Latgale Stories. Informers and White Bread

1947. Latgale, the border region. M. had just turned 7. His father had been put away for 25 years for an alleged murder. To provide sustenance for the winter, the boy was sent to tend livestock for a wealthier farmer. Collectivisation and the era of collective farms were in full swing. Farms had their horses, livestock and land taken away, leaving only a cow or two and a strip of land. Although the farmer did not object to the boy staying overnight in the house - already occupied by two families and grandparents - a hay shed was chosen as his sleeping quarters. He had to go to pasture early - around five in the morning, through cold dew, barefoot. In essence, herding meant "manoeuvring" the animals along the designated strip of land between the garden, bushes and the collective farm's fields. Letting livestock onto collective farm land could mean punishment for the farmer - up to deportation.

The war had not only ruined farms and taken fathers, sons and brothers - it had also brought Soviet power, which was propping up collective farms at breakneck speed. In truth there was nothing equal about it. Those whom the Soviet-appointed local authorities deemed "friendly to the state" - meaning mostly incomers - were given things, while those considered traitors had things taken from them. This went on for years, and it is no wonder that many people, exhausted and broken by war, tried to ingratiate themselves with the new regime, earning some benefit in return - mainly things needed on the farm and food.

M.'s father had been a border guard. His patrol area was within arm's reach of home. He was apparently one of the few permitted to carry a weapon at that time. Deep in the forest was a partisan bunker that everyone knew about but no one spoke of. Some hoped this new power would not last long; others hoped the partisans would surrender. One day word reached the local authorities that all the partisans had been shot. Whether true or not, a scapegoat had to be found - and quickly - as the village people understood clearly that no investigation or trial would take place, and this label could be pinned on anyone. So alleged eyewitnesses and a report duly appeared.

Early one morning the father left home and vanished. The family, not suspecting he had been taken, searched near and far but without success. "The Ņesteri informers" - people knew but kept silent. They only muttered: "Well, the fool - how could he just disappear like that?" Many years later, someone who had worked their way up to a party functionary let slip while drunk that the father, on a cool autumn morning, barefoot and in his underwear, had been marched to a house in Ņesteri, where the woman of the house found him trousers, galoshes and a padded jacket. He was then marched to Kārsava, then Ludza, and from there taken to prison. In the archives only a note signed by the local authority and the sentence passed can be found - 25 years. A few years later it nonetheless emerged that the case had been entirely fabricated, and the father was released to come home.

In late autumn M. began attending primary school. Food in the family was rather scarce, and the children were sent to school with nothing to eat. But this was not the same for all children. In a neighbouring hamlet lived a woman with two children who had no proper employment and kept no farm. Her husband had perished in the war, the house had burned down, and so the family lived in a farm outbuilding that had been adapted for habitation. What seemed odd was that her children were sent to school with white bread and butter.

People had already grown accustomed to Soviet rule, and on the topic of "informing" - which, although it remained taboo, would crop up in conversation from time to time when it was on people's minds - it became known that the Ņesteri local authorities, in exchange for reports, however true or fabricated, had been supplying informers with food...