Letter sent from: Hrebinka raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: near Hrebinka raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: near Hrebinka raion, Poltava oblast
Mykola Huniaha’s letter focuses predominantly on the poor state of agriculture and the food-processing industry: outdated, inefficient methods of gathering, storing, preserving and processing harvested produce and milk. Peasants were in fact serfs until they were given passports in 1975-76.
A partial transcript of the parts of the letter related to the author's memories of the famine is provided. On p. 14, Huniaha calls 1933 just one moment in the history of serfdom in Russia, saying it was too early to be silent and pretend that it was over, as 1933 was a “catastrophe for the nation.” On pp.10-11 he recalls
meeting a person in the late 1970s who worked on a burial brigade that threw Hunko in a burial pit when he was still alive during the famine.
The burial brigade was normally paid a kilo of bread for every four bodies they buried. Hunko was the third and managed to crawl his way out of the pit and escape. The former burial brigade member apologized to him saying that it had been a “terrible time.”
Russian transcription available.
