anyone found in possession of any bread or grain at all—even the poorest of peasants—was dragged from his or her home and stripped of their possessions, just as had happened to the kulaks in the months before. But this was unusual: “Very rarely did they find a more or less solid amount, usually the searches finished with the confiscation of the very last few pieces of bread in the smallest possible amount.”37 No one in authority questioned the wisdom of this behaviour: the fact that the OGPU and Communist Party officials allowed journalists, even those loyal to the regime, to observe the
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