International Journal of Sociology, vol. 31, no. 4, Winter 2001-2002, pp. 64-78. ©

2002 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 0020-7659/2002 $9.50 + 0.00.

ANNA ENGELKING

The Mentality of Kolkhoz Inhabitants

Research Notes from the Grodno Region of Belarus

Anna Engelking, Ph.D., is an ethnographer, cultural anthropologist, and associate

professor in the Department of Belarusian Culture at the University of Bialystok in

Poland. She conducts empirical research in Belarusian kolkhoz villages [agricultural

collective farms], studying the problems of national identity of their inhabitants. She is

also involved in ethnosociological research in Belarus.

Translated by Jerzyna Slomczynska.

ABSTRACT: The article is based on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research

conducted since 1993 in kolkhoz villages of the Grodno region in northwestern

Belarus, using qualitative methods aimed at elucidating the commonly shared opinion

among the interviewed villagers that "the kolkhoz has to stay " because "people would

perish without it." By analyzing the kolkhozniks' opinions that were recorded during

the fieldwork the author offers a number of possible explanations for the acceptance of

kolkhoz life at the grass-roots level. She demonstrates that, in the Soviet system, which,

in a way, preserved the structure of the feudal estate, a mythological way of thinking

and the elements of a feudal outlook on life survived as well. The author points to

peasant stoicism and pragmatism as well as fatalism to explain people's adaptation to

uneasy kolkhoz reality. This is the result of accepting the reality of life because of a

mythological belief in the world structure and order. In this belief, God is perceived at

the top of a hierarchical structure of the world as its ultimate ruler. The corresponding

human reality, that is, the social structure, is also hierarchical—with the president, or

the government, at the top, their representatives and officials in the middle, and the

simple folks—the kolkhozniks— at the bottom.

In presenting the establishment of kolkhozes into the life of Belarusian peasants, the

author demonstrates how the Soviet authorities overcame peasant resistance against

the new system and how the defeated people perceived their action—as a violent coup

of the antisacrum against two fundamental values of peasant culture: religious faith

and the farmer's work. Describing further transformation that eventually produced a

peculiar symbiosis of the kolkhoz and the kolkhozniks—a complicated system of

mutual services, benefits, and dependencies that blurred the distinction between what

belonged to the kolkhoz and what belonged to the people—the author demonstrates

that this symbiosis also involves the district and the church. In Belarusian reality, both

the kolkhoz and the church are postfeudal and post-Soviet institutions. Together they

encompass and organize the life, work, and religious practice of the villagers in

focusing on basic values of their culture. A direct interdependence between their way

of life and mentality, on the one hand, and the functioning of the kolkhoz and the

church, on the other hand, attests to the prolonged life of the feudal model, which

cannot escape the researcher's attention.

The kolkhoz has to stay.

People would perish without it.

Common belief in "The Bright Way" kolkhoz

Since 1993 I have been engaged in conducting ethnographic and sociolinguistic research

in rural Belarus. Groups of students from the University of Warsaw are also involved in

the fieldwork. We often go together to kolkhoz1 villages located in the Grodno region in

northwestern Belarus. Our research is stationary and it requires several returns to the

same locality. In the field-work we apply qualitative techniques, in particular, directed

conversations and interviews based on a questionnaire involving open questions.

Participant observation is also an important research tool in our study (Engelking 1999).

We focus not on objective reality, but on a culture-dependent perception of this reality,

that is, on a system of beliefs, opinions, values, and conscious or unconscious stereotypes

that are more or less verbalized in a given community. We gain insight into this

perception of reality by initiating conversations with members of the culture we are

studying and by making observations about their behavior. Gradually, we get to know the

communities under study more thoroughly and obtain insight into the inner system of this

culture (Guriewicz 1987: 13).

So far, we have conducted 400 conversations with the inhabitants of three kolkhozes

and one sovkhoz.2 In Belarus there are no villages without either a kolkhoz or a sovkhoz.

