Pen Pictures of Russian Village Life During the Famine

PEN PICTURES
of

RUSSIAN VILLAGE LIFE
DURING THE FAMINE



©













AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE
20 S. 12th St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Bulletin 56






were written by Quaker relief work-

ers from personal experience on the
Russian famine front. ‘‘In the Children’s
Homes’’ ts by Jessica Smith ; the remainder
of the contents, by Robert W. Dunn.

The setting is Bueuluk county of the
province of Samara, eight hundred miles
southeast of Moscow in the heart of the
Volga grain belt—now the Volga famine
zone. The conditions pictured are primar-
ily those of 1922, but the famine still con-
tinues and cannot now be terminated before
the harvest of 1923, while it will be impos-
sible to overcome tts after effects for many
years. |

[ve sketches contained im this booklet ©










Ret ie eos | Py eas Cie Sans Lone
See ee -









ONE CHILD











Hi” was just big enough to reach the top of
the barrel of vegetable fats by standing on
both toes. He was a colorless bit of flesh, but his
eyes were brown and bright and understanding.
Some one asks him his age.

‘‘T don’t know myself,’’? he answers quietly,
but clearly and intelligently, as though he had
considered the matter for some time but come to
no conclusion. 7

‘‘Well then, what is your name? What do
they call you?’’

‘*Weodor.’’

‘‘Then why do you wear that kind of a shirt?
It’s for a little girl, isn’t it?’’ It is a slip of
faded print cotton that falls below his knees.

Feodor answers thoughtfully as though he
knew exactly what he was saying:

‘‘Tt is a little shirt to die in.’’ There is neither
smile, reproach nor complaint in this shrill little
voice.

‘¢ And do you want to die?”’

Equally direct comes the reply, ‘‘Yes.’’ I have
never heard a child talk this way or seen such
eyes. It is uncanny.

An old lady from Stary Ignashkin, who has
eome barefooted to carry back Quaker supplies
to her distant village, offers Feodor a piece of
weed cake, a black gritty thing, the color of earth
and manure. Feodor takes it, examines it delib-
erately, and hands it back to her. His swollen
stomach tells us that he has tried that kind of
food before. He stands at the corner of the
Quaker warehouse door and looks long and pa-
tiently at an open box of rice.

‘‘Do you want to go home with me?’’ some one
says to him. Feodor ponders again. ‘‘There is
nothing to eat at your house either,’’ he replies.
Again he speaks the truth. It hurts to hear him
speak it.

[1]










CONFISCATION IN RUSSIA

OMRADE SHUBIN’S wife had already

tried three possibilities of illumination but
all of them had failed her. First a taper, then a
small porcelain lamp, then a big brass boulder
lamp with a smoking chimney. All three had
gone out, for lamps seem to require kerosene, and
the bottom of the kerosene tank was dry in the
headquarters of the Raycom (Communist Party
Headquarters for 8 volosts). Finally a candle
was dug up out of a drawer and the conference of
the Famine Mutual Aid Committee continued.

The question concerned a new Children’s
Home, the third one to be established in Gra-
chovka, capital of the ‘‘raycom.’’ The two ex-
isting homes were crowded, the condition of the
Patronats (Receiving Homes established specially
for the famine orphans) much worse. There
must be a fifth institution for the parentless chil-
dren of this district, one of the hungriest in the
whole famine area.

It was agreed that the new Home should be
established. But where? Houses that will serve
as modern institutions for children are rare in a
town of 3,000, even though the population has
been almost halved by the hunger. The peasants
and workers live in two or three roomed houses.
The former bourgeoisie were few, and their
houses have long since been turned into theatres
and courts and hospitals and libraries.

Some one suggested the long green-roofed
house, on Trotsky Street, that had stood vacant
for over a year except for two rooms occupied by
the titular landlord. This house has a broad
veranda enclosed in glass, an ideal sun-parlor or
children’s playroom. Its original owner fied dur-
ing the summer of Kerensky’s régime, deeding his
mansion to a sharp-witted old speculator, Ivan
Dovteff, who was willing to stay and chance the
hazards of the peasant revolution.

This evening Ivan Dovteff is called before the
Famine Committee. He comes. Comrade Shubin
tells him his house would be very desirable as a
Children’s Home. Ivan gulps and begins to ob-
ject: ‘‘You are too hard on me. There is a limit
to all things. The kitchen is cold. Some panes
are out of the windows. It will not suit you.

