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The people are too weak
to work
…..seed
and the people are too weak. We
are all weak and hungry. The winter sowing was bad and the winter
ploughing also bad.
He took me along to his cottage. His daughter and three little
children. Two of the smaller children were swollen.
“If you had come before the Rev[lution] we would have given you chickens and
eggs and milk and fine bread. Now we have no bread in the house.
They are killing us. People are dying of hunger.”
There was in the hut a spindle and the daughter
showed me how to make thread. The peasant showed me his shirt which was
home made and some fine sacking which was home-made. “But the
Bolsheviks are crushing that. They won’t take it. They want
factory to make everything.
The
peasant ate some v[ery] thin soup with a scrap of potato. No bread in
the house. The white bread they thought was wonderful.
The hut had eight ikons, ?path. tawdry and cheap. |
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Two
soldiers came and they asked heaps of questions. The bourgeoisie
were crushing the working classes in England. They shot down
demonstrations. Communists sat in prisons and England was going to
declare war on Russia.
They had come to arrest a peasant thief who had killed another. The thief had
gone to steal potatoes from the hut of the other. The owner of
the hut had come out and the peasant had stabbed her with a knife. There were
many cases of that happening.
The Red Army soldier who came also said: “Don’t travel by night. There
are many wild uncultured men who want food and to steal.”
Went to bed late, slept on floor. In one bed president, his wife and
her sister in small bed of child.
Woke up next morning before eight. The Communist leader of the next
Kolkhoz was there. Keen rev:. “We’ve difficulties but they have
to be overcome. “There is seed in this
village. Cattle decrease is disastrous. There used
to be 200 cattle. Now 6 horses and cattle down by
tremendous amount.” The New Tax, the Communists |
