Dr. CONQUEST: They are still collectivized, the system is still the same. There are some prospects of and in some areas they have tried out family contract schemes, but still under the collective system, not really owning the land. But even that gives more incentive than they have had over this period.

Congressman GILMAN: There have been a number of articles written about the kulaks, the peasants being on their own, and a kind of sub-economy developing. Is that widespread in the Soviet Union?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, they had to allow, right from the start, the peasant to have
a small private plot, which was supposed simply to support him. And, in fact, the
private plot ever since has produced a very high proportion of the salable agricultural
product in the Soviet Union. And without that, they would be in much, much worse
condition.

But that doesn’t account at all for grain, this only accounts for some livestock and
some fruit and things like that

Congressman GILMAN: Did this pressure for collectivization occur only in the Uk¬raine, or did it occur throughout the Soviet Union?
Dr. CONQUEST: It occurred throughout the Soviet Union, though at different tem¬pos and in different proportions, in some of the more distant areas a few individual farmers were allowed for sometime—but it was the heaviest and quickest in the Uk¬raine.
Congressman GILMAN: Why was it so severe in the Ukraine, as compared to other areas?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, I think that there are two reasons, one is that the Ukraine in population had always shown itself less easy to control, and so they wanted to en¬force control on them more strongly than they did anywhere else.
Secondly, it was a great grain-producing area and grain was the key to the whole. This is the main thing, meat at that point wasn’t very important, it was hardly eaten at all. They needed grain and they used it for various purposes, as they still do, they have a strategic reserve of grain against war.
Congressman GILMAN: What was the extent of the deportation? How many Uk¬rainian peasants were deported from their homeland as a result of this effort?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, they weren’t deported during the famine from the Ukraine. I mean individuals were, an odd family, as having committed crimes like keeping a few ears of corn—they were left to starve on the spot.

The deportations hit the Ukraine earlier-I have seen various figures, the total deportation from all over the Soviet Union is somewhere around 10 million. The Uk¬raine certainly had about a million of those, and probably more.
Congressman GILMAN: There was an internal deportation though, they didn’t allow them to leave the country itself, is that correct?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, they didn’t allow them to leave their villages, if you count that as deportation, it really removed the rest of the country from them, in a sense, rather than they from the country. In some areas of the Ukraine, in some districts, quite a few districts were blockaded even within this blockade, nothing was allowed into them at all, no consumer goods.
Congressman GILMAN: Nor were they allowed out of those areas?
Dr. CONQUEST: No, no.