[2]
You have no right to treat me so.’’ He blinks
and sputters his indignation against the impend-
ing atrocity of Bolshevism.

‘“ Whose house is it?’’ The mild, good-natured
face of the Comrade Chairman suggests that he
knows the answer to that question.

The landlord stalls a second too long. Then:
‘‘Mine—or my wife bought it.’’ The committee-
men look genial, firm and unimpressed.

‘“You know whose house it is,’’ declares the
chairman with decision, as he traces a picture of
the dom on a paper in front of him. ‘‘Old man
Bateshevi handed it over to you and your wife
with a fictitious deed when he fled to Roumania.
It’s yours in trust for him, for he hopes to strut
back if the government should ever fall. Well,
we say,’’—he looks around for the approval of

the committee—‘‘that until that time it’s yours |

in trust for the children of this volost. It be-
longs to them and will be used by them. Anyway,
it was nationalized in December, 1918. It’s about
time it was put to some useful purpose.’’

Ivan Dovteff looked a dagger; then grew re-
signed. ‘‘But where am I to live? Are you go-
ing to turn me out?’’

The Chairman continued as though he had not
been interrupted: ‘‘You will live in the rooms
you now occupy. You will cultivate the garden,
you will keep the place in order, you will work
for the community and we invite you not to
sabotage! That is the policy of the soviet. That
is fair.’’

The Committee agreed. Anne Herkner of the
Mission turned to me and whispered something
about landlords who objected to having children
in their houses ‘‘just like Baltimore or New
York.’’ Then she reiterated the promise of the
Quakers to supply the food, clothes and bedding
for the Home if the Committee would ‘‘pane’’ it,
staff it and provide fuel and a few other essen-
tials. Ivan Dovteff subsided, smiled mechanically
and left the room. The meeting adjourned.

Two days later... They are putting panes
in the windows of the big house with the long
green roof. The neighbors stand in their low
doorways in the sun and talk. They do not call

it ‘‘confiseation.’? They remark: ‘‘The Quakers
are helping the Famine Committee open a new

[3]


Home for Children. They say they are going to
give the food and everything. Good.’’

32
PRAYING FOR RAIN

HE discussion grew out of a question con-

cerning the way fires are extinguished in
Russia. We were working in the clothing ware-
house one afternoon when the church bells began
to toll calling the people to service. One of the
bells had a deep haunting tone like a fire bell I
had heard somewhere. So we asked the youth at
the door what the villagers did when a fire broke
‘out in Grachovka. He shifted from one tattered
trousered leg to the other and proceeded to in-
form us that so far as he knew all the people did
was to burn a candle in the church and pray
that the fire would go out.

‘Well, if the Lord could smother a fire, why
couldn’t He send some rain to make the wheat
erow?’’ This question suggested itself to me.
Anne Herkner put it into Russian as she picked
out some middy blouses for the girls in the Chil-
dren’s Home.

The barefooted philosopher thought about it
for a moment, then spoke very deliberately : ‘“We
must have sinned a lot for the harvests have been
bad for two years. Our granaries used to be
full to the ceiling; now they are empty. Some
- of the people quarreled and perhaps played cards
_ when the church bells rang.’’

‘“But what kind of God is this, who would
punish His people so ferociously for a few minor
sins?’’

The cotton shirt shifted from one side of the
door to the other, then the little cracked voice
came again: ‘‘But we have forgotten the Lord
and don’t pray to os enough; and the Com-
munists have come in.’

‘‘But who are these Communists?’’ we asked,
as if we were really surprised. ‘‘They are your
people; they help distribute the Friends’ food
to the people and give you land to work. =

‘Yes they are our people,’’ came the dead-i in-
earnest voice, ‘‘But they have ceased to recognize
the Lord. They say ‘Who is the Lord? Who

[4]


has ever seen Him?’ They do not believe as we
do that he who prays and believes in the Lord
will go to Heaven and all will be well with him
there.’’

This catechism was simply too fascinating to
stop at this point, so we followed: ‘‘But if the
Lord is all-powerful why doesn’t He make all the
people recognize Him?’’ One dirty foot scraped
the toe of the other on the door sill, but no an-
swer came.

‘¢ Are you still praying for good harvests this

year?’’