Farmers who have taken over land ownership from the state—which has been legally

possible since the early 1990s—are still a rarity in the Belarusian countryside. During our

eight years of research, we encountered only two individual farmers.

Among our respondents in the kolkhozes of the Grodno region—a very interesting area

for its borderline characteristics of ethnicity, language, and religion—there were

1 Kolkhoz is a Soviet word denoting an agricultural farm or enterprise that is collectively owned by its members-farmers. Since the kolkhoz was founded as a form of cooperative, membership in it was—theoretically—voluntary. Practice, however, was quite different; it is discussed in this article in the section under the subheading "The Beginnings of Kolkhozes." Sovkhoz is a state-owned equivalent of a kolkhoz, that is, a Soviet agricultural enterprise in which the farmers are regular employees. Kolkhozes and sovkhozes were the sole forms of farming business in the Soviet era; privately owned farms did not exist. 2 We conducted our research in the Chapayev kolkhoz in Vaverka in Lida county, the kolkhoz in Boltsishki in Voranava county, and the "Svetlyi Put'" [The Bright Way] kolkhoz in Nacha in Voranava county, as well as in the sovkhoz in Malaie Mazheikava in Lida county.

Catholics, Orthodox, Old Believers, and Muslims; there were those who identified

themselves as Belarusians, Ruthenians, Poles, and Lithuanians. We tried to interview

individuals of all generations, including children. However, because the villages of the

Grodno region are inhabited for the most part by old people, the majority of our

respondents—about 80 percent— were persons over sixty years of age. We also

interviewed more women than men: our most typical respondent was an elderly widow

living alone.

Does the Kolkhoz Have to Stay?

Inhabitants of kolkhoz villages cannot even imagine how they would live without the

kolkhoz. A young technician [M, 23, '98]3 from "The Bright Way" kolkhoz expressed a

commonly shared opinion by saying, "The kolkhoz has to stay. People would perish

without it." The words "The kolkhoz has to stay" are spoken everywhere like a leitmotif,

or, perhaps, like a magic spell. We heard them not only from local authorities but also

from ordinary kolkhozniks— both from elderly retirees and very young children. We

encountered only one respondent who expressed the opposite opinion that kolkhozes

could—or even should—be dissolved:

The time must come when they will be dissolved. . . . Such a giant as our kolkhoz

cannot do well because there is just one administrator who cannot control

everything. Therefore, something must be done about that. Our

kolkhoz is just too large It has to be divided into smaller units. Perhaps

those farms should be started here, or something. . . . This must be something that

people will own, that's the point. [M, 70, '931

Why does the kolkhoz have to stay? The simplest answer would be that it has.-to stay

because it cannot be dissolved. Because it was established against the people's will by an

authoritarian regime, it cannot be dissolved against the will of the rulers. However, the

simplest answer does not reveal the whole picture. It does not reveal the astonishing,

commonplace acceptance of kolkhoz reality. This acceptance appears to be shared by

everybody involved, not only by local authorities in their official settings but also by

ordinary people who speak informally.

Among the present kolkhozniks there exists a grass-roots acceptance for the institution

of the kolkhoz, despite their predecessors' common resistance against it at the time when

it was first introduced, despite all the traumatic events that took place at the initial stage

of its functioning, and even despite the current ambivalent attitude toward the specifics

of kolkhoz life. Those attitudes are ambivalent, to say the least, because the kolkhozniks

often say: "We don't live, we rot," or, "Let God spare you from the kolkhoz," and they do

whatever is possible to push their children out to the city, or at least to a small town.

They say, "Thank God, at least we sent the children out of the kolkhoz; they all have

apartments in the city. . . . Let's provide the children with a good education to allow them

3 Information in parentheses after each quotation reveals the sex of the respondent, male (M) or female (F), his or her age, and the year of the interview.

to leave this hell" [M, 74, '98; F, 68, '98]. If this description is sincere and adequate, do

we face an acceptance of a hell?

