The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1921-11-10

way to the next village in the hope Of
land was natiOnalized, and wholesale
acquisitions for the town workers and
the Red army commenced.
''In the spring of 1919 the seat of
Government was removed from Sara
toff to Katharinenstadt. We changed
the name of the town to 'Marxstadt,'
for we thought that if our capital
were named after Marx, instead of
after the Empress who invited our
ancestors to Russia, then, perhaps,
Moscow would treat US more fratern-
ally! But no such luck. MoscOw's
attitude to US might be resumed IN
the sentence, You kolbosniki (saus-
age-eaters) are far too fat as yet
and they went ahead with their re-
QUESTIONS. 1t is only very short time
ago that they stopped calling US Fat
sausage-eaters, boarding the grain
needed by the Red proletariat;' by
that time already some thousands Of
US were lying starving and listless,
waiting for death by the Volga.
But, to go back to the story of the
acquisitions" went on the doctor; ''in
the first place, We ourselves were to
blame.
an spite of all we had suffered
from the Civil War in 1918, we yet
had a splendid harvest in 1919, and
this circumstance, coupled with our
tremendous exertions, enabled US to
deliver the whole enormous sum of
grain demanded by the Government
thirteen million pools. We delivered
it punctuaIly too-and this was our
undoing. How often we have since
cursed this wretched punctuality of
ours! Moscow made sure that we
could easily deliver much more, and
next year doubled the amount to be
requisitioned. But next year our
harvest was a total failure. The
peasants had sown much less, for the
acquisitions had left US no food for
our cattle, which were far too weak
to drag the plough through the heavy
black earth of the steppes. And then,
to tell the truth, we had no heart to
toll and MOL, when we did not receive
the fruit of our labour. Moscow had
not kept its promises. We had re
ceived nothing in exchange for all our
grain except, perhaps, a wretched
yard or two of cotton per soul, and a
soul cannot dress itself with a yard or
two of cotton" (The doctor had ac-
quired the Russian habit of speaking
of people as "souls.') "And from US
they had taken everything. A colony
of 1000 had had to deliver $4,000
pools of grain, 5000 pools of meat,
500 pools of butter, and $4,000 eggs.
''In 1920 our harvest yielded only
100000 pools, and that was not
enough for the needs of the colony it
self. But Moscow refused to believe
our statement, and the Rayprodkom
Good Control Department. sent its
Commissioners with a strong detach-
ment of troops from village to village,
but, in spite of Terrorist methods,
they collected only a negligible
quantity of grain. Moscow refused
to accept this negative result, and our
detachments of armed workmen, and
Red Army soldiers from Tula, under
the leadership of new Rayprod Com
missioners. These detachments called
themselves appropriately The Iron
Broom They suspected the exist
ence of great stores of hidden grain
left over from last years harvest,
whereas in reality nothing of the kind
existed. AS a matter of fact, the
peasants had foreseen some such visit
alton as the Iron Broom and had
buried in some cases a small quantity
of grain for seed purposes and some
times little store for their own min
imum requirements till next harvest
The Iron Broom terrorized the peas
ants into revealing the whereabouts
of this grain buried in the ground.
Often peasant was shut up in cold
storage in an icy shed or taken out in
to the fields in winter and tied to a
stake by Red Guards, who then poured
pail of water over him, and gave
him the choice of being left to freeze
to death or of revealing his real or
supposed hidden store. Many met
their death, unable to reveal the
whereabouts of non-existent grain;
others preferred Immediate death to
exposing themselves and families to
the certainty of slow death from
starvation. Some few succeeded in
battling their prosecutors.