The world as local party activists had to see it, in the Ukrainian countryside, was described far better by this Ukrainian children’s song than by the terse orders and propaganda conceits coming from Moscow:
Father Stalin, look at this Collective farming is just bliss The hut’s in ruins, the barn’s all sagged All the horses broken nags
And on the hut a hammer and sickle And in the hut death and famine No cows left, no pigs at all Just your picture on the wall
Daddy and mommy are in the kolkhoz The poor child cries as alone he goes There’s no bread and there’s no fat The party’s ended all of that
Seek not the gentle nor the mild A father’s eaten his own child The party man he beats and stamps And sends us to Siberian camps
— Bloodlands (Timothy Snyder), Loc. 888–95
Just if you were in need of any more reasons to hate Russia.