Read Online 2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Marina Lewycka
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swinging skirts and boots with little heels and coloured ribbons in their hair. They stood together in a fierce bunch at the back of the church and left abruptly at the end without tipping the priest.
The Blazhkos looked down on the groom’s family, whom they thought uncouth, little more than brigands, who drank too much and never combed their hair. The Ocheretkos thought the Blazhkos were prissy urbanites and traitors to the land. Sonia and Mitrofan didn’t care what their parents thought. They had already consummated their love, and its fruit was on her way.
“Of course it was pulled down in 1935.”
“What was?”
“St Michael of the Golden Domes.”
“Who pulled it down?”
“The communists of course.”
Ha! So there is a subtext to this romantic story.
“Pappa and Valentina are in love, Vera.”
“How can you talk such nonsense, Nadia? Will you never grow up? Look, she’s after a passport and a work permit, and what little money he has left. That’s clear enough. And he’s just mesmerised by her boobs. He talks of nothing else.”
“He talks about tractors a lot.”
“Tractors and boobs. There you have it.”
(Why does she hate him so much?)
“And what about our mother and father—do you think they were in love when they married? Don’t you think that was, in its way, a marriage of convenience?”
“That was different. It was a different time,” says Vera. “In times like that people did what they had to in order to survive. Poor Mother—after all she went through, to end up with Pappa. What a cruel fate!”
In 1930, when my mother was eighteen, her father was arrested. It was still several years before the purges were to reach their terrible climax, but it happened in the classic way of the Terror—a knock on the door in the middle of the night, the children screaming, my grandmother Sonia Ocheretko in her nightdress, her loose hair streaming down her back, pleading with the officers.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” my grandfather called over his shoulder as they bundled him away with just the clothes he stood up in. “I’ll be back in the morning.” They never saw him again. He was taken to the military prison in Kiev, where he was charged with secretly training Ukrainian Nationalist combatants. Was it true? We will never know. He never stood trial.
Every day for six months Ludmilla and her brother and sister would accompany their mother to the prison with a bundle of food. They handed it to the guard at the gate, hoping that at least some of it would get through to their father. One day the guard said: “There’s no need to come tomorrow. He won’t be needing your food any more.”
They were lucky. In the later years of the purges, not only the criminal, but his family, friends, associates, anyone who could be suspected of complicity in his crime, would be sent away for correction. Ocheretko was executed, but his family was spared. Still, it was no longer safe for them to stay in Kiev. Ludmilla was expelled from her veterinary course at the university—she was now the daughter of an enemy of the people. Her brother and sister were removed from their school. They moved back to the khutor and tried to scratch a living.
And that was not easy. Although the Poltava farmland is some of the most fertile in the whole of the Soviet Union, the peasants faced starvation. In the autumn of 1932 the army seized the entire harvest. Even the seed corn for next year’s planting was taken.
Mother said that the purpose of the famine was to break the spirit of the people and force them to accept collectivisation.
Stalin believed that the peasant mentality, which was narrow, covetous and superstitious, would be replaced by a noble, comradely, proletarian spirit. (“What wicked nonsense,” said Mother. “The only spirit was to preserve one’s own life. Eat. Eat. Tomorrow there may be nothing.”)
The peasants ate their cows, chickens and goats, then their cats and dogs;
The Blazhkos looked down on the groom’s family, whom they thought uncouth, little more than brigands, who drank too much and never combed their hair. The Ocheretkos thought the Blazhkos were prissy urbanites and traitors to the land. Sonia and Mitrofan didn’t care what their parents thought. They had already consummated their love, and its fruit was on her way.
“Of course it was pulled down in 1935.”
“What was?”
“St Michael of the Golden Domes.”
“Who pulled it down?”
“The communists of course.”
Ha! So there is a subtext to this romantic story.
“Pappa and Valentina are in love, Vera.”
“How can you talk such nonsense, Nadia? Will you never grow up? Look, she’s after a passport and a work permit, and what little money he has left. That’s clear enough. And he’s just mesmerised by her boobs. He talks of nothing else.”
“He talks about tractors a lot.”
“Tractors and boobs. There you have it.”
(Why does she hate him so much?)
“And what about our mother and father—do you think they were in love when they married? Don’t you think that was, in its way, a marriage of convenience?”
“That was different. It was a different time,” says Vera. “In times like that people did what they had to in order to survive. Poor Mother—after all she went through, to end up with Pappa. What a cruel fate!”
In 1930, when my mother was eighteen, her father was arrested. It was still several years before the purges were to reach their terrible climax, but it happened in the classic way of the Terror—a knock on the door in the middle of the night, the children screaming, my grandmother Sonia Ocheretko in her nightdress, her loose hair streaming down her back, pleading with the officers.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” my grandfather called over his shoulder as they bundled him away with just the clothes he stood up in. “I’ll be back in the morning.” They never saw him again. He was taken to the military prison in Kiev, where he was charged with secretly training Ukrainian Nationalist combatants. Was it true? We will never know. He never stood trial.
Every day for six months Ludmilla and her brother and sister would accompany their mother to the prison with a bundle of food. They handed it to the guard at the gate, hoping that at least some of it would get through to their father. One day the guard said: “There’s no need to come tomorrow. He won’t be needing your food any more.”
They were lucky. In the later years of the purges, not only the criminal, but his family, friends, associates, anyone who could be suspected of complicity in his crime, would be sent away for correction. Ocheretko was executed, but his family was spared. Still, it was no longer safe for them to stay in Kiev. Ludmilla was expelled from her veterinary course at the university—she was now the daughter of an enemy of the people. Her brother and sister were removed from their school. They moved back to the khutor and tried to scratch a living.
And that was not easy. Although the Poltava farmland is some of the most fertile in the whole of the Soviet Union, the peasants faced starvation. In the autumn of 1932 the army seized the entire harvest. Even the seed corn for next year’s planting was taken.
Mother said that the purpose of the famine was to break the spirit of the people and force them to accept collectivisation.
Stalin believed that the peasant mentality, which was narrow, covetous and superstitious, would be replaced by a noble, comradely, proletarian spirit. (“What wicked nonsense,” said Mother. “The only spirit was to preserve one’s own life. Eat. Eat. Tomorrow there may be nothing.”)
The peasants ate their cows, chickens and goats, then their cats and dogs;
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