‘‘Yeg we are praying every day, at home and
in the church.’’

‘‘But it didn’t seem to bring results last year,”’
we continued heartlessly. 3

The boy continued still and lifeless and unemo-
tional, but his reply was as thoughtful as before.
‘¢Well, you pray, and maybe He’ll give you some-
thing, and then again, maybe He won’t. It’s His
will whatever happens.’’

A mother in a dark skirt and brilliant pink
jacket passed, leading three tots in long dresses,
like children in America use when they play
grown-ups. They were going to pray for the
harvest. That very morning the priest had gone
into the vigoyn (common grazing field) and
blessed their cow. It was for them, as well as
for the cow, a holy day.

‘‘And does the priest eat well?’’ we asked,
thinking of the roubles he had doubtless collected

during Easter week.

Veg he still eats clear pure flour—not like
we eat.’’ Our informant was proud of this fact.
‘‘But,’’ he went on, ‘‘It’s not like the good times
before, when at the harvest he’d drive through
the village, and we’d give him more grain and
good things than his wagon would hold—enough
to keep him and his stock the whole year; and at
Easter he would come to our houses and we would
give him eggs and meat and tarts and all sorts
of good things.’’ That was the way it used to be
when the people polished up their samovars and
cleaned their windows at Easter time.

We suggested that the priest, who had nothing
to do but pray, and who had plenty of good food
to keep him the year round, should make a special
effort to arrange it with the Lord to have some

[5]


generous and telling rains this year so that a good
harvest might be assured and all have some good
clean flour to eat.

‘ our ragged informant mused, ‘‘He’s sent us you
good people to feed us this year.’’

We didn’t have time to make ourselves quite
clear as to whether it was the priest or the Lord
who brought us here. Perhaps our barefooted
believer credited them both with the blessing ; but
you never could have persuaded him that the
Communists had anything to do with it.

We might have followed the matter further
had not Comrade Rapin stepped up to the door
to report that the work on the new Children’s
Homes was going very well; that the transport
would leave on Monday to bring the Quaker sup-
plies from Sorochinskoye and that we could have
a good horse and tarantass to take us to Abriskin
next day.

we

SPRING STYLES IN
GRACHOVKA

S thin as we are these things are too small,’’

groans Maria Bukarev as she tries to twist
herself into a grey ladies’ jacket with leg-of-lamb
sleeves. ‘‘I’m pretty bony, but I can’t get into
that.’’ 3

The famine has saddened and flattened Maria
until you would think you could lose her in any
coat. But the first jacket doesn’t fit her, nor the
second. Anne Herkner helps her into a third.
It is almost a perfect fit. It will do.

It is the third day the Quakers have been giv-
ing out clothes in Grachovka—clothes to the need-
iest families, clothes to the responsible workers on
the Mutual Aid Committee and in the feeding
kitchens, clothes to the hospital personnel, the
school teachers and the grave-diggers. The
clothes for the smaller children in the Homes and
Patronats are taken to them. But the adults come
to the clothing warehouse to be fitted.

‘*Who would ever have thought it would fall
to my lot to dress a judge in tweed,’’ whispers
Anne Herkner as she instructs Ivan Michailov,

[6]


chief justice of the Peoples Court of Kusminov-
skaya Volost, to try a substantial morning coat of
pre-war cloth. The justice is well pleased with
his fit and the quality of the material. And his
wife draws a summer suit that almost matches
his. ‘Our policy,’’ announces Anne Herkner,
with the incongruity of the situation growing
upon her, ‘‘is to effect a color tone between the
wife and the husband, so that when they walk
to church on Sunday, or to the ‘theatre’ on Mon-
- day, they will not offend even the most critical
eye. Spring styles in Grachovka may appear a
trifle miscellaneous, but within the family unit
we are determined to have color harmony.’’ Af-
ter hearing this grave and statesmanlike utter-
ance, the Judge bows a ‘‘do svedanya’’ (‘‘Fare-
well’’) and leaves.

Next come the Post Office staff and telegraph
employees, who remove their ragged official coats
that have long since lost their officialdom and ex-
pose their undertatters. They are forthwith en-
dowed with a suit, a hat, some underwear (if
there is any) and a shirt. One draws an immacu-
late pair of white flannel tennis trousers and feels
this distinction almost immediately. One of the
six isa girl. She looks both sweet and intelligent.
‘You'll catch the best man in town,’’ says Joe
Nepulsky, our German Wandervogel interpreter,
with his usual familiarity as he faces the trans-
formation wrought in the girl’s appearance by a
few cast-off garments from Philadelphia.

