ONE DAY, at the end of April 1933, I remember my mother suggesting that my brother and I make a visit to our distant relative Priska, who lived about four miles from our home. We gladly agreed. On our way we could also visit some of our acquaintances and school friends whom we had not seen since the beginning of last winter. We often wondered what had happened to them, and we were prepared for the worst.
We took the road along a strip of sand dunes that separated the woods from our neighborhood. It was here we had hidden some of our food. It was a pleasant, sunny spring day. All around us birds fluttered form bush to bush, chirping cheerfully. New greenery was visible everywhere, but not a single human being was in sight; there were no human voices to be heard. We did not see any cats or dogs. It was as if some terrible plague had passed through the village, leaving alive only the birds and the insects.
We passed by Antin’s house on the hill where a few weeks before we had looked for our friend Ivan. Approaching closer, we heard to our surprise some boisterous voices. There was activity around Antin’s house: some people were searching for something. We couldn’t help stopping to see what was going on, and what we discovered was the Hundred’s Bread Procurement Commission in action. The village Thousander, Comrade Livshits, was personally overseeing the search and seizure operation. He stood in front of the house shouting orders from time to time. Several Commission members were digging around the house with spades. Others were busy inside the house and in the shed.
Absurd as it may seem, the Bread Procurement Commission in our village continued its search for “hidden” foodstuffs, in spite of the mass starvation raging all around them. They continued going from one house to another, paying special attention to those who showed some signs of life. They also continued demanding grain quotas, or simply searched farmers’ premises without even bothering to ask their permission. It was also necessary and mandatory for us to attend meetings and listen to propagandists, agitators, and other Party officials harangue us endlessly about the merits of grain delivery to the state, or what the Party and government position was on certain issues and events, or what decrees had newly been passed by the state. Naturally, only a very few individuals were seen at such meetings since many of our number had already been killed by famine. Those left alive no longer had the physical strength to leave their homes.
But thanks to those meetings, those of us able to attend learned that sometime in January the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, after accusing Ukraine of deliberately sabotaging the fulfillment of grain quotas, had sent Postyshev, a sadistically cruel Russian chauvinist, as its viceroy to Ukraine. His appointment played a crucial role in the lives of all Ukrainians.
It was Postyshev who brought along and implemented a new Soviet Russian policy in Ukraine. It was an openly proclaimed policy of deliberate and unrestricted destruction of everything that was Ukrainian. From now on, we were continually reminded that there were “bourgeois-nationalists” among us whom we must destroy. They were the ones causing our “food difficulties.” Those hideous “bourgeois-nationalists” were starving us to death, and on and on went the accusations. At every meeting, we were told that the fight against the Ukrainian national movement was as important for the “construction of socialist society” as the struggle for bread. This new campaign against the Ukrainian national movement had resulted in the annihiliation of the Ukrainian central government as well as all Ukrainian cultural, educational, and social institutions. There were also arrests in our village as a result of this new policy.
With the arrival of Postyshev, the grain collection campaign was changed into a Seed Collection Campaign. The fact that the farmers were starving did not bother the authorities at all. What they worried about was the lack of seed for the spring sowing. I remember one of Postyshev’s speeches in which he instructed all Party organizations to collect seed with the same methods used in collecting grain. He also ordered the expropriation of grain seed which had supposedly been stolen or illegally distributed as food for the members of collective farms. It was made clear that the needed seed must be collected and delivered immediately and at all costs. But it was beyond our comprehension that the Communist authorities could so ruthlessly demand grain at a time when the bodies of starved farmers were littering the roads, fields, and backyards. As we listened to these harangues, we often thought that perhaps there was hidden sabotage at work to discredit the Communist Party. But we were naive. Devoid of all human emotions, the Party wanted grain from us; starvation was no excuse. The Party officials treated us with contempt and impatience. All this was heightened by the traditional Russian distrust and dislike of Ukrainian farmers. Thus we were forced to listen to the endless lies of these Russian officials that there was no famine; that no one was starving. Those who died were the lazy ones who refused to work at the collective farm. They deserved to die.
