question_answer
Compare
the passages written by Shaukat Usmani and Rabindranath Tagore. Read them in
relation to Sources C, D and E and answer the following questions
(a) What did Indians find impressive about the USSR?
(b) What did the writers fail to notice?
Source C
Dreams and Realities of a Soviet Childhood in 1933
Dear grandfather Kalinin ....
My family is large, there are four children. We don't have
a father - he died, fighting for the worker's cause, and my mother... is
ailing... I want to study very much, but I cannot go to school. 1 had some old
boots, but they are completely torn and no one can mend them. My mother is
sick, we have no money and no bread, but 1 want to study very much... there
stands before us the task of studying, studying and studying. That is what
Vladimir Ilich Lenin said. But I have to stop going to school. We have no
relatives and there is no one to help us, so I have to go to work in a factory,
to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, 1 am 13,1 study well and
have no bad reports. I am in Class 5. Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker
to Kalinin, Soviet President
From: V. Sokolov [ed], Obshchestvo I V last, v 1930-ye
gody [Moscow, 1997).
Source I)
Official view of the opposition to collectivisation and
the government response
'From the second half of February of this year, in various
regions of the Ukraine... mass insurrections of the peasantry have taken place,
caused by distortions of the Party's line by a section of the lower ranks of
the Party and the Soviet apparatus in the course of the introduction of
collectivisation and preparatory work for the spring harvest. Within a short
time, large scale activities from the above- mentioned regions carried over
into neighbouring areas ... and the most aggressive insurrections have taken
place near the border.
The greater part of the peasant insurrections have been
linked with outright demands for the return of collectivised stocks of grain,
livestock and tools... Between 1st February and 15th March, 25,000 have been arrested
... 656 have been executed, 3,673 have been imprisoned in labour camps and
5,580 exiled ...' Report of KM Karlson, President of the State Police
Administration of the Ukraine to the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
on 19 March 1930.
From: V. Sokolov [ed], Obshchestvo I V last, v 1930-ye
gody
Source E
This is a letter written by a peasant who did not want to
join the collective farm. To the newspaper Krestianskaia Gazeta [Peasant
Newspaper]...
'I am a natural working peasant born in 1879 ... there are
6 members in my family, my wife was born in 1881, my son is 16, two daughters
19, all three go to school, my sister is 71. From 1932, heavy taxes have been
levied on me that I have found impossible. From 1935, local authorities have
increased the taxes on me ... and 1 was unable to handle them and all my
property was registered: my horse, cow, calf, sheep with lambs, all my
implements, furniture and my reserve of wood for repair of buildings and they
sold the lot for the taxes. In 1936, they sold two of my buildings... the
kolkhoz bought them. In 1937, of two huts 1 had, one was sold and one was
confiscated ....'
Afanasii Dedorovich Frebenev, an independent cultivator.
From : V. Sokolov [ed], Obshchestvo I V last, v 1930-ye
gody