Kovalenko, Yakiv

Description

Creators

Yakiv Kovalenko (b. cir. 1920s), Author

Volodymyr Maniak

, Recipient

Media Type

Text

Item Type

Correspondence

Description

Letter sent from: Kyiv
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Matiushi,
Bila Tserkva raion, Kyiv oblast
Current location name: Matiushi, Bila Tserkva raion,
Kyiv oblast

Yakiv Kovalenko considers 1929, the year when forced collectivization began in earnest, as a turning point in rural life.

High taxes and search brigades that engaged in total requisitioning of grain punished any peasants who in their estimation sabotaged collectivization. Those who resisted joining collective farms faced political repression.

In the fall of 1930, there were uprisings in his and nearby villages. People took farm implements and livestock home. The uprisings were suppressed and those who opposed the collective farm were sentenced to labor camps. The NKVD arrested entire families at night and sent them to Solovki.

When he worked in Western Ukraine in 1940, people asked him if it was true that people were dying of famine on such fertile land, and he had nothing to tell them. They also showed him a book in Ukrainian that stated that between 7.9 and over 8 million died of starvation and he thought it was accurate. In his own village of 500 households, at least a third of the population died.

Kovalenko recalls his stay at an orphanage in Skvyra Raion, where the kids from the villages of former Volodarka Raion were brought. He mentions that some people were sent to Brovary Raion to harvest the grain in the summer of 1933 because there was no one else to harvest it.

Notes