Mr. HARMASH: I wonder myself. I think that the officials, they knew the condi¬tions. They could do nothing, but they had to fulfill orders from the center to send somebody to the village to organize them working on the fields, and there was nobody.
They knew it
I was afraid, of course, for months, but the punishment never was executed.
Senator DeCONCINI: They needed you, you think?
Mr. HARMASH: Oh, yes, I was the helper of the director. I was technical director actually in the soviet farm or state farm.
Senator DeCONCINI: And for that reason, they overlooked it?
Mr. HARMASH: That’s very possible, too.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Mr. Harmash, you were the director of the state farm?
Mr. HARMASH: No, the director was a member of the Communist Party.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: You had a high position?
Mr. HARMASH: He got the high position. He was the leader of the state farm. Previously he was a sailor. He knew nothing about agriculture. Beside him was sitting man who did know something about agriculture. He was administrator, unpolitical su¬pervisor of the business.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Did they tell you what they were doing? Did they explain to you the policies, what they were doing with the grain?
Mr. HARMASH: Well, at the state farm, there was no policy concerning the vil¬lages or the agriculture in general It was only local business, what we did on the state farm. We did have some supply for food, and also supply for the seedlings. We get grain, wheat, oats, and we get potatoes to put into the soil.
Otherwise, because I was just witnessing the observation in the village, because the original authority mobilized me, and I was sent from the state farm to help. It was an exchange of help. Of course, I was there overnight, and I ran from there so fast as I could.
Dr. KUROPAS: You mentioned it was a sailor in charge of the collective farm?
Mr. HARMASH: Right
Dr. KUROPAS: And he had no agricultural background?
Mr. HARMASH: He came from agriculture during the revolution, and his family was destroyed during the revolution and civil war, so he was an orphan, somewhere brought up in the so-called orphanage house.
Later on, when he grew up, he was drafted to the Army, Soviet Army. He finished his duty, and he joined the Communist Party, and he was sent to do party politics in some sort of business. In this respect, it was the state farm. He might go in some in¬dustrial outfit or somewhere else, but he came on the order of the party to this state farm.
Dr. KUROPAS: So he was a party functionary?
Mr. HARMASH: Yes, that’s correct He was a party functionary, and I was right under him.
Dr. KUROPAS: Did he make any decisions that dealt directly with the way the
farm was run?
Mr. HARMASH: Sometimes he did. He was already for several years on the farm. Gradually he got acquainted with the business of farming. In some instances, he did his decision.