Ukraine ’s “Quo Vadis” History

By Kristina Gray, Nov. 9, 2006

“Where are you going?” would be a typical question for Ukraine ’s older generation to ask of their offspring. Instead, I required my sophomore students to ask their grandparents, “Where have you been?” or put another way, “Tell me about your life?” I reminded them that “a shortened pencil is better than a long memory.” My students’ essays provided many answers to these questions about their grandparents’ past, in order to comply with a Service Learning project I had assigned to them. Thus, these interviews uncovered stories which happened during the communist period of the former Soviet Union . My Ukrainian students were not only passionate on this subject of “living history” from their elders, but they were very articulate. At least ten themes emerged with quotable quotes from twenty-four of my students.

 

Interpretation of History

Not much has been written correctly or “properly” about Ukraine ’s history as one astute student, Dima Liubchenko, wrote when he quoted: “Information means nothing without proper interpretation.” That is what history is all about, interpreting the facts and for Dima, the above quote means more to him with each passing year. “Most Ukrainians know a lot of cruel facts concerning Soviet attitude towards Ukraine , the problem is that nowadays society won’t accept them properly…but what amazes me is that American officials support Russians in their position that the famine of 1932-33 is an uncertain event according to Ukrainian interpretation.”

Some students, like Vika Kopylova, were poetic about Ukraine’s broken past such as when she wrote: “A lot of things have to be done and need to be fixed in my country because there is an awful page of broken lives …we have a drama left behind that stepped into every house, looked in each window and destroyed many lives.”

Aftermath of Bolshevik Revolution

Tanya (student's last name withheld for privacy) revealed her great grandmother’s story that she quoted from her grandmother: “In 1930 my grandmother’s father was dispossessed by Bolsheviks. He was called a “kulak” because of having too big of a household. His family lost everything, including some of their lives. My great-grandfather was sent to prison, where he got very sick and died. Part of the family was sent to Siberia , another part to Archangelsk to camps for ‘Enemies of the Nation.’ Only because my great-grandma married a poor man before these events, she was not sent to Siberia .”

 

Diana's (student's last name withheld for privacy) grandmother said in retrospect, “The Soviet period prohibited religion, there was no religious freedom, it was trained atheism instead. People who believed [in God] could not act openly or announce about religion because they were afraid of persecution. Komsomols believed that they could build the State without hungry, poor people; but their belief was mistaken.” Dimitri (student's last name withheld for privacy) found out from his interviewee, “Teenagers were taught that they should not believe in anything but the State and were told not to go to church. Only the “babushkas” went to church.”

 

Holodomor – Forced Famine of 1932-33

Dmitriy (student's last name withheld for privacy) penned what he knew about the Holodomor: “People were treated like cattle and some of them became insane. I heard kids ate ground and wheat seeds together because they thought it would grow up in their stomachs and they wouldn’t be hungry anymore.” Maryana Bobyliak wrote that the starvation period was a “black spot” in Ukraine ’s history, “My Grandma has her own story of how they used to eat grass and how they had one cow that lived, not in a shed, but in their house with all six people, that cow saved their family.” Maryana continued, “People who worked in granaries told that grain was purposely strewn with some kind of green powder. People died on the roads. They took them into a wagon like some kind of wood and put all of them into one grave.”

 

The Great Patriotic War – Red Army

After the Holodomor tragedy, within ten years there was The Great Patriotic War (better known as World War II) where the storytelling continues about the Red Army valiantly fighting the Nazis or fascists. Katya Khandogina reflected that her great grandfather went to build barriers against German tanks and probably an enemy projectile killed him. “His body was never found and unfortunately the family knows nothing about the details of his death and cannot bring flowers to his grave.” Renata Kozak artfully carved out these words, “The story of my grandparents out of a million others is a small stroke on the large, bloody painting of WWII.”

 

WWII - Partisans

But then there were the Partisans whose WWII activities are framed as brave souls holed up in the forests close to Belarussia who simultaneously fought BOTH the Nazis and the Soviet Red Army. Anna (student's last name withheld for privacy) opined: “The strict politics of the Soviet Union brought a lot of negative influence on Ukraine …everything possible was made to forbid Ukrainians to speak their native language. In other words, the process of Russification took the place against believing in God.” Anna continued to reveal what her grandmother told her about the Partisans’ activities: “ The family was very patriotic. They did everything possible to show the real face of communism hidden under the mask of a lie. They promoted the idea of Ukrainian nationalization…The unhappiness hadn’t passed without bringing a negative influence to the family. The tragedy happened November 18, 1943 when the eldest brother of Oleny Smulky was killed by communists on the day of his wedding a few months later her parents were taken to jail because of distributing the Ukrainian ideas of truth and spreading the Word of God among the people.” 