In seeking to comprehend this phenomenon of acceptance, we reach to its roots: to the

system of beliefs, norms, and myths, and the ways of reasoning that constitute the

collective unconscious, or, in other words, the mentality of the kolkhozniks. Kolkhozes

have existed for more than fifty years already and living in them has altered the

mentality of their inhabitants. For instance, the mentality is quite different from that of

Polish peasants who own their farms. Moreover, the Soviet system, and, in particular, the

Soviet kolkhoz system, has—in some peculiar way—preserved the structure of the

former feudal estate, sustaining the archaic and mythical way of thinking and various

elements of a feudal serf mentality.

The Beginnings of Kolkhozes

They wept bloody tears and yet they

volunteered to go ahead with that.

An old man from "The Bright Way" kolkhoz

In Western Belarus the kolkhozes started to appear between 1946 and 1952 (Mironowicz

1999: 179-82). By that time, the villages were already depleted of their elites: the village

intelligentsia, the clergy, and the most affluent farmers. They suffered a lot of wartime

harm and terror from the Nazi and the Soviet occupants. Immediately after the war

ended, a large part of the Belarusian village population was either deported to distant

locations within the Soviet Union or moved to Poland en masse—so-called repatriation.

For all these reasons, the villages of Western Belarus remained depopulated and

intimidated. Still, their inhabitants resisted state-imposed efforts to introduce the

kolkhozes—they had to be forced to accept them.

Some villages sank into despair: In Nacha—presently "The Bright Way" kolkhoz—

during the first harvest under the kolkhoz "the women wept as if they mourned someone's

death" [F, 56, '98]. Some other villages displayed organized, solid resistance, for

example, Papernia—presently the Chapayev kolkhoz—which started a kolkhoz as late as

1953.

There was a regular war there, because the Papernia folks did not want to join the

kolkhoz. When harassed and forced by state officials, they joined the kolkhoz

temporarily, just for three years. They sustained a lot of torment because of their

resistance. Yet, the Papernia folks held their ground; they brew vodka and sold it on

the market, this is how they lived. [F, 70, '97]

They sowed their rye and refused to sign the property documents prepared by the

Bolsheviks. . . . Surely, in order to reap their own rye. . . . They blocked the

[officials'] cars with their own bodies by lying down or sitting in the road. They did

all this until the harvest was over. Only then the kolkhoz was started—only after

they had reaped their crops for themselves. [F, 63, '97]

To force the village farmers to join the kolkhoz, the Soviet authorities used a method

that was already practiced with success in the 1930s in Eastern Belarus: they imposed on

those farmers such high taxes and compulsory deliveries of crops that the farms went

bankrupt.

We had no money to buy the bread so we brewed bootleg vodka. . . . Right after the

warfront passed over, we still owned the land; this was from 1944 to 1948. We were

doing worse and worse because the taxes were enormous. ... And later on? Later on,

there was nothing left, nothing at all. [M, 70, '94]

According to the Soviet ideology, joining the kolkhoz had to be "voluntary." Each

farmer completed an application that he had to sign. "They [the farmers] did not want to

turn in their land or to join the kolkhoz. But in the documents they wrote that they were

applying for admission into the kolkhoz" [F, 63, '97]. Another respondent described the

behavior of the Soviet officials:

They beat [the people] with clubs, they plundered, they prosecuted and tried [the

innocent]—this is what they did. What [terrible things] happened . . here! They [the

officials] grabbed the cows, the horses, everything. They •would take you to the district

office—"apply to join the kolkhoz!"—and that was that. You had to do it. They would

sign you in and you had to cdoperate with them, you had no other choice. You could do

nothing under threat of a club. . . . Any excuse was good enough for them to strangle a

man. [M, 70, '93]

Initially, each village became a kolkhoz; the president was "elected" by the villagers4.

People turned over their land, their animals, and their farming tools to the kolkhoz.

