Jan Melnik

“He came at night, he woke the ten fresh Red Army members up and we were given a little piece of paper by him. It was an oath of a fresh soldier: I, Mr X, am taking an oath. We were given a gun each, it was unloaded and without a bayonet, of course. We were asked to read the oath. Then we all had to shout: 'I'm serving the Soviet Union.' Sign. Then we were allowed to lie down and sleep.”

“So I went, I looked – some manure just in the middle of the road and some more on the side. I said to myself: 'Somebody carried manure and the horses were not strong enough so he dropped a little here and there again...' I was approaching it and it got up. It was no manure. It was my ex-classmate from Ivačkov school. 'Have you got any weapons?' I replied: 'What would I do with a weapon.' - 'Well, where have you been?' So I said that... And all of a sudden those there got up as well and let me kind of go.”

“An officer from the People's Committee came and he brought some documents saying that we were supposed to pay a hundred-ruble tax. Our neighbour Šmíd had about 12 hectars and he also had a hundred rubles to pay. My Dad wondered at that and said: 'Is there any justice at all? He has got 12 hectares and one hundred rubles and I have got 5 hectares and I also have one hundred rubles.' - 'One hundred and fifty rubles!' And he crossed a hundred out and wrote one hundred and fifty instead. If you didn't pay it in a fortnight, off you went to Siberia.”

“There were transports to Siberia from Zdolbunov every week. So they came and said: 'There is a solution. Write an application form for a kolkhoz. I, a citizen of the Soviet Union, Mr X, accept me in the kolkhoz. I, my wife, my children, my cattle and also the land, it feeds people here.' So he wrote an application form, he left it in the People's Committee and they had a meeting afterwards – there is such and such problem, there is an application form for the kolkhoz. Who is for? Well, everybody then. And we were actually accepted to the kolkhoz.”