SYNOPSIS
N.K. Lyskova was 14 during the Holodomor. The events that she described occurred in an unnamed village in Lypovets raion of Vinnytsia oblast. She blames the local, village-level authorities for excessive grain requisitioning and arbitrary assignment of the kurkul designation. She described scenes of mass mortality in the village and in the family of her uncle, improper burial of little children and adults alike, and cannibalism. In her village, people survived gathering weeds, frozen potatoes left in the fields, dead animals and pets, acacia blossoms, etc. She was given breakfast in school. In the spring, she and other people went to work in a radhosp (state farm) where they were given a watery soup (shlikhta) once a day. She credits her brother with her family’s survival. He studied and lived in Moscow and occasionally sent them food parcels.
Lyskova mentions that the letter that she had written to her brother in Moscow about people dying in the village of starvation was apprehended by the NKVD. They interrogated her brother about the author. She believes that she was let off the hook because she was only 14, a child, and that otherwise she would have been arrested as an enemy of the people.