«I remember the 40s well. Payment in our kolkhoz was enough for one kilogramme of bread for a day's work. You can work it out for yourself, well, for example, a hard-working kolkhoznik could earn between 500 to 600 working-days per year. In other words, 500–600 working days' of bread is what you could earn in a year, and you'd have to work every day, that's one thing I remember very clearly, from my memories. Then as far as the organisation of the kolkhoz went – I was very young then, older women told me how that all happened in ..., maybe that would be interesting. In 1935, the kolkhoz was set up, and by that time there were already other kolkhozes, which had been organised more or less according to people's free choice, but kolkhoz... was organised by a Commissar called Kagan, who used to go into a house, put his pistol on the table, and then ask – 'Are you willing to join the kolkhoz?'. In 1932, the population of that village was 180 people, and in 1939 there were only 70 people in the village, in other words, before the war 110 people emigrated to Saint Petersburg, which had strong connections in the revolutionary years.
Other kolkhozes were organised in the same way at that time, for example according to my mother, not far from where we lived – it's Luzhskij region now, there was a settlement. There were 25 small population points ('khutors'), and in 1935 they were all forced into the kolkhoz, and the livestock too, into one place. But the tragedy of that kolkhoz was made even worse in 1937: well, in every family there was obviously a head of the family, a man... and 25 smallholdings got together in one kolkhoz. First of all the chairman of the kolkhoz went round at night time, knocking on the doors, and they took away the head of the household. So first of all they took 23 people, and then they took the head of the kolkhoz away as well, I mean – they didn't come back. Then it was made known that they'd been given 10 years each, without the right to correspond, and you can find them only in the records of Memorial. In other words, they were shot. And then that Estonian kolkhoz had another disaster, just like other Estonian settlements. They came and chopped down ('stropili'?) and ordered everyone to move to a new place, and as a result of that resettlement, my parents ended up in the village of Radolitsa in 1939, then in 1943, I was born. Well – you can say what you like, but it was those 'repressions' that helped me to be born.
Then there's the fate of my mother: in 1934, my grandfather's family was 'de-kulakised'. My mother didn't even finish the 4th class at school, she was born in 1922, and in 1934 she finished the 4th class. They took everything, the family was forced out of the house – 'go – wherever'.
My grandfather sent his 2 daughters to his parents to look after the livestock for the khutor. And in 1935, my mother was still in that place... and in the spring, in April 1935, the whole family – my grandfather, grandmother, 4 children were sent off to the Urals, to the Perm region. But it didn't end there: in 1938, my grandfather and grandmother were shot, they worked at that time at the piloram, you know, as son of an evacuee. They were shot as political spies – you know, that Article 58.
As far as other aspects of life at that time were concerned, well I remember, for example, how difficult... that is – I was born into a kolkhoz, and from the first day I was counted as one of the members of the kolkhoz, then when the time came, later on, around the 50s or 60s, to study, you had to pass an exam to get into the institute, and then you got an official declaration from the institute to say that you had studied there. And after that, only on the 30th August 1961, when I was 18, then I was given the right to receive a passport. In the Pskov region, a passport for members of the kolkhoz was impossible to get, I can assure you of that. It's often said in the press that Khrushev gave the kolkhoz members passports. But it wasn't like that... a large number of the Karl Marx kolkhoz members received a passport only at the beginning of 1979 – that wasn't anything to do with the Khrushev 'thaw'. That was to do with the Yeltsin (sic) Declaration, which Brezhnev signed in 1975 and that meant he had to give everyone a passport in 1979.
Then about other things.. what can I say... well, for example, there's a lot of rubbish about deliberate 'sabotage' concerning livestock. I mean, sensible people have explained to me... yes, the number of livestock began to fall. It was all said to be a result of sabotage. What can you say: we're talking about war. A village was half burned down. The livestock was in the forest, the village was ready, the population was hiding in dug-outs, trenches – so there were no victims among the villagers. The only thing that died was a single butterfly!
Then when I was 2 weeks old, the house was burnt down where I was born, with all my nappies (??). I spent 2 days living in a hut with my parents. Of course we didn't die from starvation.
Then there's one other memory from my childhood, which makes you cry, perhaps. My friends, older than me, their fathers died or went to gaol. I had 2 friends like that. And I go round to see them and they're baking bread. They offer me some bread. I go home and ask 'why don't you bake lovely bread like my friends?' My Dad calls me an idiot and says 'you should try it round their place tomorrow!' In other words, they baked bread, but half the flour was made out of potato skins. So yes, it was warm, and you could eat it, but what else... Well, in theory, I mean it was wartime.
Maybe one more thing worth remembering – in the village these 70 people were called up to go to war. About the same number of evacuees were brought here, based here. Well to our credit, I can say that in my village not one evacuee died from hunger. That is, stuff was shared out. Not a lot, but it was shared. So that was a victory of the civilian population, we forget that 70 people saved maybe another 70 evacuees.
Then once we were playing with a small knife, and we lost it in a furrow and then when they carried out a search, because of us two people were sent to gaol, one of them for 3 years. Whose fault was it? The system. There we go, maybe I've missed something out. That's probably all.»