S.O. Pidhainy
THE ORGANIZED PREPARATION OF THE FAMINE
The famine and the deaths from hunger in the villages of Ukraine were very well known to Moscow in the spring of 1932.* Under normal circumstances, the Soviet government and the Communist party would have been prepared to prevent the repetition of a similar catastrophe in the ensuing years of 1932 - 1933. The government and the party could have done so, but this was not their plan; Moscow had foreseen an increased sharpening in the struggle with the peasantry for grain, and had, therefore, prepared well in advance all organizational efforts to promote an artificial famine.
The following was done to accomplish the desired results:
- Plans for grain collections were prepared for Ukraine, in spite of the actual state of the harvest yield and of the food requirements of the population. Thus, a determined effort was made to strip the peasantry of all grain.
- A special decree was issued to expropriate the entire village economy, including that of the smallest peasant. The peasants were forbidden, under threat of death, to utilize the products of their toil, regardless of whether they belonged to a collective farm or not.
- A special law was enacted to establish a commercial blockade of the Ukrainian villages in most of the regions of Ukraine.
- Special laws were enacted to tie down all toilers, workers and peasants to specific places of employment. A passport system was established to prevent the peasants from seeking employment outside their village, thus depriving them of the right to produce food from other sources.
- Ukraine as a whole, and especially the Ukrainian peasantry, was placed under a special transportation blockade, thus depriving the population of opportunities to travel in quest of food.
- The authorities made strenuous efforts to conceal the existence of the famine in Ukraine, not only from the outside world, but also from other national groups in the Soviet Union.
The summer of 1932 in Ukraine was notable for the sharp conflict between the authorities and the peasants for bread. The government tried to get as much food out of Ukraine as possible; the peasants, on the other hand, did everything in their power to prevent this and to keep as much as possible for themselves.
Some of the collective workers, individual farmers and collective farms completed their quotas in full. But, in general, the majority of Ukrainian peasants did not fulfill the plan and used all possible means to evade it.
The government then embarked on a forcible collection of food from the collective farms, collective farmers and individual peasants who had not given up their quotas. According to the central directives, it was proposed that every village should, depending on its size, be divided into a number of subdivisions (hamlets. etc.), and to each of these a special brigade was attached, whose task it was to complete the plan of collection.
As a rule, such a brigade consisted of a member of the presidium of the village soviet or a party representative, and two or three local "activists" (this latter group would include former red partisans, ex-convicts and the like), and there would also be an additional member from the board of the local cooperative stores. Depending on local conditions, the composition of the brigades would sometimes differ if the quotas were large and poorly executed. They would include a larger number of party representatives from the regional, district or central offices. Quite often teachers, students and clerks from village and district offices would be compelled to join. The groundwork of the organization of such brigades was laid in 1930 and 1931, and the brigades were constantly improved upon. As a rule, the man in charge would be an outsider, a special functionary dispatched from the county, region, or capital. Every brigade had at least one "specialist" charged with uncovering hidden foodstuffs with the aid of a large sharp-pointed steel prong.
These brigades went from house to house, day after day, looking for hidden food. They searched homes, attics, cellars and all farm buildings, barns, stables, pens and stacks. They would measure the thickness of the wall under the oven to find if there was grain concealed in the foundation. They knocked on floors and walls, and whenever the sound was dull they would pry the suspected compartments open. Sometimes, whole walls were pulled down, ovens wrecked, and the last grain taken away if anything was found. The inquisition was characterized by acts of wanton destruction and extreme cruelty. Every brigade had its headquarters manned by a special staff. Peasants were hauled to headquarters and there subjected to all-night interrogations with beatings, water torture and semi-naked confinement in cold cells. At that time, many instances of torture were noted.
The methods employed were many and varied. A former scientist of Kharkiv University, (who is now in the United States), received the following description of an action from his father, a local peasant from Lysiache, Karliv county, near Poltava: "My son-in-law did not join the collective, so in the fall of 1932 a production tax of 100 poods (l pood = approximately 36lbs.) of grain was levied on him. He paid this in full. Then, just before Christmas, an additional 200 poods of tax was levied. He did not have the 200, he did not even have 20, and so he was threatened with jail for failing to pay. He sold a cow, a horse and some clothes, got the necessary 200 poods, and paid the tax. Then in February 1933, the local authorities notified him that he had to surrender another 300 poods. He refused to pay this third assessment because he had nothing left and was himself starving. A commission then came to his house to look for food. Of course, they did not find anything except a little bag of inferior grain and a pot of beans, which they took. The only thing he had left was a sack of potatoes. This last food went fast, and then..."
Local activists, who took part in the search for food for the purpose of confiscation, naturally by-passed their own homes, and thus succeeded in keeping some small reserves for themselves. The emissaries sent down to collect grain from the larger centers then changed their method of operation so that brigade members would not work in their own villages. When working among strangers, they would be more thorough and not let any house get by without search. This explains why even many activists died as a result of famine in the spring of 1933. Their food had also been taken away from them.
Eyewitnesses from all parts of Ukraine tell similar stories about food collections conducted in the fall of 1932 and the spring of 1933. "All edible products were requisitioned"--village of Zorich, Orzich county, Poltava region. "They took away everything that could be eaten"--village of Veprik, Hadyach county, Sumy region. "All bread was requisitioned, and even peas, down to the last kilogram"--village of Uspenivka, Khmiliw county, Mikolayiv region. "They took grain, potatoes and beets, almost to the last kilogram"--village of Sofievka, Nove-Mirhorod county, Odessa region. "Everything, literally everything was taken; they did not leave one kilogram of bread"--village of Strizavka, Rzhyshchev county, Kyiv region.
There are known cases where, in the winter of 1932-33, commissions charged with confiscating grain from the peasants examined human fecal matter in order to establish what the people were eating, because although people were swearing that they had nothing to eat, they were still alive! People, who in this manner were proved to have been consuming grain bread, had to flee in order to escape prosecution.
Conditions under which the plans for grain collection were being executed in 1932 can best be illustrated by the fact that one single Pavlohrad county near Dnipropetrovsk, consisting of 37 village soviets and 87 collective farms, had a team of 200 collectors sent from the county party committee, and almost the same number from the county Komsomol committee.
Assuming conservatively that other counties in Ukraine were visited by only half the proportionate number of collectors as the Pavlohrad county, the total number of collectors in Ukraine would have reached well over 100,000 men, and this does not include special emissaries from county and regional centers, whose number was steadily growing in connection with collection "difficulties"and a general deterioration of the political - economic situation.
*After the 1931 harvest, outbreaks of starvation occurred in a number of regions in Ukraine.
Taken from: S. O. Pidhainy, Editor-in-Chief. The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Volume 2, The Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932 -33 (Detroit: DOBRUS, Globe Press, 1955) pp. 433434; 34-37.
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