But, let’s return to Antin’s house, where the Bread Procurement Commission members were searching his premises on the hill. There were rumors that Antin and his mother, deranged by hunger, had become cannibals. But that was not the reason the commission had come there on that particular day. We learned that Comrade Thousander had once met Antin and noticed he still looked well fed and vigorous. To Comrade Thousander that only meant that Antin had some hidden food, so he arranged with the First Hundred commission to have a thorough search made of Antin’s place for “hidden” foodstuffs. Imagine their surprise that instead of finding grain, they found human remains. We, at that point, noticed Antin and his mother standing at some distance from Comrade Thousander. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were guarded by one of the Thousanders armed with a shotgun. In front of them, was a heap of human remains, bones and skulls. It was a nauseating sight, and so is its sordid memory. There was no doubt in our minds that the remains of our friend Ivan were in that horrible pile.
We left the scene with revulsion and disgust, hurrying on to Priska’s house.
Priska’s fate was not much different from that of many of the unfortunate villagers’ families. For refusing to join the collective farm in 1930, and then failing to meet the state taxes and delivery quotas, her husband was labeled a kurkul and banished like many others to a distant notorious concentration camp. Later on, her husband was interned in a forced labor camp from which news reached Priska that he had died while digging the Baltic Sea-White Sea Canal. Priska was left alone with her two children: a boy about seven and a five-year-old daughter.
Priska was at home when we reached her place. She was famished to such a degree that she could hardly move. She told us her sad story laboriously since it was already difficult for her to talk.
Left alone, she had to work hard to support her children. Her work consisted mainly of running around searching for food. There was not much she could find: a couple of beets, a few potatoes, a slice or two of bread. Still, it was not so bad during the summer and autumn when she was able to work at the collective farm. While working there, she received two pounds of either bread or flour. In addition, she, like the rest of the kolhosp members who were able to work, received two hot meals daily. It was usually some kind of millet or buckwheat gruel or porridge. With her food rations, she was also able to feed her children, but when winter came work stopped at the kolhosp, and her bread rations and hot meals also ceased. The small amount of food that she had received as payment in kind for her labor didn’t last very long. Nevertheless, she and her children managed somehow to stay alive until March. Then came the inevitable: her son succumbed to starvation. She buried him in the orchard under a cherry tree. She also wished to be buried under a cherry tree after her death.
Now left with her little daughter, Maria, she knew that soon it would be their turn to die. She was afraid of the possibility that she would die first, leaving her young daughter all alone. That thought was unbearable to Priska; she had to do something to save little Maria from that fate. She had heard rumors about a Children’s Shelter in a town about twenty miles from our village. One April morning, the two of them started their twenty-mile journey on foot. Arriving at the so-called Children’s Shelter, she discovered that it was a Militia Detention Home for Children. Even though she was frightened, disappointed, and frustrated with this turn of events, she decided that even that place would be better than caring for her child alone. After thinking very carefully, she instructed little Maria what she should do and say and sent her to the entrance door. As soon as the door was opened and little Maria entered, Priska disappeared around the street corner, never to see her little daughter again.
At this point in her story, Priska became silent. Her bulging glassy eyes had a stunned look, and her lips trembled, but she did not cry. We just stood there watching her silently.
After Priska regained her composure, she completed her story. She had no peace in her heart after giving up Maria and leaving her to an unknown destiny. She was heartbroken and had feelings of great guilt and remorse. She could not stop the tears from flowing. During the long cold sleepless nights, in her hallucinations little Maria would appear before her. Sitting down on the bench in the corner under the icons, Priska could sense her staring at her. Then Maria would burst out crying, begging for bread and saying:
“Mama, why have you abandoned me? Don’t you love me anymore?”
Each night her little daughter would appear, Priska said, and each time she would ask her the same question:
“Mama, why have you abandoned me? Don’t you love me anymore?”
Finally, in her frenzied state, she walked those twenty miles again to where she had left Maria. Her efforts were in vain, and she never did see her again.
