Letter sent from: Village of Matviivka, Semenivka raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Matviivka, Semenivka raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Matviivka, Semenivka raion, Poltava oblast
Stepan Semeniuta takes issue with the excessive taxes that were imposed on peasants, both in kind and monetary ones, compared to the meager pay that those working in the kolhosps were receiving. He tells a story about a father who was told to pay “spinster taxes” for his 5 unmarried daughters.
Semeniuta also briefly discusses his own experiences, when he was swollen and extremely exhausted while plowing a field with oxen, and the commissioner (upovnovazheny) kept pushing him to work harder. He talks about people dying of starvation next to fences, begging to be finished off and often dragged to a mass grave by the burial brigade while still alive, although some of them escaped. People made mock foods using pestles to grind weeds because the mills were sealed and millstones were taken away from them or broken during the requisitioning.
He believes that the situation was all the doing of kurkuls (kulaks) and saboteurs who infiltrated the party and were sent as requisition commissioners to the villages. His life has not gotten much easier since, he writes. Some food is still not accessible to rural pensioners. He still questions whether Stalin was aware of what was going on. He says it was thanks to Malenkov that taxes were cut and to Gorbachev that the lives of people improved.
Ukrainian transcription available.
