A WEEK AFTER THE SHOOTINGS, Isabelle and Mirik were finishing their milk deliveries, the metal cans rattling in the back of their cart, when they passed by the side of the road where Stan and Vitaly had buried the Soviets. It was just after sunrise and in the dim overcast light it was hard to see. Isabelle squinted into the woods and gasped, grabbing on to Mirik’s arm. “Mirik,” she whispered. “Stop the cart.”
“No,” Mirik said, his hands shaking as he gripped the reins. “Let’s keep going.”
“Stop the cart, Mirik!”
“No, Isa, don’t look. Please. Don’t look.” He spurred the horse to go faster, attempting to outrun what they had just seen. But Isabelle knew: you couldn’t outrun the ineradicable image of your own doom.
Swinging upside down from the bare trees, strung up by their ankles, were Stan and Vitaly’s naked, mutilated bodies.
“We told you in Shatava, we told you in Proskuriv, we told you in Kammenets. We told you in Russian and Ukrainian, as loudly as our voices could carry. Let it be known to one and all that no one is to raise a hand to any operative, worker, or representative of the Communist Party or an official of the Soviet Government. There will be no other warnings but this one. Anyone who ignores us will face certain death.”
Standing in a dark blue uniform covered with military insignia, calf-high boots, and a fur-trimmed hat, Yefim Efros, the bespectacled OGPU junior lieutenant assigned to Ispas, delivered the grim message to a community hall of equally grim village parishioners. Flanking him were his armed operativniks.
It had taken Efros and his men barely ninety minutes of questioning a fistful of people before Oleg Tretyak, whom Isabelle had always hated, served up Stan and Vitaly, lying to the Soviets that the boys had stolen his weapons and beaten him. Tretyak led Efros straight to the burial grounds. Old man Tretyak had always been venal, and he thought that by giving up the Babich brothers, he could save his own hide. But within a day, the OGPU shot him anyway—for aiding and abetting mass murder and for conspiracy to cover it up. They strung him up next to Stan and Vitaly over the grave of thirteen Soviets and forbade the villagers to take down the three bodies. They would hang until they were nothing but skeletons. Taking them down for burial would also be punishable by death.
Within a few days of Efros’s arrival, Ispas was overrun with Soviet internal security chekists, agitation supervisors, administrators, councilmen, and collectivization activists sent by the Secretary of the Central Committee for Propaganda in Ukraine.
Cici and Yana were planning all kinds of payback destruction, but Roman and Isabelle forbade them to do anything that would bring more attention to their family, especially Cici who was related to Stan and Vitaly by blood—their mothers were sisters.
At first, Cici wouldn’t listen. She said she would divorce Roman before she left Stan and Vitaly unavenged. Yana wholeheartedly agreed. But before Cici could file for divorce and the pregnant Yana could take matters into her own hands, Efros arrested Myron Koval, Ispas’s wealthiest grain merchant, and evicted his family from their large house next to the village square, just as the trader from Shatava had foretold. The Bolsheviks took over the house, knocked down the walls, made the first floor one big cold room, and called another hastily assembled meeting about next steps.
Next steps included two things: requisition and collectivization.
Requisition was taking food from the farmers’ own supplies first by demand, and then by force if necessary.
Collectivization was the massive Soviet effort since 1928 to consolidate the small Ukrainian private farms into larger farms under Soviet control. Mirik said he hated to be right. “We have a hundred Communists invading,” he said, “armed, hungry, angry, and ready for war. If Stan and Vitya, God rest their souls, had kept to themselves, we might still have a hundred Communists, but they would just be hungry.”
“And there I was thinking just the opposite, Mirik,” said Roman. “If they planned to run roughshod over us no matter what, then Stan and Vitya didn’t shoot enough of them.” He turned to his sister. “What do you think, Isa?”
“Leave me out of it,” said Isabelle. She didn’t want to contradict her husband in front of her brothers.
When the villagers in Ispas remained unenthusiastic about next steps and refused to attend, the Soviets made the meetings mandatory. Any family who didn’t send a representative to Bolshevik headquarters was subject to arrest and deportation to “re-education facilities” in Russia itself. When attendance remained spotty, the Soviets started sending delegates to individual farms to spread their message more directly. Each morning, a propaganda operative, armed with flowery rhetoric and a loaded rifle, would visit a homestead right around breakfast time to extol the benefits of collectivizing. Much too soon, they arrived at the Lazars’.
