For Russian peasants, and those of other nationalities as well, the chief experience of Stalinism was collectivization—the enforced bringing together of many small-scale family farms into much larger collective farms called kolhozy. Thus private ownership of land was largely ended, except for some small plots, which peasants could till individually. That process generally began with the arrival of outside “agitators” or Community Party officials who sought to persuade, or if necessary to force, the villagers to enter the kolhoz. They divided peasants (muzhiks) into class categories: rich peasants (kulaks) were to be excluded from the collective farms as incipient capitalists; poor (bedniak) and middle (seredniak) peasants were expected to join.

One witness to this process was Maurice Hindus, a Russian-born American writer who returned to his country of origin in 1929, when Soviet collectivization was beginning in earnest. There he roamed on foot around the countryside, recording conversations with those he met. The extract that follows begins with a letter he received from “Nadya,” a young activist who was among many sent to the rural areas to initiate collectivization. Then Hindus records a discussion between peasants objecting to collectivization and an “agitator,” like Nadya, seeking to convince them of its benefits.

MAURICE HINDUS

Red Bread

1931

Nadya Speaks

I am off in villages with a group of other brigadiers organizing kolhozy. It is a tremendous job, but we are making amazing progress. It would do you worlds of good to be with us and watch us draw the stubborn peasant into collectivization. Contrary to all your affirmations and prophecies, our muzhik is yielding to persuasion. He is joining the kolhozy, and I am confident that in time not a peasant will remain on his own land. We shall yet smash the last vestiges of capitalism and forever rid ourselves of exploitation. . . . The very air here is afire with a new spirit and a new energy.

The Peasants Speak

“There was a time,” . . . began Lukyan, who had been a blacksmith, . . . “when we were just neighbors in this village. We quarreled, we fooled, sometimes we cheated one another. But we were neighbors. Now we are bedniaks, seredniaks, koolacks.° I am a seredniak, Boris here is a bedniak, and Nisko is a koolack, and we are supposed to have a class war—pull each other’s hair or tickle each other on the toes, eh? One against the other, you understand? . . .

“But it is other things that worry us,” continued the flat-faced muzhik . . . , “it is the kolhoz. That, citizen, is a serious matter—the most serious we have ever encountered. Who ever heard of such a thing—to give up our land and our cows and our horses and our tools and our farm buildings, to work all the time and divide everything with others? Nowadays members of the same family get in each other’s way and quarrel and fight, and here we, strangers, are supposed to be like one family. . . .

“We won’t even be sure,” someone else continued the lament, “of having enough bread to eat. Now, however poor we may be, we have our own rye and our own potatoes and our own cucumbers and our own milk. We know we won’t starve. But in the kolhoz, no more potatoes of our own, no more anything of our own. Everything will be rationed out by orders; we shall be like mere batraks° on the landlord’s estates in the old days. Serfdom—that is what it is—and who wants to be a serf?” . . .

“Dark-minded beasts we may be,” wailed another muzhik. . . . “We are not learned; we are not wise. But a little self-respect we have, and we like the feeling of independence. Today we feel like working, and we work; tomorrow we feel like lying down, and we lie down; the next day we feel like going to town, and we go to town. We do as we please. But in the kolhoz, brother, it is do-as-you-are-told, like a horse—go this way and that, and don’t dare turn off the road or you get it hard, a stroke or two of the whip on bare flesh. . . . We’ll just wither away on the socialist farm, like grass torn out by the roots.” . . .

The Communist Party Official Speaks

At this point a new visitor arrived, a tall youth, in boots, in a black blouse and with a shaved head. . . . A stranger in the village, he was the organizer of the kolhoz, therefore a person of stern importance. . . .

“Everything is possible, grandfather, if we all pool our resources and our powers together,” replied the visitor.

More laughter and more derisive comment. . . .

“Tell me, you wretched people, what hope is there for you if you remain on individual pieces of land? Think, and don’t interrupt. . . . From year to year as you increase in population you divide and subdivide your strips of land. You cannot even use machinery on your land because no machine man ever made could stand the rough ridges that the strip system creates. You will have to work in your own old way and stew in your old misery. Don’t you see that under your present system there is nothing ahead of you but ruin and starvation? . . . You do not think of a future, often, twenty, a hundred years from now, and we do. That’s the difference between you and us. The coming generations mean nothing to you. Else you would see a real deliverance in the kolhoz, where you will work with machinery in a modern organized way, with the best seeds obtainable and under the direction of experts. . . . Isn’t it about time you stopped thinking each one for himself, for his own piggish hide? You koolacks of course will never become reconciled to a new order. You love to fatten on other people’s blood. But we know how to deal with you. We’ll wipe you off the face of the earth, even as we have the capitalists in the city. Make no mistake about our intentions and our powers. We shan’t allow you to profit from the weakness of the bedniak. And we shan’t allow you to poison his mind, either! Enough. But the others here—you bedniaks and you seredniaks—what have you gained from this stiff-necked individualism of yours? What? Look at yourselves, at your homes—mud, squalor, fleas, bedbugs, cockroaches, lapti.° Are you sorry to let these go? Oh, we know you muzhiks—too well. . . . You can whine eloquently and pitifully. . . . But we know you—you cannot fool us. We have grown hardened to your wails. Remember that. Cry all you want to, curse all you want to. You won’t hurt us, and I warn you that we shan’t desist. We shall continue our campaign for the kolhozy until we have won our goal and made you free citizens in a free land.”