Childhood during the Holodomor 1932–1933 in Ukraine (in the South of Ukraine)

Historiography, Sources, and Methodology of Research

Today, there is a lot of research on the history of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. Almost all of it mentions the tragic fate of children who were held hostage by the Soviet government’s repressive policies toward their parents. J. Mace mentions children who were thrown into the snow with their families after their parents got de-kulakized. ¹⁵ A significant contribution to the topic of childhood was made by Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow (chapter “Children”), ¹⁶ in which he put forward the thesis that the Holodomor exterminated or maimed a whole generation of peasant children, and the consequences of this can still be perceived today. He also outlined the main directions of research into the history of childhood in Holodomor studies, which are still relevant. Further, he placed emphasis on the fact that the Soviet government was waging a “war against children”—persecuting kulaks’ children and putting labels on them that accompanied them all their lives. At the same time, according to Conquest, people assisted these children despite everything. Conquest emphasized that families were not passive in rescuing children from starvation; they were resourceful and sought ways to survive, but this was not always possible in the Holodomor. Conquest also drew attention to the destruction of family values: in conditions of famine, parents did not take care of their children, did not feed them, and even killed them for food. He describes the way children died with their families, and how parents made their children leave home to save them from starvation, sent them to orphanages, and left them anywhere, as a consequence of which criminals hunted for children in the cities, children got criminalized and placed in labor colonies, or they died from appalling conditions in orphanages that turned into morgues. Among the moral aspects, Conquest emphasized the destructive influence of Soviet propaganda on family relations. Under its influence, children wrote reports to the authorities about their parents, were involved in actions to protect and seize wheat, and became “werewolves” hated by their parents.

Stanislav Kulchytskyi ¹⁷ highlighted the problem of food provision in educational institutions and child care homes after studying the funds of the Central Archives of Ukraine. He paid attention to the efforts of the local (Ukrainian Republican) authorities to cover the shortage of food products that arose as a result of the seizure of funds that were supposed to provide food for teachers and children during the grain procurement and sowing campaign of 1932–1933. His work marked the beginning of a whole line of research on child care homes and the tragic fate of their pupils. ¹⁸

For some time, the “victim” approach of childhood research prevailed in historiography as researchers focused on the vulnerability of children during famine and demographic losses (Marochko ¹⁹ and Sergijchuk ²⁰ ). Such work was effective for the creation of a database of the Holodomor studies and its recognition as genocide by the world community. In the context of the topic of childhood, the genocidal practices of the Soviet government are considered in the research of Nina Lapchynska. Referring to the scientific heritage of Raphael Lemkin, she concludes that as a result of the Holodomor, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children were forcibly displaced to other national groups, mainly Russian ones, and lost their native language, which is one of the signs of genocide. ²¹ The death of children during the Holodomor is a tragic page in Ukrainian history, a trauma that will never be forgotten, a loss that cannot be compensated for by anything. Nonetheless, there are new methodological approaches that indicate that this topic has not been exhausted and disclosed fully yet, including for example, the bioarchaeological approach, quantitative methods for the study of demographic losses, and so on. However, we cannot ignore the historical narrative of parents’ activity in preserving the physical and moral health of their children and children’s practice of surviving in conditions of man-made famine.

Among the latest studies, Irina Skubiy’s ²² research, which examines the material world of children during the Holodomor years and the experience of children’s survival through the history of consumption, is of particular interest. This approach allows us to work with a significant array of sources—including oral history materials, which, as Olya Andrievska rightly noted, take a lot of time to turn into a social history. ²³

Women’s survival practices were analyzed by Oksana Kis. ²⁴ She draws attention to the predominance in the literature of the sacrificial image of a woman-mother during the Holodomor, but because a woman is an active member of the family, community, it is methodologically inaccurate to study her role only as a victim, especially since in extreme conditions women committed crimes. ²⁵ Moreover, another researcher, Daria Mattingly ²⁶ considered the image of a woman as the organizer of the Holodomor, since rural female activists became participants in grain procurement teams that took food from the population.

Such research methods convince us of the need to consider children and parents during the Holodomor not only as passive victims but actually in the direction that Robert Conquest began: to study their activity, life practices, positive and negative experiences of saving lives, and the relationship that developed between parents and children in an extreme situation.

At the same time, it should be noted that survival practices for young children are primarily the survival practices of their families, so it is impossible to separate the history of childhood from family history. Also, the theme of childhood cannot be associated only with the role of the mother. Instead, we can see the importance of the role of the father for the survival of the family from eyewitness’ testimonies, which list the virtues of the father: a position that gave access to food, initiative, hard work, ingenuity, sobriety, and most importantly—loyalty to the family. And all the witnesses who did not starve focus on their strong and friendly family as a survival factor, and vice versa—the destruction of the family, arrest, death, indifference of parents are steps toward tragedy.

In our opinion, insufficient attention has been paid to the value judgments, attitude toward parents, and survival practices of the children who survived. Such judgments are extremely numerous in oral history sources, but their potential has not been sufficiently revealed in the study of the consequences of the Holodomor in a social and cultural context. Such sources provide an opportunity to explore how the famine affected a person’s life, what changed forever for people who survived this tragedy, and how it is reflected in family memory today.

