Farming Under the Bolsheviks

Farming Under the Bolsheviks

Next up from the Successful Farmer May 1934 issue is the article  Farming Under The Bolsheviks -by By William Stoneman Moscow Correspondent, Chicago Daily News 

Bolsheviks-gossamer glossary

But first here is a peek at the listing of articles in this issue. 

If you see one you would like to know about any of these you can let us know via the 'More Info?-Get In Touch' button at the bottom of the page.

Before coming upon this article I had only a scratch of insight into the Bolsheviks. 

I am glad to have engraved some key awareness into my brain now, not only relative to the Bolsheviks, but the decades that led up to what William Stoneman calls 

an episode in one of the most dramatic social struggles in history, the fight of the Bolsheviks, backed mainly by the factory-worker class to wrest control of agriculture from individual peasants and to establish it upon a socialistic basis, under the absolute and supreme control of the state 

There was a phase in my life when I would get frustrated and say to the person I blamed for causing my frustration.. "you don't ever know what you don't know".   Now I just apply this to myself, said better as, I don't even know of all the many pieces I don't know. And in response to myself I will say, but I want to know.

There is a depth of history we just don't know.  But there are those who Knew.  And if we want to know too we find them, or their story keepers. 

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn knew.  Not only from his experiences, but he was also the story keeper of the people who shared the period and places he lived through. In his book THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO.  He wrote

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it.
And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all,
for not having divined all of it.

and he also wrote this

Author's Note
For years I have with reluctant heart withheld from publication this already completed book: my obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead. But now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative but to publish it immediately.
In this book there are no fictitious persons, nor fictitious events. People and places are named with their own names. If they are identified by initials instead of names, it is for personal considerations. If they are not named at all, it is only because human memory has failed to preserve their names. But it all took place just as it is here described.

above- photo clip from the 1934 article pages

I read Solzhenitsyn when I was in my mid 20's.  It was a different book than the Gulag Archipelago.  It was so hard.  I read it through to completion but I was so grateful when it was finished.  If it was that hard to read, we can only imagine the pain of writing. 

I read several books of Tolstoy, all of Dostoevski, but no other Solzhenitsyn.  But maybe I will.  I don't know.  But I am glad I read this article from 1934.  I think it is important.

read the part 1 of this 1934 series          

 

                 PLACES         SCHOOLERS         HISTORY     TIME TRAVELLER

 

 

 

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