The Russian Century

too was considered to be reprehensible. Fearing the rise of “secret organizations” under the pretext of brigade work, party leaders paid particular attention to the splitting up of friends.

Later, seeing the nonviability of such brigades, the institute’s leadership attempted to reconstitute them according to a different principle, namely the territorial wherein students living in the same district were to be united. But this too did not improve the work of the brigades. Then a final effort was made. Exemplary students were concentrated in the first brigade, good students in the second, mid-level in the third, and so on. Such an organizational principle also did not produce positive results. Those who were behind and even the average students were left without help and were unable to carry out any of the brigade assignments.

The matter kept worsening because in the time period described, the beginning of the 1930’s, the institutions of higher learning in the Soviet Union, especially the newly organized ones that did not arise on the foundations of the old establishments, which were simply renamed, had problems: they did not have well equipped laboratories or studies, nor textbooks besides primitive “work books” that reminded one of self-study manuals, and which, by the way, were published in very small press runs. Unheated classrooms and students’ empty stomachs did not facilitate successful learning. In such fashion, the laboratory-brigade method was destined for total failure under the conditions of Soviet higher education. However, as a result of its application over a number of years, there appeared a type of Soviet “specialist,” incompetent in his field and frequently simply ignorant, who was able to graduate from an institute by hiding his squalid baggage behind the backs of brigade comrades. However, the authorities became convinced quite swiftly that such “defective production” emanating from higher education, was completely inapplicable in the nation which had an acute need for specialists. Finally, special emphasis was placed on individual student responsibility, substantially raising the requirements for those entering and graduating from higher educational institutions. Results showed themselves quickly.

One day Siiak sent for all the students who were fluent in German and announced that on the very next day we were to depart for the Pulinskii Region

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Chapter Twenty-One

of Zhitomir Province in order to help in the collectivization of the German colonies.

“Bear in mind,” he said significantly, “that among those being sent there are almost no party or Komsomol elements. Therefore, if you do not justify the trust being placed in you by the Soviet regime in enlisting you in such a responsible and urgent task as the collectivization of the country, I will be unable to impose any punishment of a party-Komsomol nature, but will simply posit the question of the impossibility of your presence within the walls of a Soviet institution of higher learning.”

On a February morning I arrived at the institute from which we were to go to the station. I was wearing boots and a hat with earmuffs lent to me by Bo-ria [diminutive of Boris], a childhood friend. In my soul I was uneasy: I was not quite sure whether I would fully vindicate the celebrated trust of which Siiak spoke yesterday and sorrowfully looked at the massive oak door—it may close for me forever. The faces of my friends were also gloomy and only Misha [diminutive of Mikhail], stamping his feet and clapping his hands from the cold, was daydreaming out loud:

“Boy, will I eat my fill of sour cream with bread when I get there, just like in the country when I was a kid. These non-dekulakicized devils must still have some.”

The German colonies in Volynia, created under Catherine II, did not resemble Ukrainian villages with their small white huts, tightly pressed together along dusty roads. Here, one village soviet united farmsteads scattered over ten to fifteen kilometers. A wooden house, outbuildings, a small grove, fields all around—that made up each farmstead. The colonists lived prosperously even though they did not have much land. The cultivation of crops, cattle breeding, bee keeping and hops provided large incomes. But in 1932 these once attractive spots were already a desert. The notorious “dispossession of the kulaks” deprived the village of its richest, its hardest working, and most experienced peasants. They were shipped to Siberia, while many died in the torture-chambers of the NKVD.

It is not surprising that the two authorized officials sent from Kiev to “agitate,” were soundly beaten by the peasants and driven out on the road to Zhitomir. The chairman of a newly formed kolkhoz [collective farm] had been also recently sent to the Zhitomir hospital with bullets in his hip and leg. In an area of a neighboring village soviet, where people were able to eat only frozen potatoes, the women revolted and gave much trouble to the region’s party leadership.

The district party officials who sent us to work—evidently, the number of party members who knew German was insufficient—called upon the students not to eat and not to sleep, but to think of the grain that was to be deposited in the barns of future kolkhozes. Finding ourselves in one of the village soviets, my

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classmate and I immediately felt that, here, evidently, we would have to execute our directive precisely. The newly organized kolkhoz refused to give us provi-sions—“we don’t have enough for ourselves”—and in the unheated classroom in the school, a handful of rotting hay had been thrown on the floor.

We began to acquaint ourselves with the situation. The belongings of the exiles were turned over to the kolkhoz. Hundreds of beehives which had once produced such aromatic honey, were left in a cold building where all the bees perished from cold and hunger. No one took the trouble to feed them. Horses also died from hunger and often on the snowy fields one could see a dark heap above which a flock of ravens circled. This was a horse released from the kolkhoz stable when its time had come or one that had simply collapsed on the road. Of course, a different fate would have befallen this horse in the city. It would have been quickly converted into sausage that was very popular in those years and which was called “Konnitsa Budennago” [“Budennyi’s horse sausage,” a play on Budennyi’s “Red Cavalry”]. The colonists, however, though starving, resolutely refused to eat horsemeat.

All the grain had been shipped out. The small amount which each peasant saved after a poor harvest year, not even giving it to his family so that he could sow his fields anew, was mercilessly confiscated by the regime.

In the main, our responsibilities were to translate into German the pronouncements of the visiting party agitators and other officials. They either spoke at meetings or called in peasants for individual “talks.” Here we observed, while shuddering with indignation, the application of “effective” measures, including putting an unyielding person’s fingers into the crack of an open door and slowly closing the door. Later, such behavior was hypocritically criticized as “dizziness from success.” “Guilty” lower level party workers were demonstratively removed from their posts, though they had acted on directives from the center. Sometimes they were even executed. But the deed was done. As to the German colonists, even those who were collectivized, there remained no trace of them after a few years. All of them were shipped in a direction unknown and “reliable” kolkhozniks were placed on their lands. As the war was to show, however, they too rapidly became unreliable.

We were without any food for almost three days. Only a delayed directive from the region forced the kolkhoz officials to attend to the unwelcome, though involuntary guests. We began to receive food consisting of a small bowl of watery soup and a piece of corn bread that was much akin to brick. For some reason this soup was given to us in a dark, semi-demolished house.