Some researchers ²⁷ have pointed out that many witnesses to the Holodomor were children at the time and we thus see things through the eyes of a child. It is widely known that much attention is paid to the children’s stories about national tragedies, e. g. the Great Irish Famine. ²⁸ Children’s memories greatly expand the understanding of the events and make it possible to use them for family history. We believe this approach will enrich our knowledge about the Famine Genocide 1932–1933 in Ukraine by using a wide range of primary sources.

The characteristics of primary sources determine the research methodology which includes critical evaluation of sources. Each source requires a critical approach because the completeness and informational value of official records depend directly on those who made them and who they were addressed to: the general public, local leadership, the JSPD bodies (the Joint State Political Directorate) under the CPC (Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR), the republican leader or the leaders of the Soviet Union. Moreover, depending on the addressee the content contains information with different meanings. A particular piece of information was aimed at the general public but the party leaders interpreted and discussed it in a completely different way. Therefore, the basis for the study includes the historical research methods in the analysis of sources: document research; document analysis; diplomatic, textual, hermeneutic content analysis of the documentary heritage of the Soviet secret services, etc.

Obviously, the greatest challenge for the researcher is to calculate the number of deaths among children according to demographic statistics. As an interim report indicating natural population movement between the censuses conducted in the Ukrainian SSR in 1926 and 1939 was not published only selected materials survive but it does not provide a full picture. Data published in the collection of documents Famine in the USSR, ²⁹ “The address of the head of the Population and Health Department of the Economic-Statistical Sector of Gosplan (the State Planning Committee) of the USSR S. Kaplun on natural population movement in 1933” ³⁰ and “Tables of natural population movement in 1934” ³¹ are the only existing data sources on natural population movement during this period containing general fertility and mortality data without the child mortality rates rearranged as a separate category. During that period the death certificates reported diagnoses of “SIDS” (sudden infant death syndrome), even for toddlers, indicating hidden causes or indifference to the child’s death. In addition, a larger portion of the acts has not survived. Information about people who died from hunger is being established through demographic methods using census materials and statistical reference books which cover all areas of statistics. Therefore, we believe that after the most careful analysis we could get a crude child mortality estimation.

Major inputs for the study were taken from the documents that belong to the Archive Fund of the Republic and local governing bodies of the CP(b)U (the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine), state institutions, and local government of the Ukrainian SSR stored in the Central State Archive of Public Organizations (Kyiv), the State Archives of Odesa and Kherson oblasts. Most of the materials are stored in the archives of the Russian Federation. They concern Soviet decision-making in the upper echelons of power and particularly by Joseph Stalin. These documents are published in the collections of documents (“Golod v SSSR. 1929–1934,” 2001–2013, ³² “Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931–1936 gg.,” 2001, ³³ “Sovetskaja derevnja glazami VChK-ODPU-NKVD. 1918–1939,” 2005, ³⁴ “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubjanka—Stalinu o polozhenii v strane (1922–1934 gg.), 2001–2017 ³⁵ ), etc. This set of documents contains basic State regulations, correspondence, information concerning the political and economic situation in the Ukrainian SSR, repression against civilians, natural population movements, school education, the current state of child homelessness, living conditions in children’s orphanages, nursing homes, and reception centers in 1932–1933.

The main source of information comes from a mass survey organized and conducted in 2007–2008 to create a National Book of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. ³⁶ This work resulted in a considerable body of oral history materials which was published in twenty-two volumes including a consolidated volume in almost every region of Ukraine. Most of the respondents during the famine (1932–1933) were children. The average age of respondents as of 1933 was ten to eleven years old. ³⁷ In fact, we have memories of the Holodomor and childhood. Such collective memories give us a better understanding of parent-child relationships and the relationships between children and the community. The historical value and significance of these sources are of unprecedented importance due to a lack of information about everyday life in families during the Holodomor.

Another source of information is statistics which provides quantitative research of the period and the issue being studied. The statistical materials demonstrate information relating to the USSR, ³⁸ Ukrainian SSR, ³⁹ and separate regions (“Materialy do opysu okrug USSR. Statystychni harakterystyky. Melitopol’s’ka okruga,” ⁴⁰ “Spysok zaljudnenyh misc’ Hersons’koi okrugy na 1 sichnja 1928 roku” ⁴¹ ). General national periodicals such as general all-Union newspapers and local periodicals were subject to mandatory government censor ship but were eventually used in the research to represent government response to the events. Using such materials, it is possible to make conclusions about the messages sent by the state to the population. All the materials, a mass survey, and statistics differ in scale and type of information but partially complement each other allowing us to obtain a clearer picture of what took place in 1932–1933 in Ukraine.

The Mechanisms of the Soviet Government’s Interference in the Family Affairs—“A War against the Ukrainian Family”

The Soviet slogan “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood” arose only three years after the Holodomor 1932–1933 and it was purely propagandistic. In fact, Soviet children suffered their parents’ fate: they starved, were exiled alongside their families, or, in the case of, their parents’ death, lived in public shelters where they were not taken care of. Law enforcement bodies caught homeless children as if they were dogs and moved them away from big cities so as not to spoil the appearance of their city. Attempts were made at sentencing children to death for even the slightest offense. But school teachers had to convince them that they lived in the world’s best country.