The peasants come in their fragments of
clothes, some of them so weak and hungry they
can scarcely crawl along. You do not realize
what damage the famine has done to their big
broad frames till they slip off their bulging skin
coats and stand drooping in their thin shirts or
sweaters. The girls want something ‘‘pretty’’
for the holidays but it must not be too ‘‘loud.’’
With them, as with the older women, black or
dark-blue is the color most in demand. After you
have seen how clothes are washed here, and re-
alize the almost complete absence of soap except
that which comes from the Quaker stores, you
understand why girls of seventeen who ought to
crave bright green and blue and red are insistent
on the somberest hues.

Are the Russian people thankful for these

fy


American cast-off garments? It is almost ludi-
erous—were it not so truly tragic—to notice the
expression that lights up the most hunger-
strained face when we show a jacket, a coat, a
skirt or a suit. ‘‘Spaseebo, spaseebo’’ (‘‘Thanks
thanks’’), ‘‘May the Lord give you health,’’ and
other Russian forms of gratitude come from their
hearts. I saw Anne Herkner push four women
back onto their feet with an astonished ‘°‘ Nit-
chivo’’ (‘‘It doesn’t matter’’ or ‘‘It’s nothing’’)
when they tried to kiss her feet to-day. Others
literally wept with delight to have something to
put on for the holidays.

de
DELIVERED

HIS is a true story. It has no moral.

Her name was Yeyadokeva. Her age was
eighteen. She was what the writers call ‘‘full-
blown.’’ She lived in Semyonovka, and was
easily the belle of the village.

His name was Nicolai. He was seventeen and
small for his age, unusually pinched like a
famine-year sunflower. He lived in a smaller vil-
lage a verst away.

She didn’t like him at all. But her family gave
their word, just as all peasant families used to
before the Revolution—it is different now—and
that was final. His family needed a husky fe-
male worker. She was the one they decided upon.
The wedding was fixed for the ninth of April,
the market-day before Palm Sunday. Nicolai’s
folks would be coming to Semyonovka anyway.

They would even put a bell on the young horse,

the horse they had not eaten.

Yeyadokeva was helpless. She could not run
- away. The roads were clogged with pitchy mud.
Even if she could get to Buzuluk she knew no
one there. There was nothing she could do. Her
family needed the two poods of lebeda fiour
(lebeda is an edible weed) that Nicolai would
bring them. They needed it desperately. Under
stress of the famine many strange things were
being done, things even worse than marrying
Nicolai.

She waited for Doomsday, the ninth of April.
While she waited something happened. It was

[8]

er
a mere



April 7th. The American corn had just come to—
Grachovka, the volost capital. From the volost
warehouse, Semyonovka received its share.

Her family received three of the adult corn
rations. With these and the children’s rations,
distributed by the Friends’ Mission, they could
get along very well without the lebeda flour.
They did not have to sell their eighteen-year-old
daughter. So Nicolai, the little would-be hus-
band, went back to his village disappointed. He
carried with him a sack full of lebeda flour.

Yeyadokeva was relieved. After that she
prayed every night that she would be married to
someone else before her family got into another
tight squeeze. Nicolai still owns that sack of
flour. He is waiting.

pe

THE PIED. PIPER. OF
HUNGER LAND

UNGER has come like the Pied Piper of
Hamlin to the famine country and piped
all the children away to its grim tune. In place
of children it has left little withered bundles of
flesh, with the light gone out of their eyes, and
the gladness from their voices, and the joy from
their hearts. These little pale shadows come to
you, begging you to bring back those other selves
of theirs with whom they used to play so blithely ;
for with those playmates they could run and
dance and shout and sing, but now they can only
drag around weary feet and bodies full of pain,
and call to you with piteous voices.

We heard those little voices first on our way
down to the famine district from Moscow, when
our train was held up for a week at Samara, be-
cause of snow drifts ahead. They would come to
the car window, knowing that we were Ameri-
cans who were bringing help.

‘‘Little Uncle, little Uncle, give for the love
of Christ, give us bread !’’

