life down on the kohoz.
When my host father was my age the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union was marked by the Miracle on Ice in a little town called Lake Placid by a group of young, American hockey players. He spent the prime of his life working in a kohoz or collective farm. Today, he told me about what life was like working back then. His account is as followed, summarized and converted to English.
„Back in the Soviet times, we had 5000 people in the village. Now it is only 2000 because people leave to work in other countries. Also, back then people had 4,5,6 kids and now they only have one. We worked in brigades. Brigades had 30 or 40 people. Everyday a brigade would be told, you pick grapes today, you work grain today. We had a brigade of 45 tractors and I worked on the tractor brigade because I went to university for tractors. If you don’t go to work you need to have a slip of paper to say why that says i was in the health center or has some excuse. The village never decided what work was to be done. The raion (county) told us what to do, what to grow. It made life easy because we never had to think, no one had to think about what to do. We got a small salary, things were cheap (namely food). „
Be honest with yourself, the theoretical version of it is bit enticing. Never having to think about how to make money allows one to be carefree knowing that they will be provided for. Thinking that smart minds can get in a room together, perfectly allocate labor, and then predict the exact productivity that „un-thinking” labor will produce. We know how disastrously it all turned out, but you can certainly see the appeal. This is one of the reasons I was so enticed to come to this country, though. I may have mentioned this before, but I am now living in a place where, when I was born, I would be considered an enemy of the state. I would be the evil, hedonistic capitalist from the american empire. Hearing about life in those times, before first hand knowledge is lost,is one of the benefits of being in Moldova. These stories are devoid of political rhetoric or any judgment on a correct economic policy. These are first hand accounts, unaltered by the winner take all history we produce. It’s just about how people went on living, and how families were raised. Stories about caroling from door to door, or popping pop corn over a wood stove. A simpler time for some, probably through the distortion of nostalgia, and a disaster time for other, through the relocation and imprisonment of millions who even gave thought to opposing the totalitarian regime.
I enjoy hearing these stories devoid of the vilification of those forced to live under communism. It should never be used to downplay the atrocities committed by the totalitarian regime of Stalin, just a small reminder that our common interests as human beings extend even into the places we vilify. That people we may have seen as enemies, bear no ill will towards us, but are simply victims of circumstance.