This specificity of Soviet upbringing became increasingly apparent during the collectivization and the Holodomor in 1932–1933. There were attempts to engage juveniles in the grain procurement campaign and force them to divulge information against their parents. The Soviet authorities suggested the motive of encouraging children to oppose their parents. Some historical documents include the formal charges against parents accused of starving their children to death, e.g. “Report on False Hunger to Combat Grain Procurement.” ⁴² Thus, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast committee of the CP(b)U Mendel Khataievych in his administrative documents in 1933 claimed that “those peasants who maliciously didn’t surrender their granaries of bread, they exactly brought starvation to their families.” ⁴³ While analyzing documents, it is necessary to consider that the peasants understood if they consumed the grain then, nothing would be sown in the spring. It would not save them from starvation. It would only delay it. Therefore, the seed was untouched as a hope for the future.

The destruction of traditional family values—moral and ethical ideals which were important for the strengthening the institution of the family, responsible attitude to the family, birth, and upbringing of children, respectful attitude to parents and elderly people—is a special feature of social policy in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government considered a family to be not only the bearer of hostile religious traditions but also a hostile mode of production. Thus, all elements of the Ukrainian traditional family were recognized as threatening to the Soviet State.

Repression and starvation were not the only methods to destroy traditional family values. Education supported the successful implementation of state policy. Beginning in 1930, schooling became compulsory and had to be based on Marxist-Leninist ideology that helped to implement the policies of the Soviet government. ⁴⁴ Students were widely engaged in organizing the famine-terror. Evidence for this can be found in minutes of resolution in the students’ general meeting, on February 1, 1933, at Sazonivka school of Samiilivka Village Council in Velyka Lepetykha raion of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. The student obligations were as follows: to carry out mass explanatory work among parents, and to identify criminals who stole collective farm property, bread and plundered the storage pits with grain prepared to fulfill the grain procurement plan. The document, among other things, states:

1. After hearing the report, we, the students of Sazonivka [three-year] school, realize how important the five-year plan is to increase the growth of our entire national economy in the Soviet Union, we fully support the Resolution of the Central Committee the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

a) We promise to the party and the government we’ll carry out mass explanatory work among parents, also we’ll identify criminals who steal collective farm property, bread, thereby indulging the kulaks in disrupting the implementation of the grain procurement plan, we’ll continue searching and detecting pits for grain storage.

b) We undertake to implement the resolution [on] the grain tax for 1933 so that every peasant-collective farmer and individual peasants will understand that the new tax is better than contract tax as it raises the yields on all the fields, forces every peasant to be honest at work to increase the well-being.

We will take care of the procurement of planting materials by detecting the grain storage pits and returning the stolen collective farm grain…. ⁴⁵

Therefore, children themselves had to take measures directed toward organizing the terror-famine. Teachers had to implement the new Soviet school policy even if some of them did not support the authorities. Both children and teachers were deprived of their livelihoods due to the seizure of funds that were normally allocated for teacher salaries and school meals during times of grain procurement. However, some anti-Soviet meetings of Ukrainian teachers were severely suppressed by the JSPD. For instance, the school teachers in the village of Velyka Lepetykha, Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Oleksandra Pletenets and Nikitchenko were persecuted for criticizing the Soviet government’s policy. According to O. Pletenets (May 1933):

We teach politics at school, explain the nature of society, tell about workers and peasants’ living standards during czarist times but what they need it for and what it is going on now. It is good that the students do not understand much otherwise they’d tell the teachers that during czarist time people did not starve to death as they do now. ⁴⁶

These teachers’ words became the reason for their arrest.

The Bolshevik regime “took care” of children during the Holodomor of 1932–1933 by aiding starving children on a pro forma basis. The food supply relied solely on the resources of local government and collective farms. However, grain procurement in 1932 was accompanied by the surrender of all seed grains, including public food stocks making it impossible to aid the starving children. As a result, the assistance was provided too late following the 1933 harvest when the famine had already claimed many lives. Furthermore, the children were fed by the local communities in playgrounds. In 1939, such places were in almost every village where children received their “rations.” ⁴⁷ But in 1933 even the children of collective farmers did not get the essential food rations. As a result, Ukrainian peasants joined collective farms to provide food for their children.

“A War against Children”

In 1933 if children harvested wheat by hand, they were often punished for stealing grain on collective farm fields. Children were accused of plundering grain on an equal footing with adults. The certificates issued by the people’s courts of the Ukrainian SSR stated that even seventeen-year-olds and pregnant women were sentenced to death. ⁴⁸ There is no information that children were executed during the study period. But this does not mean that direct repression was not used against children, which led to their deaths. The death certificates contain the names of three fifteen-year-olds (a person from the Kherson house of forced detention (HFD), an inmate from the Kherson agricultural colony [named in honor of Poliakov—NK] and a prisoner of the Kherson house of forced labor (HFL)) and nineteen seventeen-year-old boys, eighteen of whom were prisoners of the Kherson HFD and one was a prisoner of the Kherson agricultural colony, who served their sentences from the autumn of 1932 until the summer of 1933. The cause of death of all of them is dystrophy, and exhaustion, except for fifteen-year-old Piotr Nekrasov, a prisoner of the agricultural colony, who died of heart disease. Thus, twenty-one out of twenty-two juvenile prisoners who died in 1932–1933 died of starvation, even though the death registration certificates were not fully preserved. The prisons were overflowing with arrested peasants, as can be seen in the martyrology of the National Book of Memory for Kherson oblast; the overwhelming majority of prisoner deaths during 1932–1933 resulted from starvation. ⁴⁹ In other words, because prisons were not provided with food, the sentencing of a teenager to prison or forced lab our was actually a sentence to death. ⁵⁰