Roma (student's last name withheld for privacy) noted what his grandmother told him about helping the Partisans: “Fortunately, Ukrainian Partisans found us. They were very surprised that two little girls were willing to help them. After some time of discussion, the head of the Partisan detachment, Olexiy, gave us the first task to carry the letters to the villagers. We were running home with those letters as if it were our Birthdays. After sometime of helping our Ukrainian Partisans, we became like a small bridge betweens the Partisans and the villagers. This bridge gave an opportunity to transfer priceless information.”

WWII - German soldiers

Also, a theme that kept surfacing in my students’ writings, besides the German atrocities, were the kind acts of certain German soldiers toward Ukrainians as individuals, families or whole villages. In some cases, people were warned ahead of time by a German soldier that their village would be torched or a whole family was fed by a caring German or a church was not destroyed by the German invaders or a firing squad did not fire against the villagers already lined up.

 

For instance, Anna (student's last name withheld for privacy) recorded: “My granny told me that the German soldiers were cruel, heartless and merciless to Ukrainian people…but some of them were kind people who had their own wives and children in their motherland and they didn’t want to wage war.” Anna continued when her grandmother was only 11 years old, she got pneumonia. “Her family didn’t have any medicine but in their village was a German doctor who felt sorry for my granny and cured her. He was a man who wasn’t heartless to children and he saw no difference in what nationality this child was, he gave her life.”

Tanya (student's last name withheld for privacy) related about her grandmother’s return from Dombas to be met with German sympathy. “ In thirty one days they managed to get to Putivl, which was occupied by Germans. Her former house, which was the biggest in the village, was transformed into a hospital by Germans (by the way it stayed a hospital until 1980). Inhabitants recognized her and told the occupying Germans that she was the owner of the house which now they used, and to her astonishment she was given one room there. My grandmother remembers how one German doctor gave her a big piece of chocolate and showed the photo of his family, whom he missed but had to stay here because of the war. ‘He always said that Hitler and Stalin must be shot’ my grandma remembers.”

However, many grandparents were forced into German labor camps and tried to escape the Germans who needed extra human power to support their Nazi war effort. Ulia's (student's last name withheld for privacy) great grandfather had been captured by the Germans and after the war in 1947 walked home through entire Europe rejoin his wife and see his daughter for the first time in seven years. It took Ulia’s grandmother a whole year to call him “father” once reunited. Oksana Boboshko’s granny was only 14 years old when she was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Austria and held for three years before the Ukrainian army freed her. “Fascists forced her to do very hard work such as pulling 50 kilo weight packets with stones or to work in the field all day long without water. Their food consisted of 50 grams of low quality bread and some boiled potatoes. It was a fantasy to stay alive there. Many of her friends died right on the fields doing their work.”

 

Aftermath of WWII

Julia (student's last name withheld for privacy) interviewed her grandmother and after the war, her life didn’t become easier. “Years 1946-1947 brought a famine due to a bad harvest.” There was barely anything to eat – no potatoes, the bread was given out at sight of special cards. The children received 300 grams of bread per day each, the father brought home 700 grams because he was working, and the mother got nothing because she was not working. However, even this 1.3 kg was nothing to be thanked for – it was of very poor quality. Jane's (student's last name withheld for privacy) grandmother also keenly felt the lack of food stating, “Everyday my mother cooked soup out of grass that is called Loboda, usually people put it in salad. And now whenever I see it, I want to throw up.”

 

Tears in Her Eyes

Many are the tears spilled or the storytelling that goes silent or voice register strained in these interviews listened to by the grandchildren who are just trying to do their assignments for yours truly, their composition teacher. Roma (student's last name withheld for privacy) noted: “I didn’t want my grandmother to cry, but I could imagine how hard it was for her to remember the time of war.” Maria's (student's last name withheld for privacy) grandmother said, “I was left without parents at the age of 13, my parents were hiding a Jewish family in the basement of their house and had to pay with their lives and the lives of their children.” By chance Maria’s grandmother was absent when the German soldiers murdered her family. Maria ended with, “She stayed alive but till now when she tells us about those days and she can’t help herself from crying.”