Ispas, a landlocked village, was home to a thousand people, a mere two hundred households, spread over the limitless rolling plains and sparse woods of southwest Ukraine. Every farm in Ispas specialized in one thing or another. The villagers bartered their goods among themselves, and there was almost no need for currency unless they went to the market in Chervona, where they sold their surplus crops to buy boots or housewares. In exchange for their milk, the Kovalenkos received bread and bacon, and it was usually enough, even during hard winters like this one, which was almost ending, yet seemed neverending.
The Lazar land was three kilometers west of the village center. They had fifteen mostly flat acres, with seven homes built on a hillock overlooking the valley. The houses were comfortable, two of them quite large, all with thatched roofs, multi-colored clay walls, and troweled floors. There were two barns for Mirik’s cows and a twenty-stall stable for Roman’s horses. Nearby streams were used for watering and fishing, but the closest proper river was the Dniester, thirty kilometers south, snaking through the border between Ukraine and Romania. The nearest city was Kammenets, twelve kilometers east. The distances were great between villages and towns, and news traveled slow; newspapers were sometimes weeks behind, mail almost non-existent.
The farmers worked hard, but there was much joy in their good life. There were woods nearby to pick mushrooms after rain. In the summer, blueberry and raspberry bushes abounded for pies and moonshine. The black soil would disappear under a sea of golden wheat in the summer and then go gray in the winter, as if the earth itself was in mourning while waiting for the next crop to seed.
And in Isabelle’s house now, as the earth mourned, sat two men, one in a suit, one in uniform. They ate her food, but they wanted more than a few potatoes from her. One man was the OGPU lackey Yefim Efros. The other was Kondraty Zhuk. He was the Communist Party activist in charge of collectivization.
Zhuk said he wanted to speak to Roman Lazar, “man to man.” Roman stepped forward, but Isabelle pushed back her chair and gestured to her brother to stay put. “I am Isabelle Kovalenko,” she said. “The land belongs to me. I am my father’s oldest child.”
Zhuk clucked his lips while he appraised her. He was a rotund yet oddly stiff man, intense and sweaty, with a pronounced crow nose and stringy hair. He was probably thirty, but fanatical zeal had aged him. “I thought the Cossacks were all about male supremacy,” he said appreciatively.
“We are not Cossacks,” said Isabelle without even a blink at Roman. When the enemy came inside your house, it was important to hide what you were until you knew what he wanted, and she was glad Roman remembered that lesson from their father and stayed silent.
“No?” said Zhuk. “I must have heard wrong, then. Aren’t you the children of the notorious Kazak Martyn Lazar? Well, no matter. Water under the bridge. War, and all that. Fine, I will talk to you. We will begin by addressing your first inaccuracy. But, do you have more bacon and potatoes? How well you eat around these parts!”
She brought him more bacon; he tore into it, and continued. “What were we discussing? Oh, yes, your inaccuracies. Yefim, would you educate Comrade Kovalenko on my behalf while I finish her delectable meal?”
Efros, sitting at the table, also gorging on Isabelle’s food, spoke with his mouth full, potatoes and onions sliding out. “This land is not your land,” he said, chewing. “This land, as all other land in the Soviet Union, belongs to the Communist Party. This was made law in 1917, right after the Glorious October Revolution. All land in Russia and its republics was nationalized twelve years ago. Were you not aware? You are being made aware now. This land is our land. We generously allow you to live on it and work on it.” Efros had a red bulbous nose. He was an alcoholic clown in military dress. He panted as he ate and panted as he spoke.
“And here lies our problem,” Zhuk said. He took another forkful of food and without wiping his mouth, continued. “You have fifteen acres, which is a tremendous estate with unlimited potential.”
“Its potential is limited to fifteen acres,” said Roman.
Zhuk raised his hand without glancing Roman’s way. “The potential of this land is going entirely uncultivated.”
No one spoke in response. In the room were Isabelle, her brothers, and Mirik. She had sent her sons to the barn with her mother, and Cici and Yana weren’t allowed inside because it wasn’t time for war.
“Very well,” Zhuk went on, “I will continue. First and foremost, you are not growing wheat on your land. You are not growing beets. You are not growing potatoes. Sounds like a waste of fifteen acres, especially when hard-working people in the cities are going hungry.”
