"People
were wandering about the gardens and hoping to come
upon something left behind in the gardens; they would
dig and dig, and examine every clump of earth. If they
came upon a smelly old potato, they would clean it and
take the starch. . . People dug up all sorts of roots.
It was terrible, absolutely terrible. People scattered
all over; they wandered here and there. Sometimes they'd
spot some small creature in the water, like a turtle
and eat it as food. It was terrible. People were reduced
to that state. I was right there. Some of the starving
were in such a bad way that they had begun to stink
already. Their feet would swell up; their wounds would
open and fester. It was terrible. You would see them
walking about, just walking and walking, and one would
drop, and then another, and so on it went."
"Moscow
assigned grain production and delivery quotas to the
provinces, and the provinces then assigned them to the
districts. And our village was given a quota that it
couldn't have fulfilled in ten years! In the village
rada (council) even those who weren't drinkers took
to drink out of terror... Of course,
the grain deliveries could not be fulfilled. Smaller
areas had been sown, and the crop yield on those smaller
areas had shrunk. So where could it come from, that
promised ocean of grain from the collective farms? The
conclusion reached up top was that the grain had all
been concealed, hidden away. By kulaks who had not yet
been liquidated, by loafers! The "kulaks"
had been removed, but the "kulak" spirit remained.
Private property was master over the minds of the Ukrainian
peasant.
Who
was it who then signed the act which imposed mass murder?
... For the decree required that the peasants of Ukraine,
the Don, and the Kuban be put to death by starvation,
put to death along with their tiny children. The instructions
were to take away the entire seed fund. Grain was searched
for as if it were not grain but bombs and machine guns.
The whole earth was stabbed with bayonets and ramrods.
Cellars were dug up, floors were broken through, and
vegetable gardens were turned over. From some they confiscated
grain, and dust hung over the earth. And there were
no grain elevators to accommodate it, and they simply
dumped it out on the earth and set guards around it.
By winter the grain had been soaked by the rains and
began to ferment -- the Soviet government didn't even
have enough canvases to cover it up!...
Fathers and mothers wanted to save their children and
hid a tiny bit of grain, and they were told: "You
hate the country of socialism. You are trying to make
the plan fail, you parasites, you pro-kulaks, you rats."
... The entire seed fund had been confiscated...
Everyone was in terror. Mothers looked at their children
and began to scream in fear. They screamed as if a snake
had crept into their house. And this snake was famine,
starvation, death..."
