In 1944 a new family law was put into effect.58 Thenceforth the state would recognize only registered marriages. The notion of illegitimate children was revived. Although these children received no such official designation, a dash was entered in the "father" space on their birth certificates. Divorce procedures were made more difficult: mutual consent became necessary, and the state charged a rather large sum. The state also stressed the responsibility of the family to raise children in a Communist (i.e., conformist) spirit. The long-term objective of the law was to increase the population. Abortion was prohibited. Single mothers received government aid, and special government awards and honors were introduced for mothers of large families.
The 1944 law on the family reflected the social transformations the society had undergone. Present-day Soviet society, with its conformism and its deep longing for tranquility after long years of trials and sufferings was coming into being. If the first postrevolutionary generation wanted to break free of the constraints of the "old ways," the survivors of the 1920s and 1930s dreamed of stable family lives, perhaps even a return to the mythical "good old days." But the wishes of the population clashed sharply with the policies of the state. The family as the base unit of this unique form of society, which was absorbed by the state, could also become a source of resistance. For many, it was a shelter and a defense against the party's "all-seeing eyes" and the government's "all-hearing ears."
Schools continued to be separate for each sex, a practice put into effect during the war. This segregated education of schoolchildren had very negative psychological consequences. Schoolboys wore military-type uniforms and caps reminiscent of those in the lycees of tsarist times. Putting uniforms on civil servants and schoolchildren was a way of regimenting society typical of Stalin's last years. There is rumored to have been a plan to introduce uniforms for full and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences, but the number of stars for academicians' shoulder patches could not be decided upon.
The uniform dress codes in civilian life symbolized the essential features of Soviet society in the later Stalin years.
Agriculture
In 1947 famine struck a major part of the European territory of the country. The areas that had been occupied by the Germans, and pillaged by Germans and Soviets alike, were especially affected. The famine resulted from serious droughts, which struck the breadbasket of European Russia: a significant portion of the Ukraine, Moldavia, the lower Volga regions, central Russia, and the Crimea. During the preceding years the state had forced the kolkhozes to turn over to the state excessive amounts of grain, sometimes not even leaving enough for seed. Thus, the country had exhausted its grain reserves. Still the state demanded that the peasants, who had been completely robbed of grain, deliver millions of tons of grain. For example, in 1946, in the midst of the drought, Ukrainian collective farmers were forced to deliver 400 million poods (131 million centners). This figure, like most of the other plan targets, had been arbitrarily determined; it did not correspond in any way to the real capacities of Ukrainian agriculture.
In desperation the peasants wrote letters to the Ukrainian government in Kiev and the central government in Moscow, imploring them to intercede and save them from death. Khrushchev, who at the time was first party secretary in the Ukraine, after long hesitation and fearing that he would be accused of sabotage, decided to write a letter to Stalin asking for authorization to set up a temporary rationing system and retain some agricultural produce to feed the rural population.59 Stalin crudely rejected the request in a reply sent by telegram. After that, hunger and death inevitably awaited the Ukrainian peasants. They began to die by the thousands. Cases of cannibalism were even reported. In his memoirs, Khrushchev quoted a letter sent to him by A. I. Kirichenko, first party secretary of the Odessa Region, who had visited a kolkhoz in the winter of 1946—47: "I found a scene of horror," said he. 'The woman had the corpse of her own child on the table and was cutting it up. She was chattering away as she worked, 'We've already eaten Manechka. Now we'll salt down Vanechka. This will keep us for some time.' Can you imagine? This woman had gone crazy with hunger and butchered her own children."60
But Stalin and his close assistants did not wish to acknowledge this terrible reality. The merciless Kaganovich was sent to the Ukraine as the party's first secretary. Khrushchev fell temporarily into disgrace and was transferred to the post of chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars. But no mere reshuffling of personnel could save the situation. The famine continued and took nearly a million lives.
After the end of the war, energetic measures were taken to assimilate the newly annexed western parts of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Moldavia into the political and economic system existing in the rest of the country. Several methods were used, including deportations, agrarian reform, "de- kulakization," collectivization, and the importation of settlers from the old parts of the Soviet Union.
First came a new deportation of "politically unreliable" and "alien class" elements. In the countryside, property was confiscated from the rich landowners, and in the initial stages land was divided among the poor and landless peasants. But very soon, as early as 1947, collectivization began, meeting resistance from the peasantry. Two years after the beginning of collectivization, for example, in the summer of 1949, despite all means of coercion, pressure, deportation, and intimidation, 30 percent of all peasant households in Estonia remained in individual hands.
In Latvia the stage of agrarian reform was rapidly concluded. The official history of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic says that the party, following tradition, "went from a policy of limiting the kulaks to eliminating them as a class. In forming kolkhozes, the peasants would vote not to include kulaks in them." But as was to be expected, "wreckers" soon made their appearance. "Active saboteurs," the book tells us, "were brought to justice; other kulaks were expelled from the country [i.e., deported to Siberia— A. N.] and their lands annexed to the kolkhozes."61 Mass arrests in the Baltic countries did not spare even deputies to the Supreme Soviet. In Lithuania, when one of the victims said, "What are you doing? I am a deputy!" the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) arresting officer replied calmly, "No matter, there is a need for deputies in Siberia, too."
The authors of the textbook History of the USSR: The Epoch of Socialism, published in 1974, wrote:
The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party, with its resolution of May 21, 1947, on the formation of kolkhozes in the Baltic countries, warned the local authorities that in this important question they should not be hasty and recommended that kolkhozes be created on a fully voluntary basis with modern machinery and well-equipped machine and tractor stations (MTSs) available. In preparing for collectivization, the most basic forms of peasant cooperation played an important role.62
The textbook accurately reported the wording of the resolution but significantly said nothing about the actual events. The following excerpts from a 1958 History of the Latvian SSR do.
There was no attempt, it reports, to "use existing forms of agricultural cooperation... as a point of departure. The large network of agricultural cooperatives, which embraced nearly three-quarters of the small farms in Latvia, was dismantled. ... Collectivization of the bulk of the peasantry was carried out in the spring of 1949 at a forced pace which, in a number of cases, led to a violation of the voluntary principle."63 The disparity between these two versions of history is immense. The first falsifies the situation; the second addresses what actually took place. The first does not mention that forced collectivization was a cause of the outbreak of armed resistance in the Latvian countryside, which was followed by mass repression. The second version makes it clear: 'The Soviet government was forced to isolate a portion of the kulaks and other hostile elements."64