“We breed horses,” said Isabelle.
“And cows,” said Mirik.
“Those other things you mention are not our business,” said Isabelle.
“We are here to tell you to make them your business,” Zhuk said.
“Our business is ranching and dairy farming,” said Isabelle. “If you want potatoes, you should speak to Stan and Vitaly Babich. They are the potato producers in Ispas. Well . . . they were,” she added. Hate was in her voice.
“We are talking about your farm, Comrade Kovalenko,” said Efros, “not the murderous criminal Babiches who have been duly punished. Do you really need fifteen acres to make a few gallons of milk?”
“We do,” said Isabelle. “The cows need pasture. Horses too. They need even more grazing and riding land than the cows. Fifteen acres is very little when you consider the needs of the animals.”
“What about the needs of the poor Soviet people breaking their backs for Mother Russia even as we sit here chatting?”
“All people need milk,” Isabelle said. “Soviets and Ukrainians alike.”
“Because from milk you make butter and cheese,” explained Roman, as if he were speaking to the village idiot.
Zhuk barked at him to shut up, but seemed flummoxed by Roman’s aside, as if he didn’t know where butter and cheese came from.
“My brothers,” said Isabelle, “breed, raise, train, and supply much of southwest Ukraine with the horses required for all agricultural needs.”
“Ah! This brings me to another important point, Comrade Kovalenko,” Zhuk said, recovering his arrogance.
“Seems like a lot of important points,” Roman said. “Any chance we can prioritize them?”
“I’ll prioritize them for you,” said Zhuk. “Horses are the past! Horses will soon be extinct—like the dinosaurs. They are a useless vestige of imperialism—and they need to be fed to boot!” One stirring propagandist and one rifled Bolshevik requisitionist, sitting, smoking, and drinking Mirik’s milk. Isabelle, who sat directly across from Zhuk, had to shield her eyes by focusing on the tablecloth. She knew how to control herself, but it was impossible for her to keep from her expression how she really felt about an insect like Zhuk coming into her home uninvited and then maligning the most noble kingly indestructible animals like their Karabakh horses. She knew Zhuk would see the black contempt in her gaze. And perhaps more ominous things. She kept her gaze lowered, while Zhuk continued.
“In five minutes, you Lazars will be out of business,” Zhuk said. “No matter what Ukrainian farmers want and feel and believe, the entire Soviet Union will be brought into the modern world. Including Ukraine. Horses will be obsolete, even in your backward Ispas. And good riddance! The tractor is coming, the thresher! The harvester! The winnower! Your agriculture will be mechanized and you will be industrialized. To get the machinery, we must buy it on the export market. But we buy it with crops, with the very wheat you are currently not growing.”
When neither Roman nor Isabelle replied, Zhuk continued.
“Last summer, Ispas had a quota. Each household was to contribute to the total number of bushels of grain we required. Did you meet it?”
“No one met it,” Isabelle said. “Not just the Lazars, not just Ispas. Ukraine didn’t meet it. The quota was set too high. There were serious problems with the harvest. That’s the nature of weather, comrade. Sometimes it’s unpredictable. We delivered as much dairy to make butter and cheese as was required of us.”
“We do not ask you to explain your failures, Comrade Kovalenko,” said Zhuk. “Comrade Stalin decreed, and we must follow.”
Isabelle raised her hand at him. “I wasn’t finished,” she said. “Aside from weather considerations, the reason the Lazars didn’t meet your grain quota is because we are not wheat growers. We cannot reap what we do not sow, Comrade Zhuk. We cannot be penalized for not delivering grain or sugar beets. That would make as much sense as a bread maker being penalized for not delivering to you the required number of bullets.”
Zhuk swelled red like a boiled beet. “We tell you your business, you do not tell us ours!” He was breathless with affront and embarrassment. What Isabelle was saying was so reasonable that he had no recourse but to bluster and bellow. “But you make a good point, Comrade Kovalenko. That’s why we are here talking to you today. This coming fall we will require from you a wheat harvest. And collectivization is the best method of preventing the disruptions of which you speak.”
“I heard that the grain quota is set even higher for this fall than last,” said Mirik.
