by Oleksandr Zavalov, HUSI 2020
HUSI student Oleksandr Zavalov shares his grandparents' experiences under the Soviet regime. His grandmother was forcibly resettled from Poland to Zaporizhia, and his grandfather from Western Ukraine to Siberia as a designated "enemy of the people."
Zavalov put together a video of his grandmother answering his questions about her past. Below the video is a transcript of the questions and answers presented in the video.
Transcript of the Video
Part I. Grandmother Sophia
Oleksandr: Tell me about operation Vistula and how you lived in Poland.
I was a little girl, and I was deported [from Poland] to the Zaporizhzhia region [of Ukraine]. We were transported in railway wagons designed to carry livestock. Every railway wagon was filled with a few families. There was an iron makeshift wood-burning stove in the wagon, and people tried to stay warm sitting around it. And we were deported to the village of Orlyanka, Zaporizhzhia region. There was cannibalism there [due to severe starving].
This is what was operation Vistula. The government wrote in the documents that Ukrainians voluntarily left [Poland].
Oleksandr: What would have happened if you didn't want to go?
We would have been shot. Many people were shot. Some people were shot in one village, then in another village, and all people were scared. Many people were deported, do you think it was voluntarily. People were kicked out of their homes; everything was forcibly taken away [that belonged to them] and deported.
Oleksandr: How were you deported?
We [with our belongings] were going first in a dray cart, then in railway livestock wagons. In the railway wagon, there were two of us [children] and two [parents]. I don't remember how many other families there were, I was a little girl. And so we came to the Soviet Union. First, we went through Poland, and then the border, and the Soviet Union begins. The first thing we have seen was a group of women standing and repairing the railway with large railroad picks. They were changing bad railroad sleepers on the railway. [We were shocked, before that] the wheat was brought to Poland from the Soviet Union in silk bags! My father told me that this wheat was very cheap, and then [after seeing the horrors of the Soviet Union] he told to children and grandchildren: believe in God, only believe in God!
We were forcibly taken from Poland to the Zaporizhzhia region. And in order to come back, many people who were taken out of Poland gathered there and drove up to the Dnipro river. Suddenly, a lot of KGB officers arrived and did not let people go on the ferry, to cross the Dnipro, and get to the other riverbank.
However, women and children began to cry, and many people gathered, so the officers eventually allowed them to cross the Dnipro. After that, we were trying to get back to our homes, which were in Poland. However, as soon as we reached the Polish border, we were not allowed to go any further.
We were not allowed to go further than Kivertsy [small town near Lutsk]. We had no place where to live. So, we went to a small village, about 25 kilometers away from Kivertsy. My father found a house to rent there, right at the forest. There was only one room there with a wood-burning stove at the center of the room with a storage room adjacent to the house. There was no many rooms, this is how we lived. My little sister was born there. One winter our house was completely covered with snow. It was impossible to go outside from the house. So other people thought that we already died.
We starved a lot. I was herding a cow barefoot. I didn't have shoes. There's even a photo how I sit in the front row barefoot, and no one can't see it because I was very small. In that photo, all the children were in shoes, but only I was sitting barefoot. In Soviet times, we were not even allowed to graze a cow in the forest. There was a sign that the forest is of the first category, so it is forbidden to graze cattle. Therefore, people drove all the cows to the swamp, because they were not allowed to graze them anywhere. To graze a cow, one had to give 300 liters of milk to the state dairy plant for free, nothing was paid. If you did not work in the forest, where you had to help the forester to plant the trees, you were not allowed into the forest at all. In the forest you could only collect pinecones to heat the house.
One had to pay a tax for each tree in your backyard. The inspection came and counted how many trees you have. If you have a pig, you had to pay for the pig. If someone was single, for example, if a man or a woman were single, and if they reached 18 years, they had to pay a bachelor's tax.
In a collective farm, nobody could get a passport. If someone was in bad relationship with the head of the collective farm, and his child studied well, he did not let them leave the collective farm. The head didn't give permission to go to college. Many people after being conscripted for military service, for example, if they were called to Siberia, stayed in Siberia to get a passport and a job.
There was no local public transportation. Once I remember returning from Lutsk to Kivertsy after work on foot, I met a man, who walked on foot from the area of Manevychi, 60-70 kilometers from us. This man was carrying a bag of bread on his shoulders. He said that he was buying bread for a week, stood in queues, and now brings it home so that his children will not die of hunger.
There was no bread to buy, it was given only for food stamps. One food stamp was equal to 200 grams of bread. The bread was so bad and low-quality that it could be made into something like clay.
I went to the store at five o'clock in the morning to buy some bread. I was standing in front of the store, and there was no bread yet. When the store opens, and the bread delivered a large crowd gathered inside. Once I was almost strangled in this crowd. It was impossible to get out. Some people picked me up and dropped me off with this loaf of bread through the window.
There was a forester who did not allow children to graze cows in the forest. I was a little girl, but some of the boys were older. These boys gathered some nettles in a bag, caught that nasty forester, and put him in a bag of nettles. The forester barely got out of that bag of nettles.