Another type of direct repression applied to children was exile with their family. The protocol of the meeting of the Bureau of Odesa oblast Committee of the CP(b)U on Repression for Sabotage of Grain Procurements as of December 31, 1932, ⁵¹ reads: “Publish simultaneously in the regional and oblast press, on behalf of the oblast executive committee, the decision approved by the CPC (the Council of People’s Commissars) of the Ukrainian SSR to expel 500 families from Odesa oblast for organizing sabotage and cutting bread procurements.” One of the children exiled in January 1933 by this decision survived and testified about what happened to him and his family. He said that they had been transported undressed in cold freight cars, his mother and two little brothers had died from the cold, and his father had fallen ill and died shortly after arriving in Saratov. Similar stories, ending in the death of children, are given by Robert Conquest, describing the transportation of families in exile on barges.

As mentioned above, only cru demortality statistics have been preserved from this time. Though some documents are stored in archives, for example, in Tiahynka Village Council of Beryslav raion, Odesa oblast, where on May 1–8, 1933 the village council recorded a total of 165 dead, 109 of which died of exhaustion. On June 4, 1933, the Head of the village council Beletsky and secretary Hrigoriev signed a new death rate document that left no doubt that the village was experiencing a famine. From February 1 to June 1, 1933, a total of 215 people died—nine in February (including two children), forty in March (including eighteen children), ninety-three in April (including forty-two children), and seventy-three in May (including forty-five children). From March 26 to May 6, 1933, there were only sixteen death entries, all recorded as “exhaustion” in the civil registration books of the Registry Office. In early June the information about the activities of the village council and the records of deaths stopped abruptly. ⁵² Since the documents were preserved quite well by that time, we can trace the cause of death of Tiahynka residents. In the autumn of 1932, the peasants handed over their grain to the state, but the state plan was not fulfilled, forcing them to return the grain issued for trudodens (labor days). It was also not enough to complete the plan. The representatives of the authorities examined all the storerooms and seized all the remains of grain, but the village council still remained in debt. ⁵³ At the end of 1932, food supplies were exhausted, and people began starving to death.

In one of the letters stored in the village council fund, the doctor of the Tiahynka Medical Centre reported that in the dormitory of the agricultural commune [it is not known which one but on the territory of Tiahynka—N. K.] Oleksii Murzenko and his family, residents of Kozachi Laheri, were in a state of acute exhaustion and needed medical care. A little later, on March 9, 1933:

I inform you that the corpse of Ivan Murzenko’s two-month-old baby lies in the dormitory of the agricultural commune. Ivan Murzenko’s child and in the outpatient clinic there is a corpse of Piotr Murzenko, residents of the village of Kozachi Laheri. Please take measures for the burial. ⁵⁴

Obviously, the village council did not have any resources to save people from starvation.

Loss of Parental Care and Its Consequences

Orphanhood was a common characteristic of 1930s Ukraine, with children becoming orphans after repression of their parents which consisted of executions, forced deportations to northern Russia, and imprisonment. The fate of many orphans and abandoned children is represented in the archival sources i.e. correspondence, protocols, acts to provide for the supervision and control of orphanages.

As indicated in documents from autumn 1932, state-run child welfare institutions began to suffer from food insecurity. The food supply situation in child-care institutions and homes for the disabled was described as catastrophic, and district and regional organizations sent numerous letters of complaint describing the food crisis. ⁵⁵ This situation occurred in so-called inpatient care institutions, but was much worse in child receiver-distributor and shelters because of an increasing number of children who arrived in cities and district centers.

The meeting minutes of the presidium of the Kherson City Council on March 6, 1933, concerning strategies to combat homelessness indicated a daily increase in the number of foundlings, homeless children, and youth (seventeen to twenty years of age) coming from the villages of Kherson and other districts. The City Council decided to allocate premises for adolescent dormitories as well as expand the network of orphanages and kindergartens. It also agreed on an allowance rate of 200 g. of bread a day. However, implementation of this decision required many bureaucratic procedures. Only a month and a half later at a meeting of the Kherson City Committee CP(b)U on April 22, 1933, they decided to apply for financial aid to the Odesa Oblast Executive Committee in order to open new children care institutions. However, the situation worsened further. The meeting minutes of the commission of purification in party members and candidates of the Kherson City Department of Health on August 29, 1933, indicate that infant mortality reached 60 percent because its employees picked up half-dead children with dystrophy in streets and only a few of them survived. Thus, it is these employees who were blamed for these negative statistics. ⁵⁶

The faction resolution of the Presidium of the Velyka Lepetykha Raion Executive Committee on June 7, 1933, stated high morbidity and mortality rates among the inmates in the Velyka Lepetykha Children’s Prison Colony were caused by poor diet and poor care:

…Children leave the yard of the colony and walk around the district center and the market, they steal oil, onions, etc. we do not isolate sick children from healthy ones, and child nutrition is in unsatisfactory condition. All this led to morbidity and mortality in children (six children died on June 6). ⁵⁷

The report of the Henichesk Raion Department of the JSPD to the Control Commission considering child homelessness in Henichesk in June 1933 indicated children’s malnutrition and the increase in homelessness due to the food crisis in the villages.

