Letter sent from: Village of Denysivka, Orzhytsia raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: likely the same location as mailing address: Village of Denysivka, Orzhytsia raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Denysivka, Orzhytsia raion, Poltava oblast
Stanislav Bondarenko's father joined the collective farm in 1929 and surrendered all his livestock. Even though the collective farmers were left with nothing, search brigades would anyway come to each house to look for grain.
In 1932, his mother was fined for collecting green leaves from beets. The famine was the worst in the spring of 1933: they ate food substitutes, people would try to get to the fields to collect some early wheat stalks but would die there, unable to make it back. Those working in the kolhosp would get some rations in a cafeteria, but the men were too exhausted to go to work or to the cafeteria and died at home. There were mass graves near the cemetery.
The work quotas were excessive and people could not
fulfill them after the famine was over. Daily pay was meager and people lived in poverty.
In 1947, people travelled up to 20 km to sell things in exchange for food. Those who tried to collect corn cobs or beets from the field were sentenced to 8-9 years in labor camps.
Bondarenko blames Stalin and his henchmen for the “anti-people” policies that innocent people had to
endure. After life-long hardship, he’s hopeful about perestroika.
Ukrainian transcription available.
