Then Came the Collective Farms
The years were quick to disappear, leaving everything behind like old things that have lived out their time and now remain in a museum to remind us of former days. It was 1940 when life was replaced by a new order. Collective farms — kolkhozes — were established. Everything was new and unfamiliar, even unacceptable. But life had to go on. An ordinary person had little choice except to be an obedient servant of those in power, to follow every law and order and, as the brave soldier Švejk was told, keep one's mouth shut and carry on serving. Every beginning is difficult, as the saying goes. And so it began in poverty and hardship. There were no cows or horses to put into the collective-farm barns, yet animals were needed. Where else could they be taken from but from the people who had been forced to become members? With great sorrow, people had to hand over animals that until then had always been fed and cared for under the watchful eye of their owners. My father too gave up his beautiful horse Kati, which he had bought for a great sum — 73,000 Estonian krowns. Now the horse was to become a work animal for the collective farm. It was not long before she died. While chained she caught the chain in a horseshoe, injured her neck while struggling and was taken away as food for foxes.
I can imagine Father's grief. That animal had been his pride and joy. And now such an end.
When joining the collective farm, a family was allowed to keep only one cow, a couple of sheep and a piglet. That was all the property permitted. Both Mother and Father had to start working for the farm, whether in the fields, the cattle sheds or the poultry house. The pay they received was so shamefully small that it is hardly worth speaking of.
I still have Father's notebook, where he recorded the work done day by day. For 571 workdays he received 1,619 roubles and 64 kopecks. Another entry says that on 11 January he received 117 roubles as his December wage. Another note says that over two years he earned 2,054 roubles and 1 kopeck.
Such were the wages in the early days of the collective farms. There was no longer any private land except the half-hectare house-and-garden plot where potatoes and vegetables were grown for the family. There was no grain to bring into one's own granary, everything went into the collective-farm store. The old people joked that even the mouse could now finish its days and die in an empty corner of the grain bin. Hay for that one cow had to be gathered from scrubland and ditch banks.
The unfamiliar life made people bitter, but our small Estonian nation has again and again been a battleground for foreign powers and changing winds. Those who imagine themselves great benefactors and 'world changers' come and go, but the simple truth is that none of them brings us any benefit.
The kind of times and freedom that existed before the formation of the collective farms will certainly never return in exactly the same way. Only we, who were young then, can treasure and remember those days.