Individual barns were disassembled and the recovered materials and elements were used

to build the kolkhoz barns. Whatever remained after completing the construction was

simply burned.

When they [the officials] started the kolkhoz they grabbed everything—the carts, the

horses. You had a bam? Then you had to keep the pigpen for yourself and give them

your barn. And they burned those bams [in their heating stoves]. [M,70,'94]

Kolkhozniks received small lots of about 30 ares in area. They were paid for their

work in grain rather than cash. Total workdays were counted for each worker throughout

the year, and, according to the count, he or she was paid once per year.

Well, you work in this kolkhoz ... and how much did we earn in this kolkhoz then? .

. . For the whole year I earned only 96 kilograms of barley, nothing else. No rye for

bread at all. It was like digging a grave for oneself. [M, 74, '97]

In kolkhoz villages people tell the following anecdote: How did the Soviets understand

4 In time, the structure of the kolkhoz changed. Several villages and smaller territorial units were combined into one kolkhoz. Currently, up to thirty villages may belong to a single kolkhoz. Each village makes a separate "brigada" [gang] headed by its own "brigadir" [foreman]. Kolkhoz officials and specialists [agronomists and mechanics] are professionals with college education in agriculture and agro-mechanical engineering; only the kolkhoz president belongs to the party-state nomenklatura.

the lettering "K + M + B"5 that was written with holy chalk on people's doors and

windows on the Epiphany holiday? "When the Soviets came here and saw on each house

an inscription 'K + M + B,' they decoded it as the 'kolkhoz must be' " [F, 70, '93]. This

anecdote can be seen not only as an ironic play on words but also as a testament to the

cultural clash of two realities—the traditional culture of the peasant way of life that

observes old customs and holidays and the imposed hostile culture that brings in its own

rules: a clash of the sacrum with the antisacrum, of order with antiorder, of the cosmos

and the chaos.

Terror and captivity entered the traditional peasant world. Our respondents recalled:

My father wasn't a poor man either. But the Bolsheviks gunned down my father, too.

He was rich and he didn't want to join the kolkhoz. . . . They burned my father's

house there—in Radzivonishki. [F, 59, '93]

When they [the Soviets] came here, they closed the churches, they subjugated the

priests, they deported them, they prosecuted them, and they sentenced the priests to

ten years [of prison] each. So the priests weren't here,

they were in jail One could say that this was not a Soviet government but

a hell, a hellish hell! [M, 70, '93]

When reporting on those events and their own experience the respondents often

repeated certain phrases; particularly the words "they took away everything," which

sounded like a leitmotif. They often called on God, or Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary,

and they used lexical or phraseological references to the Bible, and, in particular, to the

Passion. They drew on the stylistic conventions of peasant complaints and funeral

laments, as well as on religious litanies and funeral songs. Their statements demonstrated

the highest emotions; they also revealed a link to the mythical patterns of contrast, such

as good vs. evil, or God vs. the devil.

Our "liberators" came.... They took away everything, everything but a few cows. . . .

They took away the land, they took away the horse, they took away the cart, and

that was it. This is how we were left. [F, 70, '97]

And there was no bread, they took away the crops, and they took away the

land, and they took away everything: Everything that was needed for farm

ing: the plows, the harrows, the horses, the barns Oh, it was so hard. This

kolkhoz. They rummaged through everything; nothing was left in order. These were

affluent folks, so they wanted them ruined, or dead. They took away everything,

they dragged them deep into Russia. [F, 69, '98]

People became dead tired of this life. They tormented us so much. My God, we

were so afraid! You couldn't escape anywhere and they would make you shake, they

would frighten you, they would threaten you, so you trembled like a leaf. . . . The

5 According to a Catholic custom, before the holiday of the Epiphany, people write the letters K + M + B with holy chalk on their doors and windows to commemorate the three Magi, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, who brought offerings to the infant Jesus.

