We finally left our village behind and stepped onto the open road which led to the county seat. However, another ghostly panorama now opened in front of us. Everywhere we looked dead and frozen bodies lay by the sides of the road. To our right were bodies of those villagers who apparently had tried to reach the town in search of work and food. Weakened by starvation, they were unable to make it and ended up lying or falling down by the roadside, never to rise again. The gentle snow mercifully covered their bodies with its white blanket.
One could easily imagine the fate of those people whose bodies were lying to our left. They most probably were returning from the county town, without having accomplished anything. They had tramped many kilometers in vain, only to be refused a job and a chance to stay alive. They were returning home empty-handed. Death caught up with them as they trudged homeward, resigned to dying in their village.
The wide open kolhosp fields, stretching for kilometers on both sides of the main road, looked like a battlefield after a great war. Littering the fields were the bodies of the starving farmers who had been combing the potato fields over and over again in the hope of finding at least a fragment of a potato that might have been overlooked or left over from the last harvest. They died where they collapsed in their endless search for food. Some of those frozen corpses must have been lying out there for months. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to cart them away and bury them.
The actual seven miles’ distance to the town proved to be very laborious for us. After we left our village, a cold wind started blowing from the north, and clouds appeared on the horizon. It was difficult, especially for Mother, to walk against the wind, but we stubbornly persisted, and after about six hours of struggle with the wind and snow-covered road, we arrived at the entrance to the county town. Here yet another horror awaited us.
Our county seat at that time had no sewage system, and the raw sewage was collected, usually at night, by a special sanitary brigade. There was no special dumping ground for the cargo of the horse-drawn sewage tanks. They were usually emptied outside of town, along the sides of the roads. The road from our village to the county seat seemed to have been their favorite dumping ground; consequently, both sides of the road for a considerable stretch were thickly covered with raw sewage. This was in itself, a most distasteful sight and unpleasant in normal times, but we had become used to it. Now, as we slowly trudged along these littered roadsides, our stomachs turned over anew. Scattered here and there throughout the sewage were frozen corpses. They were lying singly or in groups, or just piled up one on top of another, like debris after a disaster. Some were covered with snow, showing only arms and legs protruding; others were covered by freshly dumped raw sewage. The infants were invariably pressed to their mothers’ bosoms under the cover of homemade coats.
These dead were farmers from the neighboring villages and their families, all victims of starvation. Deprived of all means of existence, the farmers saw their only chance of survival in escaping to the city where they hoped to find some job, some food, and some help. Despite the prohibitions on leaving the boundaries of their villages, they moved in throngs to the county seat, swelling and annoying its population and the city management. They appeared on the doorsteps of houses, begging for a crumb of bread, or even a piece of potato peel, usually in vain. The city inhabitants, with their own meager food rations, could not give the villagers sufficient food to save them from starvation. There were simply too many of them. They were standing or lying in the city streets, in the marketplaces, at the railroad stations, under fences, in backyards, in the ditches by the streets and roads. They became such everyday sights that the city people mostly passed them by, ignoring them and their pleas. Thus, after fruitlessly trying everything and going everywhere, the villagers and their families met their inevitable deaths. The dead lay undiscovered or ignored for days, like driftwood.
Often the starving people would be rounded up like cattle by the militiamen, taken beyond the city limits, and left to their fate. The dead, and those barely alive and unable to walk anymore, were all loaded onto trucks or horse-driven carts, and hauled away somewhere outside the city limits. They were dumped into ravines or in the dumping grounds for sewage along the roadsides. Weren’t these people entitled to at least a decent burial in the cemetery, even in common graves?
When mother and I finally arrived at the Torgsin, there was already a great crowd of starving people there. Emaciated and skeletonlike, or with swollen, puffed-up bodies, human beings stood around in the streets, leaned against the telephone poles and walls, or lay on the sidewalks and in the street gutters. They were patiently waiting for some merciful shoppers to share a pittance of their purchases with them. Others were begging noisily, shouting and crying; the rest held out their hands quietly and silently. Here and there among the crowds we could see rigid bodies of the dead, but nobody paid any attention to them….
We were informed at the entrance to the Torgsin that all shoppers were required to first go to the office across the street for an appraisal of their valuables. Having found the office, we were directed to an official inside. The official, a fat man behind iron grates, took Mother’s medallion without even looking at us, weighed it quickly, and tossed it into a drawer. He then handed us a form, requiring our name, address, and the type of our valuable. Afterwards, we received a receipt indicating the sum we were authorized to spend: exactly 18 rubles. Another hour passed as we stood in line waiting to enter the Torgsin. Finally we were inside.
What a sight it was. I could not believe my eyes; it was like a dream. Here was everything we needed and more. There were things we had never even heard of nor seen in our lives. There were even groceries known to me only from books I had read. All the items were tastefully arranged and exhibited in cases under glass. Looking at these splendid assortments of foods, I began to feel dizzy. For months, I hadn’t even seen ordinary food. I had forgotten the taste of real bread. Now, everywhere I looked were these wonderful things to eat.
I was completely overcome by hunger pangs; they were so violent that I could hardly manage to stand upright. Savage hunger gnawed at my stomach, and there was a choking sensation in my throat, as if someone’s hands were squeezing and twisting my neck. In my agony, I was about to burst out crying, but at that moment, I felt my mother’s hands on my shoulders. She understood my emotional state. Perhaps she felt the same way. As I looked at her, she smiled at me and said: “Have some pride, my son!” These words calmed me and gave me strength to overcome the physical weakness.
We decided to buy only the basic and most essential products, so, when our turn came at the counter, we quickly selected what we needed without much hesitation and difficulty. We bought some butter, salt pork, lard, two loaves of bread, sugar, and a few miscellaneous items to make up exactly 18 rubles. Most of these items were neatly packed in cans, boxes or bags. To our astonishment, we discovered that the labels on all of them bore the trade mark “Made in USSR,” meaning they were destined for foreign markets.
After we finished shopping, we left the store as unobtrusively as possible and started our trip back home. We did not fear robbers during daylight, for we were in the same position as the rest of the starving villagers, and moreover, looked like them: thin and haggard, dressed in rags, with beggars’ sacks on our shoulders. No one in his right mind would have suspected that in those potato sacks we carried a few pounds of salt pork and other staples which to us were the greatest treasures on earth.