundreds visited our Hundred. A panorama of our village on one of these nights would have shown about forty wretched farmers, shivering from cold and exhaustion, slowly moving through the darkness and waist-deep snow.

At dawn, the path treader would return home from his night-long walk, only to find a new summons from the Hundred for the next night. The program for the next night was somewhat different. First, he would be kept waiting for a few hours, and then be subjected to the usual interrogation. Had he changed his mind? Was he going to join the collective farm now? Some said yes, but the majority repeated their “no!” As before, the farmers tried to find some excuses, but now the officials refused to listen to them; they had no time. Would the farmer wait for a while? Of course, he had to wait, but not in the house; it was overcrowded. The shed was empty—well, almost! There were only five or six other farmers there, and so the victim would suddenly find himself in a cold shed that was locked from the outside as soon as he entered.

This kind of persuasion became known as the “cooling off” method. Cold, humiliated, and exhausted from lack of sleep and from harassment, the farmers would wait for hours. In the cold darkness of the shed, some would begin to realize the hopelessness of their resistance.

A few hours would pass, and the functionaries would bring the farmers, one by one, into the office and tell them to sign the application. The majority still refused. So, singly—they could not go in a group—they would again be sent “path treading.” This would be repeated the next day, and the day after that until the men, exhausted physically and broken in spirit, would submit to the officials’ demand. Every victim’s place in the shed and on the “path treading” would then be taken by another villager.

The inhabitants in some other Hundreds experienced still another method of persuasion. One day we heard a story about events taking place in the Second Hundred. The Party functionaries of that Hundred had entered into “socialist competition” with Hundred Seven for the speedy fulfillment of the collectivization quota. During a meeting at which the farmers still stubbornly opposed the collective farm, the chairman of the Hundred ordered a fire to be lit in the building’s stove. Then he ordered the stove damper closed. He posted a guard at the door and left the hall. After a while, a few farmers dropped to the floor semiconscious. Finally, someone broke the window.

Whether that chairman finally met his quota is unknown. But the man who broke the window was later tried in the People’s Court for “interfering with an official’s duty,” and for “inflicting damage upon socialist property.” He was sentenced to a hard labor camp for ten years and was not heard from again.

Evening and Sunday meetings were extremely humiliating and torturous experiences in our lives. They had undoubtedly been designed not only for the purpose of political and ideological brainwashing, but also as a means of breaking the farmers’ spirit of independence. The meetings were to be channels through which the Party could direct farmers towards collaboration with the Party officials in fulfilling the task of collectivization. Party propaganda termed these meetings “mass participation in socialist government.”

These meetings played a crucial role in driving the farmers into the collective farms. The meeting would usually start with a long speech about the methods of collectivization. There would follow short speeches, after which some time was allotted to questions and answers. The meeting chairman would then announce that a debate would follow. Of course, these debates were nothing more than small speeches by functionaries and other activists, for no villager would take part in them. We had no choice but to listen until we became stupefied.

Finally, the chairman would announce the next point on the meeting’s agenda. This was the summary of the “socialist competition” during the previous week. Every adult was forced to take part in the competition for speedy fulfillment of the collectivization quota.

Our village as a whole competed with a neighboring village. Our Hundred competed with Hundred Eight and also with its own counterpart in the neighboring village. All functionaries competed among themselves as officials and as individuals, and all villagers were also supposed to compete among themselves.

The chairman of the meeting on competition would tell his audience the village’s standing in the competition. And no matter what progress was achieved, the officials were never satisfied; so, consequently, we were blamed, scolded, and threatened. Only one hundred percent participation would satisfy them.

Then the chairman would call upon the head of the Hundred to make a report about his Hundred’s standing in comparison with its rival and the other village Hundreds. If our Hundred happened to be among the leading ones, then we could hope to go home sooner. But when our Hundred was behind, we would prepare ourselves for another lecture about the importance of the “socialist competition.”