Soviet power ... put its hand [over us] and tightened it into a "net" ["no"]. It sent all

these communists here and gave them power over the nation. [F, 78, '97]

Kolkhoz Fatalism

Our fate is such that the Soviets came here.

And we were born when they were here,

And we live here, and we have to. . . .

An old woman from the Chapayev kolkhoz

After the initial period of terror, Soviet rule became easier for the kolkhoz population.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, earnings were no longer paid in grain—the kolkhozniks

started to receive normal wages and pensions. They were no longer ascribed to the land

like medieval serfs because they did not have the identification papers necessary for

travel and work outside their residences. Finally, as the last group of Soviet citizens, they

also received their internal passports.

We started receiving the passports not so long ago.... [Before that] we were simply

the kolkhozniks, worth nothing in the village, having nothing for ourselves. You'd

like to go to Lida, for instance, to get work—without a passport they wouldn't hire

you. . . . You needed to have permanent residence in the city. . . . City folks got

passports from the beginning. In the village, the kolkhozniks had no passports. [F,

59, '93]

The time of relative prosperity came under the rule of Brezhnev who is still

remembered nostalgically. All our respondents kept saying, "Under Brezhnev we were

doing so well that even in America people couldn't do any better!"

It was so hard at the beginning, so very hard. .. . until, I guess, 1966. Once

we started getting money for our work, it got easier, and easier, and easier

... because for whatever you sold you would earn money to buy the bread,

you would get money—you would buy some bread We could do some

thing. It got easier and easier and easier. So it was. [F, 70, '97]

Finally, a turning point came as well: Gorbachev introduced religious freedom.

Gorbachev came; at once he went to America, he went abroad, everywhere, and

they told him there that we were God-praising folks, so he accepted God. And he

went to see the Pope. And he allowed the people to believe in God. [F, 78, '97]

Gorbachev's perestroika even succeeded in changing the image of the enemy— the

Soviet power: "There was a law such that the Soviets [had to] live without God, without

belief, period. Only when this Gorbachev came along did they start to assume the

Orthodox faith" [M, 66, '93]. The former atheistic, anti-religious attitude of the state

officials changed into the opposite one. "All our higher-ups go to church. They all go.

And earlier—nobody did. They all keep praying now, all of them" [F, 67, '97]. The

Orthodox and Catholic churches that had remained closed and ruined were reopened

anew because "the law was now issued that faith was allowed." All local and kolkhoz

authorities obey this law, they do not discriminate against believers for their religious

practices.

As the years went by one aspect of the "phenomenon of acceptance" became clear—

people got used to the kolkhoz.

When I had just come back home, right after the war, they installed a kolkhoz here.

They took away everything: the cows, the bams, the granaries, they took away the

horses, and the carts, and the plows, they took away everything and nothing was

left. Life was very hard at first, and then we got used to it. All our life since then has

been in the kolkhoz. [M, 66, '93]

Getting used to something unpleasant often induces passivity, submission, or

helplessness. From this point of view one could read the most common kolkhozniks'

refrain, "So what could you do with that? You could do nothing," as a testament to their

helplessness. However, it could also be read as an expression of pragmatism resulting

from a realistic assessment of one's own situation. "One won't go against all" [F, 66, '97].

One may refer to peasant stoicism as well, to peasant persistence demonstrated in the

following anecdote:

A villager addresses a new kolkhoz president: "You are my eighth." And he

explains to the surprised official: "You arrived here and you will leave one day,

while I was always here and here I will remain." [F, 56, '98]

After the peasant resistance against the new order was crushed, the only thing to do was

to stay with whatever was saved, in simple words, to stay alive. The power of antisacrum

assaulted two basic values of peasant culture: work and faith. However, it did not destroy

the most precious value that is served by both work and faith: it did not destroy life itself.

