Miron Dolot - Execution by Hunger

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] “Cut your own throat” is an expression I use here to describe the new village administration, established at the onset of collectivization in which the farmers were forced to take active part and which eventually destroyed them. In other words, the farmers were put in a situation where they destroyed themselves through their own actions, i.e., they cut their own throats. 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 propagandist [4] Propagandist was the official Communist title of a person whose duty it was to spread and disseminate Communist ideas and ideology. During the collectivization of farmers, the propagandists served as the eyes and ears of the Communist Party. They were the ones who introduced the Party’s policy of collectivization to the population at “grassroots” level. They were usually appointed from among the Party and Komsomol members. was assigned to each Hundred, and one agitator [5] Agitators differed from propagandists in that they were supposed to stir up and mobilize the people for support of a certain course of action. But, in reality, there was not such a difference between them. Anyone with a mouth tuned to the Party line was qualified to be appointed an agitator. Even children were given this title and sent from house to house with propaganda materials in their hands and prefabricated phrases in their mouths. 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 kurkuls [6] The Ukrainian word kurkul (Russian kulak) was the official definition of a village usurer in the Soviet Union. Any farmer who employed hired labor, who possessed heavy machinery, or hired out such machinery, or contracted to work on other farms, who leased land for commercial purposes, etc., was branded kurkul. This definition found ready recognition in the West, and consequently we hear here that kurkul means a rich or well-to-do farmer. Such translation or interpretation of this epithet can be misleading because the Communists applied this label indiscriminately to all farmers, even to genuine paupers. During the collectivization this label was widely used, and it became an epithet of abuse for all those farmers who refused to join the collective farm. The policy of “liquidation of kurkuls as a social class,” introduced by the Communist Party in 1929, resulted in the disappearance of millions of farmers labeled as kurkuls. Many of them were simply murdered; others were starved to death during the famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine; and still others were deported to the “corrective labor camps” or to the concentration camps. The label kurkul was attached to anyone, even to nonfarmers, who showed the slightest sign of disagreement with or opposition to Communist agricultural policy during that time. The possession of a one-room house, a cow, and a few chickens, or the possession of a house with a tin roof or board floor was enough to be labeled as a kurkul. 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 kolhosp [7] Kolhosp is the Ukrainian acronym for collective economy or collective farm ( kolkhoz in Russian). According to the statutes, a kolhosp was supposed to be a voluntary cooperative undertaking of a group of farmers who collectivized their land and agricultural implements and were paid in kind and money according to their labor days. But in reality, the kilhosp was forcibly imposed upon the farmers and came under complete control of the Communist Party and the government. It became nothing less than a state agricultural enterprise. The members of the kolhosp had no say in farm policy or in the distribution of income. 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.