 

Many students admitted that their grandmothers had tears in their eyes such as when Julia’s (student's last name withheld for privacy) grandmother said: “We had no homes, no warm winter clothes, no money and no food. We had nothing except our lives which we had to save every minute.” Anna's (student's last name withheld for privacy )revealed about her grandmother when she wrote, “but a lot of them [stories] she still keeps in secret about the terrors she had to go through.” Anna’s grandmother had witnessed her father being burned alive as well as others in the village who were punished for being Partisans. Anna reflected, “I cannot blame her for not telling anything before, no one would like to remember such things.”

 

Importance of Education

Julia (student's last name withheld for privacy) recorded that her grandmother’s education was interrupted by the war and because of the Germans all schools were closed. “Although there was a shortage of all kinds of goods including paper in the country, her mother succeeded in solving this problem. She found some old paper and taught my grandmother how to write.”

Julia (student's last name withheld for privacy) also shared about the importance of education from what her grandmother told her about her great grandfather who died heroically in the Great Patriotic War. Consequently, her great grandmother was left without the breadwinner to feed their six children. This bereaved mother was caught getting extra bread from a guard and both were sent off to Siberia where she died. “The Soviet authorities were ruthless and sent all six children to different charity houses. Only in five years, when the eldest brother Aleksey became eighteen years old, he managed to travel across the country searching for his brothers and sisters.” Even though it was difficult, the siblings were all reunited and under Aleksey’s care who deprived himself of an education while he worked at a plant. Julia continued, “My grandmother highly appreciates everything her brother did for them: “He gave us a chance of a better living. He forbade us to work and insisted on our excellent studying. Aleksey was absolutely right. Having entered the universities, all of us got a ticket to a better life.”

Grateful Grandchildren

Finally, one other theme that emerged was respectful appreciation for their elders. Julia (student's last name withheld for privacy) admitted that doing this assignment “makes old people feel their importance to someone again.” Sergey Petrov confessed that he and his peers take everyday conversation for granted while elderly people often feel very isolated due to distance, sickness which keeps them bedridden or death of friends so they do not have the pleasure of talking to someone for days on end. Sergey wrote, “This simple fact explained all the excitement Evdokiya had when I came to her house and asked permission to talk to her about her life.”

 

Others view their elders as important as if returning to a distant past. Alex (student's last name withheld for privacy) believed that we should “value these people as inexhaustible resource of knowledge and life experience.” Anna Grebelnyk termed her grandmother as “a book of the past” and when she was listening, it was as if she were turning the pages of a very noble book. Roma Shatov’s grandmother quoted a Ukrainian idiom of “white bar after a black bar” which portrays the indomitable Ukrainian spirit of believing that good things always happen after bad things.

 

Call to Action of Current Ukrainian Government

The Ukrainians are waiting for the good to happen and perhaps impatiently expecting the present form of government to mete it out. George (student's last name withheld for privacy) claimed: “It is offensive to me that our country cannot ensure proper old age to its heroes and they have to live out their days getting scanty pensions.” Anna Grebelnyk asserted: “The present day authorities should analyze cruelty and mercilessness of totalitarian government and make a decision – don’t make them [pensioners] suffer once again!” Katya (student's last name withheld for privacy) was more realistic: “I realized that the government did not think about people who fought for our land. The leadership of the Soviet Union always repeated that everything is for the people but nothing was done to improve their lives. The deaths of thousands of people are on their consciences.” Here’s my own editorial note, make that “the deaths of MILLIONS of people should be on their consciences!!!”

 

The question of “Where are you going?” may be asked of Ukraine after a look at its thousand year old history. Having just read Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical novel of “Quo Vadis” written in 1895, I now understand why this book was recommended to me by a Ukrainian woman several years ago. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Sienkiewicz’s book seems almost prophetic as to how Stalin’s iron rule of 30 years destroyed Ukrainians. It makes Emperor Nero’s acts against his own Roman citizens pale in comparison to the millions of Ukrainians who perished under the hammer and sickle. Yet Ukrainians’ nationalistic spirit still exists today.

 

I want my students to continue to write with shortened pencils from the memories of their grandparents on their own initiative. Not only should the current Ukrainian government be challenged with the question of “Where are you going?” but also the Ukrainian youth of today should help to correct the injustices from yesteryear and be able to know where they are going, hopefully to a better and brighter future.

Word Count: 2,654

Quo Vadis is a Latin term which means “Where are you going?”