One after another they would come, cutting
through you like a knife, those voices. We should
have liked to fill their arms full of everything
we had, and watch the wan faces grow bright and
hear their grateful, ‘‘Spaseeba, spaseeba’’

[9]


(‘‘Thank you, thank you’’). But after each one
came so many others, and the little given in this
way is such a temporary help, so we would hand
out a scrap of bread, or a bit of chocolate to still
the voices; or we would say, ‘‘Nyet! Nyet!’’
(‘‘There is nothing to give!’’)

Then we would pull down the shades, so we
could not hear, and so they could not see the
white bread we spread with butter and jam, and
the bully beef, and the steaming tea which we
poured into our cups.

we

IN THE CHILDREN’S
HOMES

VERY possible effort is made to care for the

children, and everywhere the welfare of the
children is put before everything else. Most of
the little waifs who are deserted or orphaned, are
gathered up and taken to the central receiving
home, which has been established in each village
by the government. From there they are distrib-
uted to the various Children’s Homes as vacan-
cies occur. Though there is not room for all the
children, vacancies occur often, for the children
die rapidly. Many of them are in such a weak
condition when taken to the homes that even the
best of food and care cannot save them.

When we visited the Sorochinskoye Receiving
Home the other day, we found 236 children.
There were only 80 little wooden beds so that in
some cases they have to sleep four or five in a
single bed. The children are brought first into_
a bathroom where they are scrubbed with water
that has to be hauled from the river, shaved and
deloused as thoroughly as possible with the lim-
ited facilities, for there is little soap and practi-
cally no disinfectant. For 150 of these children
there was no change of underwear, and for 50
children, no clothing at all. Most of them were
barefooted. In the hospital ward there was no
bedding at all—just rough sacking on the little
beds.

We went next to the Hospital, where there is
room for only twenty children. The air that
greeted us as we opened the door was nauseating.

—10)


The nurse told us that they had not enough bed-
ding to keep the patients warm, even with every-
thing air tight. We could not bear to look long
at the little children we saw here; they were such
piteous bundles of skin and bone, their faces
drawn with suffering, their little eyes beseeching
us to do something to help them.

As we entered the Home for Mothers and Ba-
bies, a great wailing and sobbing of baby voices
greeted us. In the first section of this home there
were 66 babies under three years old, emaciated
bundles of wretchedness, wailing incessantly.

- There were only five women to care for these

babies, so it was impossible to keep them properly
clean. |

Outside the door we met the doctor. I have
never seen a more hopeless expression on any-
one’s face. He was a young fellow with five
Children’s Homes to look after. This one, he
said, was the worst of all. Most of the babies
were nearly dead when they were brought in.

- Between the first of January and the fifteenth of

February, 111 out of 140 babies had died. In the
two weeks after that there had been 150 deaths.
He told us that the average death rate was 10
babies a day—70 per cent of all the babies
brought in. Even as we stood there, 50 little un-
buried bodies were stacked in a closet waiting for
the burial squad.

One of the largest homes has 300 children and

only 150 beds. As we opened the door, singing

greeted us. Drawings done by the children were
hanging on the walls, and they were having regu-
lar lessons. In another room they were playing
games—a Russian version of ‘‘ring around a
rosy,’’ only instead of skipping, the kiddies were
walking solemnly around in a circle, too weak to
skip.

The Young People’s Communist League is in
charge of one of the Homes, where a devoted lad
of nineteen is at the head with a staff of 15 work-
ing under him. There are 115 children in this
home, wonderfully well looked after. The
youngster in charge works constantly. The
other day some one came in from the Home to
bring the report of the food given out for the
month. It was a little mite of a fellow, and we
thought he was one of the children acting as mes-

[11]






senger. We took the report and expected he
would go. But he stood around with an air of
authority, and finally asked if we had any in-
quiries to make regarding the Home. It was the
bookkeeper of the Home himself, come to make
his own report! |

Be

THE END OF THE WINTER

tr company with the President of the Village
Mutual Aid Committee, I walked to the ceme-
tery near the edge of the town. We had been
looking at a loom in a weaver’s cottage, and a
boy had come and handed the President a pass-
port wet and worn. It had been taken from the
body of a man. The man had been found that
morning on the thawing snow track between
Grachovka and Ivanovka. His name, we found,
was Gregor Petrov, his address Kusminovskaya
village; his occupation, peasant; his age, thirty-
five. That was all—except a little more about
his movements (he had been a Red soldier), and
his place of birth.