“Of course it is!” Zhuk said, slapping the wood table. “It must be—to make up for the unforgivable shortfall of your last harvest.”
“Did you hear what I said, comrade?” said Isabelle.
“Yes, yes,” he snapped impatiently. “I don’t want to hear your Ukrainian excuses anymore. You will become wheat growers. You will collectivize and become the modernized, efficient, wheat-growing socialists the Party requires you to be.”
“You want us to start growing wheat which you will then sell to buy equipment to get rid of our horses?” said Roman. “No, thank you.”
“We require you to start growing wheat because the Soviet people need to eat!” said Efros.
“You poor simpletons,” Zhuk said with a sneer. “You seem to be under the impression this is a conversation.” He scoffed. “We are not asking.”
Roman had had enough. “You’re not listening to my sister,” he said. “You’re not listening to me. I’m going to explain it to you as simply as I can. You cannot go from pasture to wheat-bearing ground in one year.”
“We can and we will,” said Zhuk.
“Would you like to walk the property with us now that you’ve eaten?” said Roman. “I will show you that the ground is tamped down. It has never been tilled or fertilized, it has never received a seed or grown a crop. We have half an acre of cultivated soil, on which we grow food to feed our family. But the rest of our land is flattened steppe-like earth.”
“It’s the famous black soil of Ukraine, is it not?” Zhuk said. “Everything can and will be planted in it.”
“Go out into the road,” Roman said, “which horses and wagons have trampled for decades. Go out there and dig a hole and plant your seed in the clay and see how well it grows, comrade.” Roman almost spat.
“Sign over your farm to the newly formed Ispas collective, and we will send you labor and plows to till your steppe-like soil.”
Isabelle saw her brother was getting hot under the collar. He too couldn’t hide what he felt. “City men like you came to Ukraine two years ago,” Roman said. “There was another food shortage then—there seem to be so many of them in your socialist paradise—and you tried the same tactic. Tell us, were your efforts to take our farms by force successful in 1927?”
Zhuk sneered. “In 1927, we didn’t come to Ispas, did we? We had bigger fish to fry. This is how you know times have changed, because this year, even an insignificant common shiner like you is being called to action for the glory of the Soviet Union.”
“Even a common shiner like me can read,” Roman said. “Can you read, Comrade Zhuk?” From a small cabinet, Roman retrieved a yellowed Kievskaya Pravda. “It says here, in plain language, ‘All collectivization must be of your own free will.’ Roman threw the paper on the table in front of Zhuk. “That’s direct from Comrade Stalin. He wrote this letter to all the citizens of the Soviet Union including, I assume, the citizens of Ukraine. Who are we to argue with our great teacher and leader?”
Zhuk stood up. “That was last month. This month things have changed.”
“We know better than you what our dear leader’s letter says,” Efros barked. “We’re not here to compel you. We are here to persuade you.”
“This is where you’re incorrect, Efros,” Zhuk said to his OGPU colleague. “If persuasion doesn’t work, you will compel them.”
Efros told Isabelle that by new decree she was required to hand over one half of her provisions. “One half of whatever you’ve been hoarding for yourselves. Half your onions, potatoes, beets, wheat, rye, carrots.”
In response, Roman, Ostap, and Nikora stepped forward. Isabelle’s brothers were younger, taller, and more robust than the Bolsheviks. Their physical proximity and the squaring of their shoulders must have alerted the city men to the precariousness of their situation. Zhuk and Efros had no immediate method by which to requisition the family’s food supply, or even to protect themselves. Efros fumbled for his revolver, which lay on the table by the dirty plates, but Roman got there first. Grabbing the revolver, he spun the chamber a few times before handing it to the junior lieutenant.
“We’re going to need a day or two to get the supplies together, comrades,” Roman said. “Come back and we’ll have them ready for you.”
“When we come back,” Efros said, “we will bring ten militia men.”
“Won’t be necessary.”
“Tonight there’s a mandatory meeting at the village hall,” Zhuk told them. “You’re required to be present, including your wives and children. Comrade Kovalenko cannot be the only woman attending these meetings, even if she is nominally the landowner. We do not trust her to get the message across to the other women who run these homesteads.”
Efros approached Isabelle, who was already by the flung-open door. “Can we trust you, Comrade Kovalenko?”
“You should trust me least of all,” said Isabelle. “Get out.”