by Miron Dolot
In November 1932, the suffering of our villagers began to approach the magnitude of last spring’s famine. The first famine had been marked by unspeakable suffering, and yet, it had not been without a ray of hope: it was spring, and we all prayed that the new vegetables and fruits would sustain us until the summer harvest. The situation this autumn, however, was different. The harvest of 1932 was good, but the government took everything. The collective farmers were left without bread, except for that meager payment in kind that they received as advance compensation for their work. By the end of November, we were at the end of our resources. We were without food, and we had no money with which to buy any. The dried and preserved wild berries, the edible roots, the cabbages and pumpkins, the beets, the fruits had already been consumed. There was no hope of getting a new supply of them. We faced a severe winter with freezing temperatures, and great snowstorms which we knew would last until the end of March or even longer. Again, as in last spring’s famine, a multitude of beggars roamed the village, pleading to be rescued from death. They begged for morsels of bread, for scraps of food, for peelings and discards. Once again, one could see famished people, dressed in rags and tatters, roaming over the potato field searching for leftover potatoes. Once more, starving farmers, like walking skeletons, searched the forest and explored the river with the hopes of finding something edible. And again, they went to cities, railroad stations, and the railroad tracks, in hope of getting some food from the passengers.
Compared with other villagers, my family and I were in better shape to survive the winter. We had learned from the difficulties experienced during last spring’s famine to make extra preparations and to take special precautions to stay alive. Our main problem was how to hide the little food we had from the X-ray eyes of the officials. It was difficult to outwit them, but our survival instincts made us inventive.
The threat of imminent famine sharpened our minds; it freed us from the fear of being caught and made us ready to fight for our lives at any cost. While preparing for the long winter, we knew that we had to outsmart our persecutors if we wanted to stay alive.
Hiding food was not an easy task. The prospect of intolerable hunger forced us to take risks we would otherwise have never dared. After much worried thinking and discussion, our mother finally hit upon an idea: it was very simple, but extremely risky.
“Why not enlist the help of the government?” she remarked, as if it were obvious.
We did not understand what she had in mind.
“What do you mean?” I asked, completely baffled. “You mean to ask the government for help? You know that instead of helping us they have already taken everything we have!”
“No, not that,” she answered quietly, as was her way. “I mean we should hide whatever food we have in a pit on government land.”
We had to agree with her. It was an excellent idea. Its logic was clear: no official would even think of someone daring to hide food from the government on the government’s own land. Any personal use of government property was severely punished by law, but we dared to defy that law, and by doing it we saved our lives.
As we anticipated, the Bread Procurement Commission searched all over our backyard and garden, but did not bother to cross the boundary to the government property—the adjacent sand dunes.
During harvest time, my brother and I had not been idle. No matter how carefully the crop was guarded, we were able to collect enough wheat grain to sustain our lives until at least the next spring. We were agile young boys with nimble feet; we knew each path, each bush, and we knew how to avoid being caught. The only problem that remained was how to hide the grain. However, that problem had now been solved by our mother.
We buried some potatoes and grain in several places in a strip of land adjoining the woods. That land was a useless sandy dune overgrown by bushy willows and sallows so it was very easy for us to disguise our hiding places. In the winter, these hiding places were covered by snow, and we left them undisturbed. But when spring came and the snow melted, this hoard was our only means of existence. We would open our hiding places during the night, take out some potatoes and grain, enough for a few days, and then close and cover them up again. Our nightly visits to those hiding places are among my unforgettable experiences. Those potatoes and that grain were the greatest treasure that was ever hidden in the ground.
During the wintertime, we ate the food that was hidden elsewhere—in the tree hollows, for example, or in the roof thatching. We hid the grain in small bags in many places so as to be able to remove one bag at a time. Upon removing it, we immediately cooked and ate it. Both the cooking and the eating were done at night. We still had some potatoes, sauerkraut, and pickles which we received as advance payment in kind for our work in the kolhosp. This was our only solid food, but as days passed, these resources began to diminish rapidly, and we trembled at the thought that the commission might some day catch us eating our cooked wheat.
CHAPTER 23
WE LOOKED toward the approaching winter of 1932–1933 with great trepidation, as if awaiting the arrival of the Judgment Day. It came with nature’s crushing wrath. The particularly severe winter conspired with the Communists against the farmers.
In our region, winter begins at the end of November when the heavy rains stop and the first frost sets in. The puddles freeze and the mud hardens. Heavy grayish white snow clouds chase each other across the sky.
This change of weather is accompanied by an icy east wind which blows along the valley and forces people to retreat into their shelters. It is the time when our villagers hurriedly finish their work in the fields and retire to their deserved winter rest. In the past, when the field work ended, our villagers were not forced to go out in bad weather. They would set aside enough food and firewood so that the cold days and nights indoors meant little hardship.
