Miron Dolot - Execution by Hunger

It was hard for us to believe what we had been hearing. Again, there was much confusion. Was it true what the newspaper and the resolution said? What if this whole thing were a trick; a provocation? This was a distinct possibility. Only yesterday, these Party functionaries had used all the brutal means they knew or could devise to herd us into the collective farms. The Central Committee, we were told, had given orders to collectivize all of us before the first of May, at any price! Some of our villagers had lost their lives refusing to yield to the pressure. Thousands of others were labeled kurkuls, evicted from their houses, and banished to concentration camps far away. The majority of us had joined the collective farms as the only way to save our lives.

Now the Central Committee was telling us that it was a mistake; that the local authorities were to be blamed for these excesses because they acted overzealously and distorted the Party line. Where did the truth lie? Who was ultimately to be blamed for the loss of our freedom; for the thousands of deaths; for the destruction of our way of life?

AFTER FINISHING the reading of the resolution, Comrade Representative raised his head and slowly scanned the hall. Then he drank some water, and repeated the previous gesture with his handkerchief.

The assembly was deathly still, all eyes watching him.

“There are things which are difficult to explain,” he began haltingly, after looking at the paper he held in his hands. “What I am about to tell you is such a thing.”

Then, stuttering, stammering, and often correcting himself, he told us that neither the Party as a whole, nor the Party representatives individually, could be held guilty for the forcible collectivization and for the terror that reigned in the villages throughout Ukraine. No, the Communist Party could not be blamed for these crimes, for it never advocated force or violence.

This statement of his sounded like a sarcastic remark or a bad joke. However, we had learned to take such statements in stride.

He continued: “The real culprits who distorted the Party line and brought so much suffering to your village were the Jews. Yes, it was the Jews who did it; not our dear Communist Party.”

This was only the beginning. After some moments of hesitation, he went on explaining that the Jews, generation after generation, had been brought up in the belief that the Ukrainians were anti-Semites, and responsible for terrible and violent atrocities against them. This the Jews could not forgive nor forget. They know how to take revenge. It is a well-known fact, he continued, that the Jews, using the Communist Party as a springboard for their ambitions, have penetrated all branches of central and local governments, especially such branches as security and justice. Our local GPU, he pointed out, was entirely in their hands. They have been using these official positions for their own benefit. The Communist Party, announcing the policy of total collectivization and liquidation of kurkuls, had entrusted the local governments and special Party representatives such as Thousanders with almost unlimited power. The Jews took advantage of this power to take revenge against Ukrainians. They became overzealous in expropriating the grain from farmers, and causing starvation in Ukrainian villages. More than that, they pinned the labels “kurkul” and “enemy of the people” on the majority of the farmers without any justification and had them exiled to concentration camps or locked up in prisons.

What the representative had said we could not easily ignore. Such revelations and accusations were totally unprecedented. We had never heard such anti-Jewish rhetoric before from anybody, let alone official Party representatives. But, here, the official representative of the county Party organization openly declared that the Jews were to be blamed for every horror that had gone on in our village since the beginning of collectivization. His attempt to whitewash the Communist Party of all wrongdoings was something we expected. After all, he himself was a Party member! But why blame the Jews? This tactic was hard to fathom. Comrade Zeitlin might have been of Jewish origin, although we never knew for sure. But he was no worse than any other Party member or non-Party activist. Besides, he and others like him were just carrying out the Party’s orders and instructions, acting on behalf of the Party. And why should only Comrade Zeitlin be held responsible for the acts of violence committed in our village?

There was something else. Antidiscrimination laws strictly prohibited anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Thanks to those laws, Jews were able to occupy key positions in the Party and government. Anti-Semitism was a punishable offense. The slightest derogatory remark or even a joke that might have been construed as such could have brought severe punishment. Yet, now the representative of the county Party organization was officially propagating anti-Semitism. Why? He seemed to be actually inciting a pogrom against the Jews. Was he acting on his own initiative, or on behalf of the Party?

The old axiom “Divide and rule” seemed to be one of the motives behind his speech. The representative also might have had a traditional Russian slogan in his mind: “Kill the Jews and save Russia.” There is no doubt that he wanted to make Jews the scapegoats for the crimes committed by the Communist Party during the collectivization and to incite the farmers against them, in this way diverting their attention away from the real problems and actual culprits.

But the Party representative had no success with such tactics in our village. His anti-Jewish rhetoric encountered our disdainful silence. Later we learned that he traveled with his anti-Jewish speech throughout all the villages of the county. But wherever he went, despite his efforts, he failed to provoke any pogroms.

Comrade Representative finished his speech, collected his notes, rushed to the exit with eyes cast down, and disappeared without a backward glance. We never saw him again. The member of the village soviet took his place at the rostrum.

What happened next was a spontaneous riot.

“We have had enough of you!” somebody yelled as the member of the village soviet tried to say something.

“Away with you!” someone else shouted angrily. “We have been listening to you for too long!”

The member of the village soviet desperately wanted to speak, and he started to yell at the top of his voice, waving his arms over his head, but the shouting did not stop. As a last resort, he grabbed the drinking glass and started ringing it with his pencil, but his voice and the ringing were both drowned out in angry swearing and cursing by the enraged crowd.

Suddenly a young man ran to the stage. The frightened and bewildered member of the village soviet, with his arms outstretched in a defensive position, backed up to the side stage door and disappeared outside.

“You heard what Comrade Representative said,” the young man shouted. “We have been duped. Let’s get our horses and cows out of that stinking collective farm before it’s too late!”

“Let’s do it now!” echoed the crowd.

“Right now!”

The young man jumped down from the stage and ran to the exit, and like stampeding cattle the audience rushed after him. Windows were broken, and children climbed out of them. Others used the stage side door to flee.

Once outside, they were in a great hurry to reach their destination.

“Hurry!” a man urged his wife. “Hurry up, or someone may take our cow!”

And they started running.

“How about our wagon?” a woman asked. “How shall we find it in this darkness?”

Others expressed similar worries:

“It’s so dark outside! How can we recognize our horse and cow?”