The kolkhozniks say: "Since God gave us our life, we need to live cautiously, one step at

a time" [F, 70, '93]. In order to survive, one needs to practice adaptation. In an old

woman's story we heard an acceptance of her fate that was generated by her affirmation

of life:

So what would you do? As it is in an old saying: the one for whom you need to sing

a song is the one on whose cart you ride. What would you do? If you want to live,

you need to manage things. Or else, what would you do? Where would you go? You

won't blow against the wind, will you? [F, 78, '94]

Rather than attesting to the peasants' passivity, this acceptance of their fate testifies to

the fact that these people accept the rules constituting the order of things in this world.

They see this order as a hierarchical structure with God at the very top: the creator of

everything else and the ultimate ruler. The kolkhozniks say: "As God allows, so it will

be." And they leave to God the business of taking care of everything that is outside their

immediate experience, or knowledge, or imagination. When asked directly about such a

thing they say, "God only knows." This is why they can say: "Thank God, we're

managing somehow... [because] God is making all this, honey. All this money, and all

these people" [F, 71, '93].

"It's God who sent all this. It's God. Just as Sybil wrote. Everything happens according

to what she wrote." [F, 71, '93]

If we check on Sybil's [prophecy], everything comes true. That the ... those '.". . .

kolkhozes would come and everything. . . . That the field boundaries would be erased

but the bread would remain as expensive as before. [M, 70, '93]

Sybil said that there would be fertile fields and mountains of wheat, yet people

would go for miles to find bread. And so it was: the bread, and the wheat, and

everything had to be turned into the kolkhoz. People had to turn into the kolkhoz

whatever they sowed. And the people did not get anything at all for themselves,

only about a pound of rye at the year's end. And this is how the people lived. [F, 68,

'98]

One can say that it seems the kolkhozes exist because they were supposed to exist.

One may refer to Ludwik Stomma's rule governing the isolation of the consciousness—

one of the basic determinants of folk culture: "It is as it was supposed to be" [Stomma

1986: 82]. Exactly: the kolkhozes exist because they were supposed to exist. Their

inhabitants live in the world of Sybil's fulfilled prophecy. This is another aspect of the

"phenomenon of acceptance"—the affirmation of reality based on mythical reasons for

world order. The reasons stem from accepting God's will described by the prophecies that

get fulfilled.

Kolkhoz Feudalism

Life is hard for the red lord. The president of "The Bright

Way" kolkhoz

Let us now turn from the mythical unconscious to the realities of life in order to find yet

another different answer to the question of why the kolkhoz has to exist. This answer is

suggested by a specific symbiosis of the kolkhoz and the kolkhozniks—a complicated

system of mutual services and dependencies that blurs the division between what belongs

to "the people," that is, the individual kolkhozniks, and what belongs to the kolkhoz.

With respect to this issue we often heard another commonly repeated phrase: "If the

kolkhoz helps us, we will help the kolkhoz," or, just the opposite: "If we help the

kolkhoz, the kolkhoz will help us." The kolkhoz became an organizer of the entire life of

the kolkhozniks. It has provided them with jobs as well as with living quarters. The

kolkhoz would even build a house for you if you paid for it with your work for the

kolkhoz. The kolkhoz provides meals for the workers either served in a kolkhoz diner or

delivered to the fields. It provides transportation: a kolkhoz shuttle-bus is often the only

means of transportation, and, if gas is available, its services are not limited to

transporting the workers to and from the workplace. The kolkhoz provides the

infrastructure: it builds gas lines, roads, and social centers. It provides goods that are

inaccessible at the market, such as grain, flour, and sugar. In a sense, the president of the

kolkhoz emulates the paternalistic duty of a former feudal lord feeding his subjects at the

time of shortages before the harvest. The "people's" property may become the kolkhoz

property and vice versa: one may sell his cow to the kolkhoz or one may buy a cow from

the kolkhoz. At the time the kolkhozes were first established, it sometimes happened that

someone could get his barn back from the kolkhoz if he offered them his cow in return.

