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whole life, Pavel Vasilyevich ’ s heart had been at one with the peasants and their troubles, with their sense of life and their well-reasoned thrift (boots for going to church, bast shoes for the village, and bare feet for plowing), and now that heart ached over the devastation of the countryside: the Bolsheviks were stripping the villages bare (and every featherbrained inspector or instructor who stopped by made sure to scoop up whatever he could as well). There was a time when one could watch the leisurely return of a fine herd of several hundred cows to the village in the evening. Here and there, children with switches are separating their own cattle; a steady cloud of translucent dust, glowing in the rays of the setting sun, hangs over them; the well sweeps groan, heralding the watering that will come before the abundant milking. Such scenes of the prosperous and peaceful life in the villages were nowhere to be seen now, however. These days there were no brightly lit windows in the peasants ’ huts: kerosene lamps stood dark, and within there was only the faint glow from the mutton fat burning in saucers.
     
    Meanwhile, the Civil War had ended, and the opportunity for the Tambov peasants to join the Whites had passed. Now, however, their patience had reached its limit and they were seething. In the autumn of 1919, the peasants killed the chairman of the provincial executive committee, Chichkanov, while he was making a trip around the province. The authorities responded by sending in a powerful punishment detachment (Hungarians, Latvians, Finns, Chinese—you could find all sorts in the punishment detachments); and again there were many executions.
     
    Peasant anger continued to mount and accumulate through that winter of pillaging. In the spring, as the snow was melting, Pavel Ektov made a trip in the wagon of a peasant friend to lay in some supplies: he went from Karavaynovo to a spot he knew well, where the Mokraya Panda and the Sukhaya Panda join and then go on to flow into the Vorona. He knew the villages in that region: Grushevka, Gvozdyovka , Treskino, Kurgan, Kalugino . Grushevka, with its lush hayfields that lay right outside the village and filled it each June with the aromas of meadow grass, brome, and clover; Treskino and its peculiar church, a three-story cube, and the grand church in Nikitino , faced in bluish brown tiles and a roof of fish-scale pattern shingles; Kurgan, where there was a burial mound from Tatar times; and Kalugino , laid out in a curved line with its disorderly row of huts scattered along the bare gully of the Sukhaya Panda. And the bottomland along the winding Mokraya Panda, covered in lush grass, with the quails singing their hearts out. This was a glorious spot for village kids, for fishermen, geese and ducks—the children would play in the water, only as deep as their waists, though the cows would climb out of the same river for their daily milking. Beyond Grushevka and Gvozdyovka was a large forest, and near Nikitino , with its many orchards, there were a few wooded gullies.
     
    That spring the peasants waited and worried, and many didn ’ t even want to begin seeding: It ’ s all for naught, they ’ ll just come and take it. But how can we get by with nothing to eat? They began gathering in gangs in the woods and ravines, talking of how they might defend themselves.
     
    It was no easy matter, though, for peasants from different villages to agree to join forces, make the decision, and then to find the right moment to cross the line into full-scale war.
     
    Meanwhile, Goldin ’ s food detachments kept up their pillaging of the villages, and they continued their lavish feasting when they took up quarters. (There were instances when they ordered a certain number of women be sent to them for the night, and the village would comply—what else could they do? It was better than being shot.) The detachments hunting down deserters would still make examples of those they caught by