Tag #114975 - Interview #78047 (Eva Ryzhevskaya)

In the late 1920s collectivization started. Our village was also affected by it. The Soviet regime divided all peasants into three categories: kulak [14], middle and poor. Our family belonged to the third category, and we had nothing to lose. There were so-called kulaks in our village - hard- working people, whose families, including children, were involved in hard agricultural labor from morning till night. Of course, they had good houses, horses and cows. Everything was taken away from those people, and they were sent to Siberia. We weren't touched, as there was nothing they could have taken from us. The kolkhoz was founded after the dispossession of the kulaks.