The Communist authorities believed that starving children should not spoil the appearance of cities and towns, but instead of opening new institutions and providing them with food, they decided to disband orphanages. With the beginning of collectivization in 1930, the transfer of children into the care of collective farms was practiced. ⁵⁸ But as a result, in 1932–1933, children and teenagers were taken to the villages with raging hunger and life-threatening lack of food. At the same time, the peasants themselves had to leave their children in cities.

Some stories about the destiny of such orphans and children without parental care occur in eyewitness accounts. According to eyewitnesses who lived in the territory of present-day Bilozerka raion, parents were unable to provide their children with food, and because of this they committed them to Blagmon (a former nunnery near Kherson, at that time it was Odesa oblast), where children’s shelter was established during the famine 1921–1923. The children who survived were taken home after the famine. “For orphans, there was a commune of Rakovsky, where orphans were fed once a day,” recalls a resident of the village of Pravdyne (Tsarevodar) (Odesa oblast) (a witness—Vansovych Kateryna Stepanivna, born in 1921). ⁵⁹ Few memories were saved of those who lived at the Henichesk child reception center in 1933. We recognize that it was very difficult for them to survive with the account of their horrifying living conditions.

In the 1920s the crisis of humanism in Ukraine was directly connected to the fact that most churches were closed after the “decisions” of communities. The church buildings were confiscated, the clergy were repressed, the Ukrainian SSR anti-religious campaign was in full swing so orphans were cared for in “government institutions” (orphanages, child reception center) where they were indifferent to children’s destiny.

But the children were very flexible and adaptable to the “new life.” For instance, a boy was sent to Saratov after his parents had been persuaded to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms. Although he saw his mother and brothers humiliated, he got over his father’s death and still felt grateful for getting a “nice” reception during the exile:

We were well received, sent to the barracks in an abandoned church. Food was buried in the frozen ground, we ate potato peelings and frozen dog meat. I worked at the factory in the boiler room and threw logs into the stove…. After working at the brick factory, I went to war. (a witness—Tarasenko Ivan Yakovych, born in 1923) ⁶⁰

After washing away his parents’ “guilt” at war the young man returned to his native village. He “corrected” his “shameful” life and even in some ways, he felt grateful for a second chance the Soviet government gave him.

Murders and Crimes against Children due to Famine

There were cases in which parents killed their own children to avoid seeing them die of starvation. There also were sensational instances of cannibalism when parents killed one of their children to feed others. Children were abducted or even bought by strangers for food. Sometimes children turned into cannibals after killing other children. ⁶¹ According to the interrogation reports of Natalia Khaliavko, a resident of the village Kyselivka Kherson oblast, the mother of two children had been starving for five days in the winter. Suffering from hunger she drowned her two-year-old daughter in an ice-hole but told her parents she had left her in a hospital in Mykolaiv. She was arrested when her daughter’s body was brought to the surface in March. She explained that her husband had left her, and she could not stand looking at the children suffering from hunger. She drowned the youngest sick daughter to get a job. Later she settled in the state farm “Horodnii Veleten” in the greenhouses, where she had been working until the crime was brought to light when the ice melted. ⁶²

The main theme of the memories is death. The witnesses recall horrific scenes like these stories about cannibalism and anthropophagy trying to explain what made people do this, what took them to the extreme—to madness, violence, murder. However, it must be acknowledged that death was not already a phenomenon that adults needed to shield children from. One of the respondents recalls: “My husband when he was a teenager together with Dasha Sheiko was forced to pull dead children to the cemetery on a sleigh…and throw them away into a pit.” ⁶³

Complex psychological, moral, and ethical motives affect the memories of past events that were forbidden to remember. The motives forced people to deny or perceive the facts in a peculiar way. “It was bad, but we were patient,” “we were friendly and helped each other,” the witnesses remembered but archival sources said the opposite: Natalka, a murderer of a child, worked among the “happy” Komsomol members ⁶⁴ ; a quartermaster, who gave support to an orphan boy, stole food from the staff canteen; the tractor drivers plowed the virgin land dreaming of harvesting crops while the handymen refused to go out into the field dying of hunger. Respondents denied reports on killings caused by starvation in their region, but the archival documents testified to the contrary.

At the same time, parents’ efforts to preserve their family relationships were highly appreciated by Holodomor witnesses in Ukraine. They remember with deepest respect and gratitude their parents who kept the family together and protected children in extreme conditions.

Parental Strategies of Saving Children

In general, numerous testimonies from people who survived the Holodomor in their childhood are an important source for understanding the issue of child hunger. Their evaluative judgments and responses explain the impact of the Holodomor on the development of Ukrainian society. Self-questioning “why have I survived?” permeates almost all evidence. It should be noted that a particular respondents’ infantilism can be explained by the fact that they experienced the famine in childhood and spoke about it in old age. Infantilism is expressed through simplifying complex phenomena, e.g. witnesses explain the reasons for the Holodomor in terms of their later life experience and information borrowed from other sources especially the media.

