Mr, DANILENKO: Well, it preceded, perhaps, with a certain propaganda new Socialist order for which I was too young to comprehend. And based on that propaganda, it started to materialize in the direction of first, inviting to join the collec¬tive farms, inviting I say, but in fact they did say it was a voluntary thing, but then when that didn’t work, they started to use stronger means. And, perhaps, the fact that collectivization didn’t work too well-all those things that followed later were employed.

My own father, even though he wasn’t a kulak by their definition, or kurkul as they used to say, but he was independent and he just couldn’t see how he would voluntarily join the collective farm. And because of this, he was tried~I mentioned about his trial -he was tried in connection with another function that he was assigned to perform, namely, in addition to having his grain and his quotas were fulfilled, he was made responsible for fulfilling quotas of the neighbors.

He didn’t want the function, so to speak, but then he said okay, if you want me to, I will do it, but don’t expect me to take anything from anybody by force. And obviously, his quotas were not fulfilled and he was sent for trial. And I don’t know, I think I may have gone a little off your question, sir.
Congressman HERTEL: And, of course, when these trials took place, and when your aunt was sentenced, the people of course had no rights, no chance, it was a fixed trial
Mr. DANILENKO: Normally, even though I am not an authority on it, I know what it happened to my father, he probably was an exception at that trial when he said, no, I am not guilty. That didn’t help, he still got his two years of labor camp. He ran away after about a year or so, but then he was caught again, and after two or three months, I think he was acquitted—somebody looked over his problems, so to speak, and he was acquitted from that incident, trial and two years of labor camp.

In other words, he probably fulfilled about half of the term and he was acquitted. But that was just in good times yet, so to speak. The famine and the starvation hasn’t, in essence, begun yet, because it was slightly before. It may have been in 1931 and 1932, the incident that I just finished relating. Congressman HERTEL: Thank you. Questions from the Commission? (No response)

Thank you very much, sir, for coming to speak to us.

Mr. Sviatoslav Karavansky, is a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group who left the Soviet Union as a part of a prisoner exchange seven years ago and is now living in Denton, Maryland. Thank you for coming, sir.

TESTIMONY OF MR. SVIATOSLAV KARAVANSKY

Mr. KARAVANSKY: From my childhood years I remembered that from 1929 the beginning of industrialization and collectivization, our family and all of the people of Odessa suffered a great shortage of food. Buttermilk, milk, sugar, and even bread dis¬appeared from the stores. In the period 1929-1930 the whole city turned to the ration¬ing system. The entire population lived on rations. The portions that were handed