Holodomor

Ukraine, 1932

My name is Solomiya, and I have a story to tell you. I will speak it as I walk through the night, for it is dark and cold and the sound of my voice may fill the emptiness. Stranger, If you are beside me, I will not be alone. You are my mother, father, sister, brother.  

May I call you Mishka?  

I have done a terrible and wonderful thing tonight, and my hands are black and seared with the evidence of my crime. I was, at dawn, just a girl of sixteen, starving to death amongst my people. Today, I watched the Red Army drive their cars over the bodies of my neighbors and held my fathers hand as he took his final breath. Now dusk has fallen upon me, and the girl I knew is gone. I am a woman, and my body and soul are worn as thin as if I had lived one hundred years. I have made myself an enemy of the state and I will live or I will die, but I am free.

 And I have only you, Mishka.

So many hours has the pain been my companion, the burns on my hand, my cracked blistered feet. The aching of my swollen joints. I wanted to give up, to lie down and let my spirit drift away. It would not take long I think, there is little sustaining me save this story I am telling you, and my Father’s words pressing me on. 

“Flee, Solomiya. Your uncle waits for you in Poland. Let the Bolshevik dogs chase you with their bullets, for you are my little krolyk, a wise and quick rabbit.  

“I am with you Solomiya.” I kissed him, though fluid oozed from his cracked skin. The lice had migrated to his eyes, the corners of his mouth, as his limbs grew colder. A sure sign his suffering would soon end.

“I am with you, father.” I held his hand in mine, and in my other hand the wooden matchbox. My past in one hand and my future in the other.  

I have repeated his words again and again these many hours, afraid I will forget the sound of his voice. Not like my mother, whose voice I share and cannot lose. When I sing, as she did, it is her voice in the melody and she is with me, my hands cupped in hers.

Hey, pohnu ya v chuzim krayu,

Pohynu ya v chuzim krayu.

Chto z my bude braty yamu?

Chto z bude braty yamu?

Oh, I will die in a foreign land.

I will die in a foreign land.

Who will prepare a grave for me?

Who will prepare a grave for me?

The song once lulled me to sleep, sad but beautiful as it rose and fell, the lilt and softness of her tone. It has now become my story.  

But if I stayed? Who then would prepare a grave for me? Who would lay flowers on my coffin? Here in our homeland, my people fall wherever death strikes them; leaning against fence posts, lying along roadsides, in train stations and in their homes. Children cry for food and die in their parents arms. Mothers give last drops of milk and pass away while their babes suckle helplessly. This forced famine has left the dead in shallow graves; layers upon layers of corpses, black and twisted. A murder of crows circle about the graves, laying witness to Stalin’s secret. Help is not coming.

Can you hear me Mishka?

This is the fate of our villages. They call us Kulaks; enemies of the Soviet Union. We wanted only sovereignty, independence, to keep the farms our grandfathers gave us. Yet our people were driven to join collectives or executed like criminals, thrown from our homes into forced labor colonies, deported to SIberia, and most effectively; starved. Many resisted, but my family joined a collective. We believed we would again taste the fat of a pig. We were given a handful of peas for a days work, enough to keep us from fainting in the fields. We ate anything we could find. Potato peels, sugar beets, grape seeds, grass, acorns and roots. We put it all together and cooked it in water. Father spooned the soup into Mother’s mouth, for she had no will left to live. There was no hope in those fields for us; the quotas were unreachable. Our people died like flies while they filled the storage barn with grain bound for Moscow. 

Momma walked each morning to the road and stared into the distance, until one morning she did not return. I found her there, her back against a tree, and sat beside her for some minutes before closing her empty eyes. Here, the living cannot easily be distinguished from the dead.  

The dawn is coming, and it gives me strength. Now I will tell you of my crime, and you can judge.

I covered my father with a blanket and laid two flowers on his heart, wrapped myself in his tattered jacket and pulled my scarf over my head. The sun was setting and before I had reached the collective the night was dark and still. I approached the storage barn and ran my hand along the wooden beams. The state will take this grain, and its rightful owners, they will watch it go. It will lay in the Zahotzerno warehouses to be distilled into alcohol for intoxication, while my people are dying of hunger.

 I closed my eyes and breathed in the raw earthy smell of the grain. From the flask I carried, the pungent smell of petrol. I heard deep voices from the main house, communist soldiers, brigadiers from Leningrad. These men entered our villages and searched for grain, cracked our millstones, and accused us of treason.

“What will we eat?” My neighbor Vitea cried, flinging dust at the men, But the Chekists laughed at her, sparing her life only because of the ignorance granted her for being a woman. “God will not send you manna from heaven.” they mocked. The people hide food in their hair, in their mouth, beneath their tongues, but they would find it and take it too.

I cried then, for my father, as I listened to the laughter from these men with full stomachs. And I pulled out the box of matches and slid the wick into my petrol flask. I heard at this time the rustle of dry grass which I prayed was no more than a curious barn cat. Turning my head, I found myself looking into the eyes of a Russian soldier. I will tell you, Mishka, I have never felt such fear. I was prepared to die, but should I fall here before this, my final act? It was too much to bear. I saw his holstered gun and I wondered if my hand could move as fast as his, but my torch was not yet lit. Seconds passed and the soldier did not move to approach me, did not unholster his weapon. Did I imagine he took a small step away from me? I pulled a match from the box and lit it, my heart pounding, throbbing, terror like a hand squeezed my throat shut. Still this man did not flinch, or cry for help. His features were so young, he might have been only a little older than me. I lit the soaked fabric wick and the flame jumped up and licked my hand fiercely before I let it launch against the side of the barn. The petrol spread against the wood and a warm blaze lit my face. I waited, braced myself for the bullet that would surely find me now, but it did not come. Now, in this new light, I saw the features of my enemy more clearly, the paleness of his skin, the solemness of his gaze. How very young he was. I turned and walked into the darkness as the barnwood crackled, the sounds of men rising up from behind me.  

Mishka, I am leaving you.  

I will go on from here. A shadow hangs over my land but there is this new light of dawn, warming my face like a blaze of fire, steady and strong like me. I will fight for my land and for my life. This new hope, it is the bread of life to sustain me, my manna from heaven, my light in the darkness. 

In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, a famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. Nearly one hundred years later, the people of Ukraine continue their fight for sovereignty.