In fact, we see the events of the Holodomor through the eyes of children. One of the most important needs at this time was food. Thus the issues that are widely represented in the memories are food, access to food, its quality, and quantity. This demonstrates that during the famine, food became the basis for mass ideology simplified to the sole aim—to survive despite everything.

The survival of children depended on the quantity and quality of food that parents could provide. Parents chose different survival strategies, one of which was the theft of food, which became possible when the father held a position related to its distribution. Witnesses recalled:

My father was the deputy director of state farm. We had some bread, ate zucchini. There were three daughters, a father, and a mother in the family. At that time, I was a girl fifteen years of age. (a witness—Voievodina Olga Pavlovna, born in 1912, Beryslav) ⁶⁵

My parents worked on a collective farm. They had a very poor life but a little better than others because father was a miller and sometimes he brought home a handful of flour. We lived half-starved but no one died of starvation. I heard that people were very hungry. I was the girl next door to my best friend. Her father was a peasant Dorosh Kryvoshei. My friend brought me amaranth cookies and we were exchanging them: I gave her my cookies with flour, and she gave me some with amaranth. (a witness—Poberii Lidia Feofanivna, born in 1924, Kachkarivka village) ⁶⁶

My father worked as a storekeeper. There was some grain in the grain warehouse so people came to him. Sometimes he turned away so that people would take a little grain in their pockets. Well, then he was taken to Kherson and imprisoned for allowing people to take grain…. (a witness—Lemesheva Antonina Fedotivna, born in 1920, Stepne village, Beryslav raion) ⁶⁷

But there was so little food that even the “bread-winning” position of the parent could not save all the children. Parents had to make a terrible choice:

Our family lived in the village Zavadovki, Hornostaivka raion, Kherson oblastin 1932–1933. There were three children in the family. My father worked as a miller. I remember we ran to marshy and reedy banks, pulled out burdocks and mother cooked soup. But were the meals nourishing? We went about hungry. My legs were swollen. I felt like they were stuffed with cotton wool and I couldn’t walk much anymore. But my father saved me from starvation. Every day he brought two handfuls of different grain wastes, namely a little bran. My mother cooked it and gave me a little more food than to other children so I survived. (witness—Bratus Timothyi Ilyich, born in 1923, Beryslav) ⁶⁸

Children remember with gratitude their parents, skilled fishermen who were able to feed their families.

Our family did not suffer from hunger because father was a collective farm beekeeper and we also caught ruff in the Dnipro. (a witness—Tsvirinko Tamara Andriivna, born in 1926, Kachkarivka village, Beryslav raion) ⁶⁹

The river helped us to survive in those horrible times. It was our “mother river”. We caught fish, then cooked soup, as soon as the buds started to swell, we cut them off and ate. (a witness—Mykhailiuchenko Ilia Serhiiovych, born in 1914, Odrado-Kamianka village, Beryslav raion) ⁷⁰

Strategies for the Survival of de-kulakized Families: Community Support and the Transition to Collective Farm Life

It should be noted that fishing is mentioned by eyewitnesses as the major source of food, so when the river froze, it was a real disaster (a witness—Hanna Mykytivna Symonenko, born in 1920, Odrado-Kamianka village, Beryslav raion). ⁷¹

Life-story memories also reveal important moments of mercy and supporting children in difficult circumstances. Any aid gave children a sense of worth, the opportunity to pass through severe testing while maintaining not only physical but also mental health:

There was no help or protection from the state. My cousin Mitrofan Potainyi helped us a little with food and clothes. (a witness—Klavdiia Avramivna Andrusenko, born in 1923, Kachkarivka village, Beryslav raion) ⁷²

Respondents recall that the poor themselves applied to the collective farm to work in winter, but they needed workers only for sowing and weeding. “Those who did not work died…. Those who worked did not starve…. Those who worked survived” (a witness—Kurylo Mykola Danylovych, born in 1923, Bilozerka village), ⁷³ “Those who dispossessed and arrested the kulaks did not starve” (a witness—Melnichenko, Bilozerka village), ⁷⁴ “There were those who did not starve, they were the authorities.” ⁷⁵

Dispossessed people living on the edge of life were deprived of civil rights and the right to life. Families with children left without their main breadwinner were the most vulnerable category:

Aunt Ulyta, my mother’s sister, lived with her family in our house. She, herself of Cossack descent, was beautiful, persistent, fearless. She was de-kulakized and evicted from her house. People in the village treated her with contempt and my parents took them in because there was nowhere they could go. If we went about hungry, they had nothing to eat at all. My aunt had two children: a boy who was the same age as me and a younger girl. The aunt gave the children small pieces of the raw flesh of her body which she cut and then bandaged these wounds. She cut her arms and gave children to suck blood. But the children did not survive, they died one after another. Later, my aunt also died as hadn’t been able to overcome the grief. (a witness—Bratus’ Tymofii Iliich, born in 1923, Beryslav) ⁷⁶

Not everyone had the opportunity to escape persecution, but a change of residence made it sometimes possible:

