Distrust grew too, and indeed had been growing since the beginning of the collectivization and de-kulakization drives a few years earlier. “Neighbours had been made to spy on neighbours,” wrote Miron Dolot: “friends had been forced to betray friends; children had been coached to denounce their parents; and even family members avoided meeting each other. The warm traditional hospitality of the villagers had disappeared, to be replaced by mistrust and suspicion. Fear became our constant companion: it was an awesome dread of standing helplessly and hopelessly alone before the monstrous power of
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