It was growing dark by the time Priska finished her story, and we had to leave for home. The next day, Mother sent us back to Priska’s house with some food, but it was too late. We found her dead on the floor. In her despondency, she chose to die a quicker, less agonizing death. She mustered all her remaining strength to poison herself by inhaling charcoal fumes.
We remembered her desire to be buried under a cherry tree, and at nightfall we buried her close to her young son.
Such suicides became a common occurrence in our village at that time. Many people took their lives by carbon monoxide poisoning like Priska did. It was simple and painless. Those who decided on such a step were mostly women whose husbands had been arrested and sent to concentration camps, and who had lost their children in their heroic struggle with starvation. They would seal the chimneys, the doors, and windows, make a fire in the oven or in the middle of the room on the mud floor, and die from the deadly fumes. Others would set the whole house on fire.
But the most common form of suicide was by hanging. Among those who chose this way were the village functionaries, especially the leaders of the Tens and Fives. Some members of the Communist Party also committed suicide in one way or another. The authorities were aware of these mass suicides, but did nothing to stop them.
During the following days, we visited other relatives and friends about whom we were anxious. Anything could have happened to them since we last saw them.
First, we stopped at my friend Vasyl’s house. His father had been arrested and banished to some northern region. He had lived with his mother and two little sisters, but we had heard nothing from him since he had dropped out of school sometime in December of last year. As we entered the house, we saw the two famished girls and their mother. All three of them looked like living mummies. They were crouched silently in the middle of the room on the mud floor. They were cooking weeds, orach and nettle, which grew abundantly in our region. The girls left our greetings unanswered. All their attention was concentrated on the bubbling liquid in the pot. They watched it greedily, with spoons in their hands. The mother started weeping upon seeing us. It took us quite a while to calm her down so she could answer our inquiries about Vasyl, and then she told us his story.
At the onset of the famine, Vasyl had joined some men experienced in traveling to distant places. He went with them to Russia to buy food. He was lucky. He returned home with several loaves of bread and about thirty pounds of flour. That was last December. In March of 1933, when the famine reached its most disastrous proportions, Vasyl decided to repeat his trip, but this time he was not so lucky. He somehow managed to catch a train to a small Russian town not far from Moscow. From there, he was able to inform his mother in some way that he was on his way home. However, he never returned. His mother later learned that he had been arrested at a border railroad station, and eventually tried as a black marketeer, convicted, and given a sentence of five years of hard labor. No one had heard from him since.
There were many cases like Vasyl’s. Despite the official prohibition against travel in search of jobs and food, and in spite of our miserable living conditions and the fact that we were practically in a state of collapse from hunger, we couldn’t simply give up. No one who could still stand wanted to resign himself to death without a struggle.
There was no attempt of any kind to organize some relief for the starving families in our village either by the authorities or by private individuals. On the contrary, when a local teacher tried to put some relief in motion, he was arrested and sent to dig the Baltic Sea—White Sea Canal. He was accused of “spreading false rumors that our villagers were starving.” The idea of organized relief vanished together with him. We were on our own to fight the disaster individually without the benefit of social organization. The mass exodus of the villagers was not only to neighboring towns and cities. Many, like Vasyl, went to farther regions and even to Russia where there was no famine. It was not easy to do, even if one had money. As I’ve noted before, we were not allowed to buy train tickets, except when we had special permission from the village soviet. In 1933, the ordinance was being enforced much more strictly. The trains were guarded by soldiers of the special forces, and it was impossible to sneak onto a train without showing a ticket. Besides that, the villagers did not have the passports which had been introduced the previous December, so it was easier to check all passengers traveling north or east from Ukraine and catch the “illegal” ones. Anyone caught was forcibly returned to his village or sent to a labor camp.
This was an ideal time for the city black marketeers. With their personal passports, they could buy train tickets for travel wherever they wanted to without any difficulties. Then they in turn could resell the ticket to a villager for an exorbitant price. A ticket to Moscow on the black market, for example, would usually cost four or five times as much as its original price.