The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

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.

Once we couldn’t determine what was the mass of white that had aggregated on the sides of the soup bowls. These were maggots; the soup had been made with completely rotten flour.

No, Misha was not able to treat himself to sour cream here.

208

Chapter Twenty-One

We were charged with compiling a list of how much grain was still due from each farmstead and we dragged ourselves from house to house over barely walked-on, snowy paths. My city boots were soaked through and I wrapped my feet in newspaper. It froze to the soles of the boots. I was coughing violently, but I visualized the headline on the institute’s wall newspaper: “Saboteurs have no place in a Soviet institution of higher education!” And I continued on, making notations with ossified fingers.

For some reason, meetings were always scheduled at night and, in hoarse voices, we translated the stereotypical speeches of the regional orators. Sometimes the kolkhozniks who were “adapting” spoke—those not yet acclimatized usually remained grimly quiet.

Once I was going to a women’s meeting, as usual, scheduled late in the evening. My friend was occupied at the other end of our district and I struggled along on my own from the school. I tried not to lose the path and fall into knee deep snow. Clouds alternately blocked off the sky or revealed a narrow sickle of the cold moon. My path followed a sparse wood, then it led out to the public road. It was there by the woods that I saw a dark figure lying right on the trail and moving slightly to the right and to the left, the way a person does in a shooting gallery preparing for an unerring shot at the target.

I turned cold: at this instant there will be a flash from the sawn-off muzzle. I will fall into the snow and never see my mother again . . . But why would anyone shoot me? The colonists, after all, understand that we are only screws in the machine, that we are incapable of changing anything in this fearful operation. Maybe the person is lying in wait for someone else, not me? To run is hopeless—the shot would get me in the back. I tear off my hat that hides my hair and go directly at the dark figure.

But there is no shot. . . . Only having come up very close do I see that this is a dying horse moving its head in agony. Then I run across the barren, cold fields choking from the tension. Only upon reaching the road do I notice that I am still clutching my hat in my hands.

The trees are covered with bright, still sticky leaves, and baskets of lilies of the valley are being sold in the streets. I really don’t want to be stuck in boring meetings at the institute. But this time I will not be able to slip away easily. My name is listed in the agenda for the day. It is proposed that I and some other friends be inducted into the professional union. This is essential in order to obtain work—but I do not worry since I feel that everything is in place. My grades are high, I have some half dozen social commitments, and my old ladies, housewives whom I am bringing out of illiteracy, are already reading in syllables. And suddenly, completely unexpectedly—rejection.

Tat’iana Fesenko, Internal Dissenter

209

“Comrade Pavlova [the author’s maiden name] must be more fully immersed in the proletarian kettle and definitively reject her bourgeois ways,” drones a horse-jawed student who does not miss the occasion to flaunt his vigilance. “Even today, look at her dress!”