My grandfather was a wealthy peasant. The family had their own house. Our family consisted of a father, a mother, two sons, and two daughters. I was the eldest, Mitia was born later. Katia was born in 1925 and Vasia—in 1928. During the famine 1932–1933 we all lived together in Kucherskyi. We did not starve. Everyone went to pick Black nightshade, poured out gophers out of their holes. We boiled and fried gophers, picked geranium flowers, other plants—woolly woundwort, spurge. In 1933 when my grandfather was dispossessed the whole family went to Nikopol to earn money. We had our own light carriage and my father and mother were transporting and plowing. None of the family members died during the famine 1932–33. (a witness—Logvynenko Anna Nikiforovna, born in 1921, Beryslav) ⁷⁷

Collective farmers who influenced the collective farm chairmen stood up for their dispossessed relatives:

My parents had land and worked very hard. We woke up at 3–4 a.m. every night and went to the steppe. When the wheat was mown we worked on the threshing-floor. We also helped our parents from an early age. Our family had horses, cows, calves, agricultural equipment and a steam thresher. We built a good house. But when collectivization began we were kicked out of the house, my father was imprisoned in Velyka Oleksandrivka village, and my mother in Novovorontsovka village. This was done by the people familiar to us, the so-called Komsomol members—Hrinchenko Havrylo, Hrinchenko Pavlo, Lemekha, Polovynko, and others. We, the children, were thrown out onto the streets, the house was sealed up and they ordered not to touch the seal. We left possessing only what we were wearing and went to the village. Nobody there to let us in their house, other children chased us, they just laughed at and mocked us, because we were kulaks’ children. I had to eat geranium flowers and other herbs. We were dirty and slept wherever we were. My father died then…. My mother decided to go to Kachkarivka village, where she came from because her life was too bad: people didn’t let her come into the house, they took all the furniture to the collective farm office, they stole everything. Even after the war, I saw some of our towels in other people’s houses. Our icons disappeared, the glassware was taken away. Party activists grabbed some of our stuff and the other was sold out. My mother had some money and the documents but the Komsomol members pulled them out from the inside of her shirt and took them away.…My mother was not admitted to the collective farm. But when Joseph Guglia had espoused her position at the meeting she got admitted to the brigade. (a witness—Andrusenko Klavdiia Avramivna, born in 1923, Kachkarivka village, Beryslav raion) ⁷⁸

My family consisted of seven people. In 1930 our family was dispossessed; my father was taken away and we lived with mother…. Many people died of starvation in the village…. Then my mother and elder sister were taken to work and they got rations of 200 grams of flour and 1 liter of milk, and smaller children were on the playgrounds where they were given food. (a witness—Oksamytna Lilia Hnativna, born in 1918) ⁷⁹

One of the respondents mentioned that as a child he ran with a jug to the “children’s playground,” where many children from the village gathered. They were fed thin soup or borscht, 150–200 grams of bread (a witness—Ponomarenko Andrii Petrovych, born in 1928, Olhivka village, Beryslav raion). ⁸⁰

If a family lost only their house it was a trifling matter:

I remember the famine 1932–1933. I lived in Velyka Oleksandrivka raion. There was a good harvest, but they did not allow to gather it. Our family of five lived in a good house, we had a cow, a horse, and chickens on the farm. We ate beets, sauerkraut, corn, and other foods. Our family did not starve and no one died of starvation. The village council did not take the food away, but as our house was big and beautiful they took it away and set up a kindergarten, and we were moved to an old house. My father went to the collective farm voluntarily handing over the horse. (a witness—Onyschenko Natalia Tymofiivna, born in 1923, the village of Novoraisk, Beryslav raion) ⁸¹

Assessment of Family Survival Practices during the Holodomor in Children’s Memories

The memories reflect the evaluative judgments of the Holodomor survivors about their parents. We can observe some general tendencies: approval, disappointment, and condemnation. Respondents rated positively if their father held a position that provided access to food or he could use his official position to steal food for the family. Some respondents who expressed gratitude to their parents claimed that they did not go hungry because their parents were hardworking, “real masters” and could provide for their families in any situation and only those who were “lazy” died of starvation.

The starving children appreciated their parents who kept the family together against the odds and took care of the children and each other. The respondents felt grateful that their parents managed to build a life under the new government regardless of their “kulak” origin—even if the respondent was chosen to live but other children died.

Thanks to my father’s fishing our family did not suffer, we lived “tolerably” well…there was not enough bread. Hungry people were everywhere. Father’s fishing saved us. The whole family understood that the father should be properly fed, he must have a rest and keep up strength. We changed fish for food wherever we could.” Vira Andrianivna kept the best memories of her father: he was kind, did not drink, did not smoke, did not beat. “He was not like the others.” (a witness—Lutsenko (Opara) Vira Andrianivna, born in 1921, the village of Stanislav) ⁸²

Some respondents who were orphaned after their parents had been dispossessed and died in prison blamed the authorities for their parents’ deaths, for hunger, for emigration and loss of family wealth. These respondents usually received support from family members who remained at large. These respondents name and convict particular perpetrators—specifically the village activists who robbed and appropriated property.

Disappointment with parents is found among some respondents who survived hunger and exile. The most tragic for them was the fact that they were left without family care and protection. The disappointment is expressed by their attitude to hunger: when those who survived the Holodomor grew up and began earning money or rations they never felt hungry even during the hungry years 1946–1947: “In 1947–1948 we also were hungry but I already worked so it was a little easier” (a witness—Sidenko Mariia Gavrylivna, born in 1923, Kirove village, Beryslav raion). ⁸³ The disappointment also manifested itself in complete indifference to the death of a parent or one of the parents who failed to protect their children, even if parents were repressed, deprived of property, arrested, or exiled. As a result, the circumstances of their death and burial place did not arouse interest during the respondent’s lifetime.