The kolkhoz cows are groomed, milked, and grazed by the kolkhoz workers employed at

the cowshed, and, at the same time, all kolkhoz families who own a cow have to graze

the "people's" cows. Nobody, not even the kolkhoz president, is free of this duty when

his or her turn comes. When the kolkhoz cows get sick a village witch woman comes to

cure their sickness by removing the spell that caused it. The kolkhoz cowshed workers

keep the kolkhoz plowing horses in their own stables, just as the feudal serfs kept their

lord's plowing oxen in their own cowsheds. The same horse may, therefore, work for

both the kolkhoz and the people. Everybody works on the kolkhoz beets, in return

receiving the hay for their cows. Work with the beets is necessary because without it

there is no way to obtain hay. Everybody, including teachers and even school principals,

as well as retirees, faces this duty without exception: "All of us here are retirees, only

retirees. .. . But we keep helping, working with the beets. Both for the kolkhoz and for

ourselves. Everybody does what they are able to do" [F, 70, '97]. Since the kolkhozes

began, the kolkhozniks have been stealing the kolkhoz's property, especially grain,

openly declaring that this is not a sin. They call it "wangling." Without this "wangling" it

would be hard to survive: "I don't even know how we manage. We have to wangle" [M,

74, '98].

A kolkhoz truck serves as a hearse at each funeral in the village. The kolkhoz trucks

and buses drive groups of altar boys to Poland and they also bring the building materials

for a cemetery wall constructed by the local priest. The kolkhoz plants the priest's

potatoes: "Once upon a time, the priest used to own the land. And he had his own horses,

and everything. Nowadays, he doesn't. Only the kolkhoz would plant potatoes for the

priest, not much—a few acres, so he wouldn't die of hunger" [M, 52, '94]. The kolkhoz

president finances the construction of a new chapel while the sovkhoz director provides

the wooden boards for the chapel and the iron sheets for the [Orthodox] church as well,

as a sovkhoz apartment for the Orthodox priest and his family. At the harvest festival in

the church, the kolkhoz officials sit in the first row of seats, together with the officials of

the district committee while the district president offers to the priest "a loaf of white

bread on a white cloth" [M, 70, '98].

The presence, and even the active participation, of local state officials in the religious

life of the community became a natural thing, as did the priest's reliance on the help

provided by the state and kolkhoz institutions.

Both the district president and all others do their best in working for religion. The

district president, a very fine girl, respects and obeys the priest. She keeps working,

singing, and praying, and reading the Bible. Oh, they've all converted to religion

nowadays. They observe the holidays. They've all converted to religion, my dear.

[F, 80, '93]

We learn that the priest visits the local social center to hear the confessions of older

people. Below is a fragment of an interview with an old kolkhoznik:

Is there a social center in this village?

There is one. Right in our village. ... It was built when the kolkhoz was already

here; the kolkhoz president built it.

What is this center for? For parties? Dances?

Yeah, people play and dance here; and even the priest came here a few times. He

came here a few times.

The priest? Why did he come?

Oh, he came to hear older people's confessions. [M, 74, '97]

Kolkhoz symbiosis encompasses not only the kolkhoz and its people but also the

district and the church—business, administration, and religion, all together. The three

institutions encompass and organize the entirety of life, work, and religious activities of

the villagers concentrated around agricultural work and the Christian faith, which

constitute the basic values of their culture, the so-called core values (Smolicz 1987: 59).

This explains the direct interrelationship between the way of life and the mentality of the

kolkhozniks, on the one hand, and the functioning of the kolkhoz and the church, on the

other hand, in modern Belarusian reality, which is both post-Soviet and post-feudal. This

rare phenomenon of the prolonged existence of the feudal model cannot escape the

attention of researchers engaged in fieldwork in Belarus; this is especially the case when

contemporary ethnographers are hosted by the kolkhoz, or the parish, or the school, just

as their nineteenth-century predecessors were hosted by the former landowners in their

facilities. With luck, the present ethnographers were able to befriend not only the

kolkhozniks but also a kolkhoz president, who sometimes invited them for a drink and

engaged with them in informal, sincere conversation: "Life is hard for the red lord."

