Osadchy, Mykhailo
Description
- Creators
- Mykhailo Osadchy (b.1918), Author
- Volodymyr Maniak, Recipient
- Media Type
- Text
- Item Types
- Correspondence
- Envelopes
- Description
- Letter sent from: Fastiv
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Mykhailivtsi, Bila Tserkva raion, Kyiv oblast
Current location name: Mykhailivtsi, Bila Tserkva raion, Kyiv oblast
Mykhailo Osadchy was 15 at the time of the Famine. He notes the peasants’ situation worsened markedly starting in 1929, with forced collectivization and grain procurement campaigns. Impoverished peasants were forced to join local collective farms that lacked basic agricultural implements and specialists, and used backward methods. While the size of the arable land remained the same as in 1926-27, the harvest fell by 40-50% in 1932. The dekurkulization that began in 1930 was ruthless and involved deportations to Siberia and repressions.
Those working in the field were given a ration because they would have nothing to eat otherwise. The collective farm took away all the grain, so the workday pay in kind was withheld, and the shearers, who would normally receive bigger pay per day in kind, ended up in debt to the collective farm.
Schools closed in the spring of 1933 because children were too weak to attend. Some people went to Russia and begged for bread and some succeeded. Others traded their valuables and clothing for milk. Women and children wandered in the harvested fields looking for frozen potatoes and beets. Having a cow was a big factor in surviving.
Osadchy gives a detailed description of working in the beetroot fields in 1933.
Most of the dead were collected and buried in a mass grave by an appointed gravedigger.
Osadchy’s mother, father and little niece died of starvation. He estimates that 300-350 people died of hunger in his village. 50 years later, the local collective farm is still backward in the way it is run.
Note: The text is interspersed with satirical songs.
- Notes
- Author's gender: Male
Author's name in Ukrainian: Михайло Кирилович Осадчий
- Date of Original
- 24 December 1988
- Date Of Event
- 1932-1933
- Subject(s)
- Barter
Cows
Deportations
Diners (Restaurants)
Schools
Child labour
Mortality--Statistics
Rations
Unrequited love
Holodomor
Search Brigades
Repressions
Survival strategies
Dekurkulization
Travel for food
Collective farms--Management
Mortality--Mass
Famines--Ukraine--History--Sources
Famine victims
Ukraine--History--Famine, 1932-1933--Personal narratives
Burial brigades
Mortality--Family
Food substitutions
Satirical songs
Collectivization
Death and burial - Local identifier
- WF 96
- Collection
- Maniak Collection
- Language of Item
- Ukrainian
- Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Recommended Citation
- Holodomor Research & Education Consortium