My sister and I went to school in the same coat. My older sister went to school in the morning, and I went to school in the afternoon. If she returns from school late, I had nothing to wear, no coat, no shoes. So, I had to wait until my sister came home from school, then I put on her coat and shoes and go to school. My teacher has noticed that I am getting late for my first period very often.
When the teacher had a meeting with my parents, she said: “why your daughter is often late to class?” Then my mother said that I don't have a coat and shoes. But I was ashamed to tell the teacher that my sister and I share the same coat.
Later when I was in eighth grade, it was necessary to pay money for school, for me and for my sister, but our family had no money. The principal came to classroom and didn't touch my sister, but kicked me out of the classroom and my bag too, saying get out of here! I went home, and my father told me: "what I could do?" He was earning only 30 soviet rubles. I was small in stature, but I really wanted to study and decided to go to the district communist party Committee. One morning, and I haven't been to school for two weeks, I get ready and go to the district communist party Committee. The secretary asks me: "why are you here, child?" I answer: "I will not tell you anything, I will only tell this the first Secretary of the district communist party Committee." Suddenly three men come out of the office. The secretary says: "the child came here." One of them says: “I'm the first secretary [it’s a party chief of the district], what do you need?” I tell them that I was kicked out of school because I don't have money to pay for it. “My father and family have no money; we have three children. Give me please any job.” This party chief called me to his office, and I told him everything in detail, and he called the school principal to his office. The principal comes into the office and starts yelling at me: "why did you come here?" I burst into tears and trembled. We were afraid of this school principal. At this moment, the first party secretary bumps with a fist hardly the glass on his desk. The glass cracked and shattered. Then he said to me: "wait for a minute in the hallway." After a while, the principal comes out of the office and says to me: “you must be at school right now” [to continue studying].
Part II. Grandfather Anatoly
Anatoly's family was illegally resettled to Siberia. They had very nice house [in Ukraine]. His family had about 6 hectares of land where they were growing crops. Also, his family had some horses and cows. [The Communists] have seen this and decided to forcibly resettle them. At that time, Anatoly's father and one of his sisters were not at home. Only Anatoly, his mother, and his older sister were captured. When his father returned home, there was no one at home already, the house was looted, all the things were taken. He spent two years looking for them in Siberia.
Anatoly and his family was taken by the authorities and forcibly resettled [from Ukraine] to the Kemerovo region [in southwest Siberia]. [KGB forces] arrived at four o'clock in the morning, and said: "get ready, you are will be resettled." One sister (of his two sisters) was not at home at that time. She was visiting relatives in another village. His second sister worked as a teacher in another village.
So, they [Anatoly’s family] were told [by KGB people] to pack their things for relocation, and they were given a certain short amount of time. After that they were taken to the train station. On the way to the station, [KGB] found out where his sister is (who worked as a teacher). So, they stopped by to pick her up for resettlement too.
At the railroad station, Anatoly's family [mother, sister, and Anatoly] were put into railroad livestock wagon. Thereby, they were relocated to Kemerovo region in Siberia. They got there only in a few weeks. On the way to Siberia, if someone died, the body was simply thrown out of the wagon into the forest, not buried.
Anatoly was a little boy and had a wooden box that one Polish man gave to him in a small village where they lived. Everyone loved him very much in that village. Anatoly was 6 years old when he went to school because he already knew a lot.
When they were forcibly put on a train to be sent to Siberia, one soldier from KGB approached Anatoly and hit him with a knee. Anatoly did not want to give him his box, but the KGB man hit him with his knee and took the wooden box.
Anatoly started to cry, and his mother told him: "don't cry, son, or they might even shoot you."
When they finally came there (to Siberia), they were put in such a barrack. The length of this barrack was about 200 meters. All people were settled in such conditions. Inside, there were made four or five iron wood-burning stoves for heating. They gathered the firewood themselves for heating. They carried the coal themselves and heated the barrack. The barracks had two-tiered bunks. One family occupied one of these bunks, and the next was occupied by a second family, and so on. This is how they lived, each family on their bunk.
Anatoly was bitten by those lice and he was getting to the hospital with typhus. The doctor in this hospital was a German man (war prisoner). This German man treated Anatoly very well and cured him.
The settlers in the village [where they were relocated] had no right to go anywhere, if anyone left, the police caught him and put in prison.
If any of the settlers were killed, there was no investigation, it was said that they all are ‘banderovtsy’. Anatoly was stabbed several times, he has scars, he was treated bad as a "banderovets". Once Anatoly was stabbed in the belly, another time in the back. Once, he came to school, and a corpse was found near the school with eyes gouged out.
There was one woman there with 12 children. Her husband died or was killed in the army. Her eldest son, aged 22, worked in a coal mine. Once this son died in a coal mine, the coal fell on him. Because of that, that family almost starved to death. Then they were relocated to a collective farm.
Anatoly wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist party in Moscow, and they were rehabilitated. They received a letter that they are free and had done nothing wrong.