But the winter of 1932–1933 was different from any of the previous ones. Although nature followed her usual pattern with the exception of unusual cold, the life of the villagers did not take its normal course, for in step with the winter, a great famine approached.
The scarcity of food alarmed us as early as November while we were still working in the fields of the collective farm. The small advance received from the kolhosp had already been consumed. We had been told that we would receive more food as soon as the field work was completed. But we never did.
Then came the taxes. Taxes in the form of eggs and milk were obligatory only to those who owned fowl and cows. But each household had to meet a quota of meat, approximately 250 pounds annually, regardless of livestock holdings. Farmers without livestock were forced to pay this obligation to the state with money. Thus the annual earnings of a collective farmer from his work on the collective farm were insufficient to meet his obligations to the state, let alone for his subsistence.
However, even if the villagers had had money, it would have been impossible for them to purchase food. For, in fact, the trade in foodstuffs and other consumer commodities was officially prohibited. On November 6, 1932, the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Communist Party jointly issued the following resolution:
Because of the shameless breakdown of the grain collection campaign in various counties of Ukraine, the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine order the local Party and administration authorities to eradicate sabotage of grain, which has been organized by counterrevolutionary and kurkul elements. The opposition of a number of Communists, leaders of this sabotage, must also be stamped out, and the passive and indifferent attitude towards this sabotage on the part of some Party organizations must be liquidated. The Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee have decided to blacklist all those localities which conduct criminal sabotage and to apply against them the following reprisals:
To suspend the flow of all merchandise and all state and cooperative trade in these localities; to close all state and cooperative stores; and to remove all sup
plies of merchandise.
To prohibit trade in essential foodstuffs, which trade heretofore had been conducted by collective farms and individual homesteads.
To suspend all credits destined for those localities and to withdraw at once all credits already given to them.
To overhaul the personnel of the administrative and economic organizations and to remove all enemy elements therefrom.
To do the same on collective farms by removal therefrom of all enemy elements engaged in sabotage.
This resolution obviously deprived the farmers not only of the foodstuffs grown locally, but also of commodities such as matches, salt, kerosene, fish products, sugar products, canned food, etc., as I mentioned before. The trade in foodstuffs and consumer goods was prohibited throughout Ukraine, for there wasn’t a single village that had fulfilled the grain delivery quota.
Anxiety turned to panic when the first disquieting news came that the kolhosp storehouses were empty, that the grain had been taken away from the village, and that none had been left for the local populace.
The long winter had just begun. It would be six months from December before we could gather vegetables in our gardens again; it would be eight months before we could get bread from the new crop of grain. Already, some of us were on the verge of collapse from starvation. We clung, nevertheless, to the hope that the government would help us, but as time went by, that hope faded.
Meanwhile, the cold became more intense and the snow fell slowly, continuously, threatening to block the road from the village to the county seat and other neighboring towns. Yet the members of the Bread Procurement Commission continued in their task, relentlessly tramping from house to house, confiscating everything edible they could find in their attempt to meet the state quotas. Even the smallest amounts of grain and meat were forcibly seized from the villagers.
We had to do something. No one wanted to lie down passively and starve to death. One of the first steps undertaken by the villagers was a mass exodus to the neighboring cities where they hoped to find jobs and food. All—young and old—tried to reach the cities as they had tried before during the last spring famine. Many did not make it, and their frozen bodies became roadmarkers for others on the snowed-in route to the county towns. Those who were strong enough to reach the cities failed to find a paradise of plenty, even though the food rationing there slowed down the onslaught of famine somewhat. The food rations were so small that the city dwellers could not help the starving farmers.
Jobs were as scarce as food. Some of the younger huskier men found jobs at the sugar plants, state road construction projects, or woodcutting. Others were hired to carry water from the community wells. But the elderly men and women and the children who desperately sought out the cities with the hope of earning their daily bread were less fortunate.
As the exodus of villagers to the cities increased, the government confounded the farmers with an ordinance prohibiting a villager from appearing in any city without a proper certificate. Any emigration out of Ukraine was also strictly prohibited.
It was precisely at this time, the end of December 1932, that the government introduced a single passport system for the entire country in order to prevent the starving farmers from leaving their villages for the cities. This meant that all Soviet citizens over sixteen years of age, permanently residing in the cities, had to be registered with the militia in order to get their Soviet passports.
No person lacking a passport was permitted to live in a given city or be employed and receive food rations. All but the farmers had to have passports. This meant that a farmer could not stay in a city longer than twenty-four hours without being registered with the militia. Thus, not having passports, the farmers could not be employed in a city, and most importantly, they could not have food rations.
The passportization was supposedly directed against the kurkuls, as Soviet propaganda proclaimed: “Passportization is a mortal blow against the kurkuls!” This murderous slogan revived the old question: “Who is a kurkul?” All villagers had been collectivized by this time. There was not a single independent farmer left in our village by the end of 1932. Could the members of a collective farm be kurkuls? It was difficult for us to understand such logic. But, at this point, such faulty reasoning didn’t matter to us anymore.
