Blog #16

Maurice Hindus – Red Bread 1931

            Russian born journalist, Maurice Hindus’ describes his return to a Russian village 1929-1930.  He tells his personal peasant neighbors’ responses, the disparity that existed during  Joseph Stalin’s rule.   He describes how Stalin’s kollhozy or collective farms in the Soviet Union, changed the peasants’ lives during the time Stalin ruled Soviet Union for two decades.   Stalin wanted to modernize agriculture that led to having the peasants forced to join collective farms.   If these peasants resisted, they would be sent to prison camps.   Harsh measures including land confiscations, arrests, and deportations to prison camps were inflicted upon al peasants.  Many of these peasants objected violently and they had to leave their private farms.   These peasants had to even slaughter their own livestock and destroyed their farming equipment.   Stalin wanted to destroy the kulaks.  The kulaks opposed communism and were left homeless without anything.   During this time, it was forbidden by law for anyone to aid Kulak families.  Many families perished when they were deported in unbearable living conditions.   Hindus talked further about the social cost and personal suffering.  Thus, the hatred toward the Soviet regime remained intense.   In the end, this might of lead to more efficient farming and increased production; however, many people died in Stalin’s rule and terror.

I conceive that this type of propaganda was a campaign for Stalin’s communist power.   I consider that Stalin’s unyielding cruelness, intimidation, and horror simply did not justify the millions of people who died for his cause.   I admit that Stalin’s reign of terror to modernize Russia, caused people to die from famine, and eventually destroyed the Kulaks.  Finally, I accredit Russia monopoly of power continued even after Stalin’s death as we all know when Hitler arrived and replaced another reign of terror into Ukraine.