It should be noted that adolescents vehemently condemned their parents more often. Parents were condemned for their refusal of support if they had left children to seek livelihoods for themselves. Such groups of adolescents usually found support and survived thanks to their relatives, neighbors, or complete strangers. From an early age, they worked hard on the collective farm or left the village for a while searching for a job in mines or factories but eventually, they returned to the village.

The real-life examples of hard-working parents who could not escape from hunger and persecution refocused young people on joining the collective farm:

I can say simply: it is much better to work on a collective farm than in a single farm community. When I was on our individual farm household my father did not let me rest. He often swore. And now I get up at 6 a.m. and go to work. When I return home, we have a quiet dinner. I work until my work is done, then I’m free. Previously I had to work hard day and night but I didn’t see even white bread. Now I don’t only see, but eat it every day. Sometimes on our farm, I worked so hard that my eyes become sunken, cheeks hollow but now I’m a good-looking fella! (Twenty-two-year-old Pavlo from Kharkiv oblast claimed during daily radio checks of collective farmers)

It was published in the newspaper “Pravda” on November 3, 1933. Pavlo worked diligently as a collective farm stableman and he needed only radio in his house for complete happiness. ⁸⁴ These words, even considering the propaganda component, show how the burdens of the individual farming household were perceived by young people. The government created openly unfavorable conditions for private initiatives, which seemed less attractive to young people than the collective ones.

More and more young people left the villages when their parents asked them to because they did not want their children to be enslaved on a collective farm. The processes of total urbanization in the Ukrainian countryside could no longer be stopped.

Conclusion

As a result of this study we have tried to reveal the fate of children and youth during the Holodomor 1932–1933 in Ukraine, the role of the family and family survival practices through the prism of family history. The use of oral history materials and their analysis based on archival sources allowed us to show the social and cultural consequences of the Holodomor for the Ukrainian family, in the context of the tasks set for researchers of childhood history by R. Conquest.

Several eyewitness accounts reflect typical events in Ukraine’s country side in 1932–1933 and reveal the assessment of famine survivors. Such information is an important source for understanding child hunger. The generalization of survivors’ experience highlights the importance of not only financial but also moral support to children in difficult situations.

Based on the achievements in the history of the Holodomor of scientists from different countries who devoted their work to this tragic topic in the history of Ukraine, it became possible to address the problem of childhood in extreme conditions of famine.

In the course of this study, we have found that the Soviet authorities used repressions against families and children: teenagers from fifteen to seventeen years old were arrested for non-fulfillment of grain procurement plans. Due to the lack of food in places of detention during 1932–1933, minor prisoners in Kherson died of starvation (twenty out of twenty-one documented deaths). A form of direct repression was the expulsion to the northern regions of Russia of entire families along with children who died during transportation or due to poor conditions of detention in places of exile.

Repressions imposed on peasant families due to non-fulfillment of the grain procurement plan led directly to the death of children in the villages. The study concludes that the impact of the famine was particularly severe for children and youth. This is confirmed by the high mortality rate and an increase in the number of homeless children, for example in 1932–1933 in Tiahynka village, Beryslav raion almost 50 percent of the dead were children. Many children lost their parents and were left without parental care. The Communist authorities considered that starving children should not spoil the appearance of cities and towns but instead of opening new institutions and providing them with food it was decided to disband orphanages and forced teenagers to work in collective farms.

In children’s memories of hunger, we find value judgments about survival practices used by their families. Respondents positively assess the actions of parents that made it possible to avoid hunger, even if they contradicted moral norms. At the same time, they highly appreciated the professional skills of their parents who helped them get food through fishing, beekeeping, and so on. Especially warm memories were preserved for the parents who managed to save the family and together fought for the lives of their children. However, the most successful practice of survival at that time was the rejection of individual farming and the joining of collective farms.

The Holodomor 1932–1933 generally had reduced requirements for living standards, since after wards any convenience seemed luxurious. “Rations” became the indicator of welfare. If initially the policy of collective farm leadership in 1932–1933 had caused outrage, after the Holodomor it was regarded as something ordinary. Therefore, the former independent peasants joined collective farms to survive. As a result, the generation that survived the Holodomor 1932–1933, the repression in 1937–1938, and World War II was undemanding as to the quality of food and living conditions, terms of remuneration.

As a direct consequence of the famine, a new generation wanted to leave the village and fulfilled their potential in the city, thus the processes of total urbanization and rural depopulation began. The persecution and oppression of the individual households accelerated collectivization, and the Ukrainian family ceased producing agricultural products. The family does not bear traditional values. Traditional family relationships were destroyed, parents’ work efforts were not rewarded, instead, they could lead to repression. All this led, on the one hand, to the loss of parental authority, and, on the other hand, to the disregard for ethical standards: children respected and appreciated their parents for surviving even if their parents had violated moral or ethical standards.

To avoid the social stigma of being kulaks or an enemy of the Soviet Government young people continued avoiding their parents and memories about them. But today people try to re-create their family history. The loss of ties between generations, the lack of information on repressed relatives, the broken family ties revived interest in genealogical research in Ukraine.