In the times of a deepening crisis, it is more and more difficult to manage the kolkhoz.

The managers' opinions about the indispensability of the kolkhoz are similar to those of

the kolkhozniks:

If the kolkhoz falls apart, the people will be the most hurt. The people will bear the

worst consequences. It's not good for a person to be left alone. It's worse for a

person to be alone than to stay in the kolkhoz. It's better for a person to be in the

kolkhoz. [M, 23, '98]

In spite of these concerns about the uncertain future, it seems that as long as Alaksandr

Lukashenka, a former sovkhoz director,6 remains the president of Belarus, there can be

no serious threat to the kolkhoz:

6 Alaksandr Lukashenka graduated from the Agricultural Academy as a specialist in the organization of farming. Before becoming president of Belarus, he served as director for the "Haradok" sovkhoz in the Shklovsk region.

Lukashenka takes care of the people, to let them live. You know, without

Lukashenka the kolkhozes here would be destroyed; there would be no order, the

land would not be plowed, and the hunger would come. Instead, we have the

kolkhozes and they provide, and they feed, and they house, and everything is done.

In Lithuania they have no kolkhozes and there is no order there. [M, 70, '981

This concept of order seems pretty clear: It is a hierarchical structure of social reality

with the authority—nowadays the state president or the government—at the top, its

representatives or officials, including the kolkhoz president, just below the top, and the

ordinary people, that is the kolkhozniks, at the very bottom. These are the people who

describe themselves in the following terms: "When a person lives in the village, he is just

at the very end of everything. People like us, the ordinary kolkhozniks, are not even

considered human" [M, 74, '98; F, 68, '98].

This order encompasses various scales. On the macro-scale, it concerns interstate

relationships:

The Belarusians are just simple folks, the Russians are more knowledgeable; they

were more important in the Soviet Union. And Belarus? Belarus was like a village.

It was only a republic subordinate to Russia. [F, 68, '98]

On the micro-scale, order concerns the local community and the family, which are also

perceived in terms of a patriarchic ladder: "Who is the caretaker of the village? The

[local] government is, and the parents are the caretakers of their kids" [F, 66, '97].

A fragment of an interview with a kolkhoz villager provides an insight into the

postfeudal image of reality and the kolkhoznik's location in this image:

Were there any valuable objects of the former landowner left here in this property?

Yes, there were. But nothing was left until now; everything was taken away -' or

destroyed. People live on this property. They go to work. They work in cowsheds.

Whose are the cowsheds?

The government's.

And what do you have here, a kolkhoz or a sovkhoz?

A kolkhoz.

And who is in charge of the kolkhoz?

People who are prepared for such a job. Some people work and the others manage.

Is there a district council here?

Yes, yes, there is one.

And what is it, this district council?

Well, how to say? It's all the government. God forbid being left without the

government. Some people would harass others. Instead, we have peace so far.

Peace.

And who is in charge here?

The kolkhoz president is in charge in the kolkhoz.

And in the country? Who is the most powerful one?

Well, in the villages? It's the "brigadir" [foreman]. The "brigadir."

And in Belarus? Now it's Belarus here, right?

Yeah, Belarus, Belarus. . . . But what will it be in the future? For the time

being it's Belarus. Let only peace remain here. We don't care We just do

our things, step by step, slowly. We keep praying, we go to church, God only knows

. .. what they will do. [F, 79, '97]

Order and peace belong to the most precious values for these villagers. In this respect,

Belarusian society is no different from many others. However, a belief that any kind of

government is good enough for as long as it provides society with both peace and order is

vintage Belarusian. With such collective mind-set, the mental journey of Belarusians

from a patriarchal to a democratic vision of the world can be neither easy nor quick.

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