The result of the competition within and among the Tens and Fives was also carefully analyzed. The winner subunits, that is to say, the Tens and Fives that collectivized the most farmers during the last week, would ceremoniously be presented the Red Banner and their functionaries would be proclaimed Shock Workers, and officially commended for their good work. The loser subunits together with their functionaries, would be listed on the chorna doshka, literally, “black board,” which was supposed to be a great disgrace. The least successful subunits could expect to see their names written on pictures of a turtle or a crocodile. The turtle represented slowness, and the crocodile viciousness. The “crocodiles” had the worst part of the whole affair. They were treated as enemies of the Communist regime or, worse still, as saboteurs. Usually these individuals were transferred to other subunits either within or outside of their Hundred with the warning that repeated failure would be followed by arrest or banishment.

The report of the subunits over, the meeting would continue with the report about individual competition. First, the functionaries competed among themselves for larger numbers of collectivized farmers. All of them were forced to take commitments upon themselves in the following manner: a functionary would announce in a stereotyped sentence that, realizing the advantage of the collective system, he solemnly promised the “dear Party and government” to collectivize so many farmers by the next Sunday meeting. Then he also challenged Comrade So-and-so to surpass that goal. The challenged one had no choice but to accept the challenge, and so a chain reaction would start.

Among the villagers, the nature of the competition was a little different. During the week prior to Sunday, the officials would take care to “prepare” some farmers. At the Sunday meeting, these farmers would duly rise and utter memorized phrases about how happy they were to join the collective farm; they would then challenge Comrade So-and-So (a farmer) to do the same.

At the Sunday meetings, the challengers and the ones challenged had to give accounts of their various competitions. A functionary had to report how many farmers he had collectivized since the last meeting. The lucky ones were praised; the losers were reprimanded. They were then warned to do a better job by next Sunday, or else bear the consequences.

Then the farmers would give their accounts. The challenger was left alone, but the one challenged had to either accept or refuse the challenge to the “socialist competition.” If not, why? If yes, why was he still not on the list of the loyal Soviet citizens, i.e., the members of the collective farm? This was a painful moment for the honest villager for he could not afford the luxury of flatly refusing and telling all the officials to go to hell, which, no doubt, he gladly would have done. On the other hand, he could not find any acceptable excuse. All the villagers could do was to mumble: “I’m not ready yet.” Of course, such a statement would trigger new threats and admonishments.

With the reports on the competition over, the meeting proceeded with the next point on the agenda: personal reporting. Every member of our Hundred had to appear before the assembly and answer the questions of why he had not yet joined the collective farm, and when he intended to do so.

These meetings usually lasted all night, and on Sundays, all day. Hungry and terrorized, the villagers quietly listened and obligingly answered the multitude of questions, but stubbornly stood their ground. Nothing could move them. At least that is what they thought.

But the Communist officials were not ready to give up their ground either. They were waging a war, and they knew that where one tactic did not work, another might. And this was precisely what happened.

At the end of February and the beginning of March 1930, the officials appraised the situation, regrouped their forces, devised new tactics for the offensive, and then delivered a smashing blow.

One Sunday, we learned that, except for Khizhniak, Khomenko, and Comrade Judas, all the Hundred’s functionaries, including those of the Tens, Fives, and all the other subunits throughout the village had been reassigned. Some of those whose subunits were not among the first in meeting the collectivization quotas, were assigned to the neighboring villages. At about the same time, some functionaries from neighboring villages and towns arrived in our village. In strange surroundings, these farmer functionaries became more aggressive.

About this time, the village Party strategists introduced a new tactic that we called “dog eat dog.” Those farmers who were previously considered kurkuls and those who had been persecuted in one way or another and were still living in the village were reinstated in the good graces of the Communist officials and engaged in active work for the Party and the government. These tactics worked even better than the officials had expected. The farmers were told that they deserved to be shot, but they were being given a chance to prove themselves worthy of living. What they had to do was to help the Party and the Government to collectivize the farmers. Of course, if they proved themselves worthy, they would be accepted into the collective farm also. And so these so-called kurkuls became staunch activists, for the desire to prove themselves “worthy” drove them to become merciless executors of Party policy.

Moreover, since they were farmers, they knew the psychology of their fellow villagers, and therefore were the most capable in devising new ways and means of forcing their fellows to comply with Communist policies and demands.