Now it began to dawn on everyone why there wasn’t any food left in the village; why there weren’t any prospects of getting any more; why our expectation that the government would surely help us to avert starvation was naive and futile; why the Bread Procurement Commission still searched for “hidden” grain; and why the government strictly forbade us to look for means of existence elsewhere. It finally became clear to us that there was a conspiracy against us; that somebody wanted to annihilate us, not only as farmers but as a people—as Ukrainians.
At this realization, our initial bewilderment was succeeded by panic. Nevertheless, our instinct for survival was stronger than any of the prohibitions. It dictated to those who were still physically able that they must do everything to save themselves and their families.
The desperate attempts to find some means of existence in the neighboring cities continued. Many of the more able-bodied villagers ventured beyond the borders to distant parts of the Soviet Union, mainly to Russia, where, as we had heard, there was plenty of food. Others went south, since we had also heard that there, in the coal mines and factories of the Donets Basin, one could find work with regular pay and food rations.
However, few of the brave adventurers who set out for these lands of plenty reached their destination. The roads to the large metropolitan centers were closed to them. The militia and the GPU men checked every passenger for identification and destination. These courageous men and women doing their utmost to stay alive, achieved quite the contrary. We can only guess what happened to them when they were arrested; it was either death or the concentration camps. If they managed to escape the verdict of death in the “people’s” courts, receiving the questionable reprieve of hard labor, they never began their sentences. The combination of hunger, cold, and neglect took their lives on the way to the camps, at the railroad stations, or in the open box cars rolling north and east, in which they froze to death.
The ones who escaped the roadblocks set up by the militia and GPU often became the victims of outlaws who terrorized the railroad lines and the open markets. The lucky ones who managed to return to their villages after these terrible experiences, and those who remained in the village, gradually lost their spirit and belief in salvation from their plight. Weakened by lack of food, freezing for lack of fuel, they simply had no more stamina left. The farmers sank deeper and deeper into resignation, apathy and despair. Some were convinced that starvation was a well-deserved punishment from God for believing in Communism and supporting the Communists during the Revolution.
We heard that a few of those who came back had somehow managed to acquire food—mainly flour—but few of them were able to bring their treasures home. Those provisions, obtained under great hardships, had been confiscated by the state agents, or stolen by outlaws.
All of these events convinced us that we had lost our battle for life. Our attempts to escape, or to secure food from other sources, were for the most part unsuccessful. We were imprisoned in our village, without food, and sentenced to die the slow, agonizing death of starvation.
CHAPTER 24
AT THE END of 1932 when all the vegetables and bread had been consumed news reached the villages of our region that special stores had been opened in the county town with plenty of everything. It was even rumored that foreign goods were available there. However, we also learned that the only medium of exchange for these goods was foreign currency and gold or silver, the latter two in any form or quantity.
Little by little, more information about these stores trickled into our village. The stores were known under the name of Torgsin, which is an abbreviation of the Russian words for “trade with foreigners.” It was said that this store was selling all the neces
sities of life: groceries, clothing, medicines, and so forth.
We knew that Torgsin had existed for sometime now, but only in the large metropolitan cities where many foreigners lived. Now, these stores were coming to us. Yet, as unsophisticated as we were, the aim of the Soviet government was clear to us. These stores were intended to strip us of the last remnants of our gold and silver. Family heirlooms such as crosses, icons, earrings, wedding bands, watches, and anything else that might have contained some precious metal were much coveted by the regime. The Communist government, suspecting that the farmers still possessed gold and silver coins from prerevolutionary times, wanted to get hold of them. For generations, families had accumulated such treasures as silver teapots, sugar bowls, cream pitchers, salt and pepper shakers, and other silver pieces. It used to be a fashionable custom among young village women to have one of their upper front teeth crowned with gold whether or not it was dentally needed. The government wanted these too.
Hunger accomplished everything that decrees and threats could not. The last reserves of precious metals, meager as they were, were pried or dug out from their hiding places. They became the only means of survival.
To own gold was now everybody’s dream; it became synonymous with life itself. Gold could buy bread…just imagine. Even we lowly villagers could buy bread, and plenty of it very easily if we only had that magic gold. But the question was how and where to get it? A few of us had some, but the majority had never even seen it.
As the news about this fabulous store spread, we began to hear horror stories about armed robberies and murders. Wearing gold jewelry openly, or having a gold tooth, was flirting with death. Murders committed for a pair of earrings, or a ring, or whatever else was made of gold or looked like gold, soon became everyday occurences. A girl lost her finger along with her ring when the robber who was unable to remove the gold ring simply cut off her finger. Thieves armed with tongs would forcibly extract the teeth from those who had gold crowns. These crimes had a tremendous demoralizing impact on our lives.