by Olga Chaplin
Stalin’s Five Year Plans, begun in the countryside even before the 1929 official date, targeted the independent small farmers, most of whom were in the Ukraine, the empire’s ‘black-soil’ region, its perennial ‘bread basket’. His collectivisation struck off all of Lenin’s land production policies; worse still, it dismembered the very social group which produced the grain for the empire. With the Ukraine’s grain output constant, yearly, and it being geographically placed ideally for all food grown in a Russian empire, which had seen privation and poor harvests every second year of the previous Tsarist regime, the disruption to the Ukraine’s wheat and other production was catastrophic.
Understandably, the Ukrainian farmers were unwilling to give up their land without a fight. But this is what Stalin wanted. Labelling any farmer unwilling to leave his land a ‘kulak’ (wealthy opportunist farmer under the old regime), his ruthless methods of charges, imprisonment, executions, and sentences to Siberian labour camps, at the same time starving the Ukrainian people of grain for the sowing season, had the desired effect. Over six million Ukrainians died in the period 1929 to 1933. More importantly, for Stalin, he took absolute control over the Ukrainian people who, even under Lenin’s leadership, had been respected and encouraged to increase their farm productivity, which was so vital to the welfare of all of Russia. From a society which saw the Tsar with his ‘munificent benevolence’ bumble along, yet not take away farmers’ livelihoods, Russia, by the early 1930s saw its new ‘Tsar’, Stalin, a totalitarian dictator, ruling with an iron fist, supported by his legions of soviet cadres, akin to unionists, eager to gain his support. Few of these would have realised that they, in turn, would become Stalin’s victims as the Five Year Plans faltered and as Stalin, with brazen power, took on first the soviets, then the bureaucracy, the Bolshevik Party and, ultimately, the Red Army forces, to irrevocably change the nature of Soviet society: a police state, ruled by fear.
His decimation of the armed forces, in the purges from 1934 to 1939, cost Russia and all its people dearly, as Hitler turned on his previous co-signatory of Poland’s fate, and invaded Russia in June 1941: the infamous Operation Barbarossa, in a three-pronged attack. Yet again, the Ukrainian people suffered as Hitler’s armies secured control over most of the Ukraine, its agricultural and other resources supplying his growing military empire in years to come. Hero Stalin used his genius to hide behind young untried soldiers and marshals and hastily created generals, as they fought valiant campaigns to stop Hitler’s armies within forty kilometres of Moscow. With over twenty million Russian, Ukrainian and other nationalities’ lives lost in the struggle against Hitler’s imperialism, it could be said that the Soviet Union people’s victory over Hitler was in spite of, rather than because of Stalin, whatever his image and speeches from the Kremlin portrayed at the time.
But again, all those touched by the war were affected in different ways: in the Ukraine, more so than in other regions, as German armies retreated, and took back with them over eight million labourers to Germany’s heartlands, many of them Ukrainians; most of them, never to see their homeland or loved ones again.
It is to the credit of peace-loving peoples the world over, to the attempts made by the new United Nations after 1945, and the true desire of so many western countries to uphold the ideals and laws of democracy, that we can say, with a certain tempered pride, that Europe itself has passed from its dark days of Mussolini’s, Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes to a more honest appraisal of society under totalitarian dictatorship; though we should be ever vigilant of such a return.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My kind and generous-hearted parents shared with us, their children, and with their many friends, the stories of their life in Ukraine and the journey of their removal from their country. It is a precious inheritance for which I am immensely grateful, as it portrays the richness and depth of their culture despite the hardships endured by them and their countrymen and women during that time.
I am also grateful to the writing members of the informally-named Bay Road Writers, present and past, for their tolerance of my halting efforts and their encouragement throughout. My especial thanks go to Anne Lovell and Margaret Grace, whose talent, wisdom and forbearance know no bounds.
That I could be so fortunate as to have found such a professional publisher in Caroline Webber is yet another gift bestowed on me, in her superb mentoring, editing and publishing skills and knowledge, which have enabled me to complete this personal journey of honouring my parents and their lives, in what is for me the only meaningful way that I can.
Caroline’s suggestions, and Gloria Tsang’s sensitive interpretation of the story in the cover design of this book, are very much appreciated.
My appreciation, thanks and love go to my children Rodney and Jacqueline for all their encouragement in my writing endeavours.
My heartfelt thanks, reserved until now, go to my husband Ric, whose humour, kindness, support and love endure beyond all else.