police were unable to quell this revolt A detachment of the N.K.V.D, was sent out to put down the revolt How many peasants were killed on the spot, I don’t know; but every day, toward the evening, I went down to the railroad depot, and, with an aching heart, observed as groups of peasants from the village were loaded into freight cars— whole families with their small children—headed for Siberia.

Returning shortly thereafter to Odessa, I saw that the city was experiencing even more difficulties supplying provisions. The ration-card system was not equipped to supply the needs of the population. The black market reigned supreme. The ‘dekulakization’ of the urban population was under way. The more or less ‘wealthy’ persons, such as doctors, lawyers, and former merchants, were rounded up at night and taken to jail. There, through intimidation and torture, they were forced to give up all the valuables that they might have. Those who didn’t want to surrender their valu¬ables, and those who had none, were crammed into cells like sardines, in such a way that they could not even sit but were forced to stand. An acquaintance of mine stood in that manner for two weeks. His legs swelled up and he remained an invalid for the rest of his life.

This ‘initiative’ of the secret police was justified by the need to have hard cash to buy tractors, especially Fords, to ensure that the new collective farms had the neces¬sary equipment. As a joke, the people called these victims ‘tractor drivers’, and called this process of extracting gold — ‘zoloto’ in Ukrainian—lzolotukha\ or ‘mumps’, after the childhood illness of that name.

The village, wrestling with collectivization and not wanting to give up all its live¬stock and tools to the collective farms (in effect, to the State), slaughtered cattle and brought the meat to market. As a result, the Ukraine was left barren. Even after the man-made famine was over, problems with the supply of meat appeared. Then Stalin advised the new collective farms to raise rabbits for meat, relying on their rapid and copious reproduction. Nothing came of this, but the rabbits were nicknamed ‘Stalin’s bull’.

The famine started—that is, when they took away all the meager reserves from the Ukrainian peasants. Those who had some clothing or other articles came to the city, to the market, to sell it and buy bread. But bread was sold by ration cards. A black market emerged, and the high prices did nothing to resolve the hunger problem. Starving, ragged peasants staggered through the city. On the streets, especially on the outskirts of town, lay the bodies of those who died of starvation.

The government did all it could to make sure no one saw this, because many foreign vessels came to Odessa’s ports to take the ’surplus’ Ukrainian grain and other mer¬chandise abroad. They exported everything in order to get foreign capital for the ‘needs of the state’—to buy tractors and for propaganda abroad, among other things. The city ‘cleaned up’ the corpses every morning. A special club was created for foreign sailors to prevent them from going into the city and seeing what they could not have missed. At the club they were entertained and distracted, even with girls.

I also had the opportunity to witness the ’show of prosperity’ staged to pull the wool over the eyes of the French minister Herriot, who was invited to the Ukraine to con¬vince him that there was no famine. (He was undoubtedly convinced when he received a number of rare paintings from museums.) As proof that life was absolutely normal, they escorted him along streets that had been especially prepared for him.