Kozlov, Yurii

Description

Creators

Yurii Kozlov (b. circa 1914), Author

Volodymyr Maniak

, Recipient

Media Type

Text

Item Types

Correspondence

Envelopes

Transcriptions

Translations

Description

Letter sent from: Lviv
Describes events in (1932-1933): Villages of Tarasivka, Pyriatyn raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Tarasivka, Hrebinka raion, Poltava oblast

The author, a disable war veteran, studied at the Pyriatyn industrial college (tekhnikim) from 1930 to 1933.

Peasants lived well before forced collectivization. Trade was booming in Pyriatyn, and agriculture was developed in Tarasivka (sugar beet processing; agricultural equipment cooperative/station, etc.). Collectivization was conducted with a heavy emphasis on the arrests of those who did not wish to join the collective farm; first kurkuls and then pidkurkulnyky were subjected to dekurkulization, deported.

Describes the collective farm (kolhosp), including low productivity, poor harvests, lack of education/understanding of new techniques or equipment (chaos with respect to using the Fordson tractors introduced into the collective farm).

Famine was the worst in the spring of 1933; deaths started in February–March 1933 and peaked in the spring; children and older people died first; cold was a factor; there was nothing to use for heating; crosses from the graveyard were used as firewood. 70 percent of the population in the village of Maksymivka, Pyriatyn raion died; settlers from Briansk oblast, Russia, were brought in.

Gravediggers would take even those who were still alive.

Cannibalism in families; a mother killed and ate her three children.

Petrovsky visited Pyriatyn but did not do much good; Postyshev visited in summer of 1933. [Well-known officials.]

Many people went to Russia for food, but often what they were able to obtain was taken from them and rarely did someone come back with bread.

Notes