The body had been taken to the pit, the boy
explained. They asked me if I would like to see
it. Perhaps I would want to inspect the pit any-
way. It was like an invitation to see a city mu-
seum, or a public monument. It was one way
of introducing one to the town. 3

The old cemetery forests a white knoll several
hundred yards from the yard wall of the last
house on the west side of the village. Beside it
stand a few willows, naked and melancholy, and

elose to the bank of one of the frozen inlets of —

the Tok. But between the cemetery fence and
the willows, all but covered in the drift, lies the
freshly dug earth in which the hunger victims are
put away. We stepped over it gingerly and stood
at the edge of the pit. Part of it lay full to the
top with bodies fortunately mantled with a thick
sprinkling of clay. In the other part lay a pile
of bodies, ghastly and bare except for an occa-
sional shroud of rag carpet. It sloped down to
the bottom of the pit, leaving a part of this side
to be filled by those who yet lingered between life
and death in the houses but a stone’s throw away.

[12 ]
















nants ail
=





One doesn’t describe the bodies of the hunger
dead. One looks at them, if one dares, and turns
away. But we did this only to feel ourselves
sinking in the snow to our knees. “‘Look out!’’
said our guide, the one grave-digger who was able
to work that day. ‘‘There are unburied bodies
under the snow here.’’ He shovelled away for
a minute and then knocked the top board off a
erude coffin. Bones and clothes—starvation’s
winter contribution to the potter’s field. “‘Hun-
dreds of them are yet unburied,’’ came the thin
voice of the grave-digger. ‘‘For a time we tried
to bury them singly but they came too fast for
us. So we laid them out here. Then the deep
snow came.’’

‘How many have been put in the pits up to
date??? We steadied our nerves with an official
accent. The man with the spade pointed in every
direction : ‘‘T'wenty there, a hundred in that one,
three hundred there, five hundred in the big pit
already.’’ The death-rate curve was clear in the
sequence of his figures.

‘And all of these, more than eleven hundred,
died of hunger?’’

PEN cag 7?

‘¢Since when ?’’

“New Year’s Day.”’

‘CAnd are there not many of them from the
surrounding villages ?’’

‘Not so many. Not more than three hundred
who are not from Grachovka.”’

Eleven hundred buried. How many more un-
buried, how many more to go into this pit, and
into the next and larger one that will be dug?
I thought of the abandoned houses along the
street by which I entered the village for the first
time a few days before. I thought of the month
that must elapse before the peasants can eat fresh
oTass. |

“Do they ever have separate funerals?’’ I
asked the grave-digger as we turned back to the
village, ‘‘or are they brought here without any
ceremony ?’’

‘Tf someone has a live horse or a few roubles
for a priest, it can be done, but that is not often.
Most of them are brought here during the day,
two or three at a time, and put on the snow. We
tend to them at ‘set of sun.’ ”’ ,

[13 ]










Every day as the sun sets, this man, and as
many of his five assistants as are able to raise
a spade that day, wrap the day’s accumulation
in old colored rag carpets and drop them into
the pit. Just a little earth is scattered over them.
Faces and hands and toes show through it.

Near the pit on the snow, partly covered with
a bit of straw, lie the bodies of three children
brought this day from the Patronat. When we
visited there yesterday they were alive. Beside
the children lies Gregor Petrov from Kusminov-
skaya—thirty-five years old and a peasant.

2

RODIMOVKA—EASTER
| SUNDAY

OUR versts due west from Grachovka lies

Rodimovka—a nest of twelve huts, just be-
yond a swamp and a dark swift stream. We
crossed by a sturdy wooden bridge and reached
the first straw-laden shed. Then we had but to
step off the ‘‘main’’ road, walk a few yards down
the one and only street, slip into a basket-fenced
yard, hump under the door of a stable and knock
at the rag-padded door of a house.

It happens to be the house of Stepan Davido.
Stepan, his wife and his daughters of twelve,
eight and two are at home. It is not nice to carry
mud onto their hard-scrubbed front room floor.
But house, furniture and people give a welcome.
‘‘Come right in,’’ say all of them, ‘‘We were
expecting you sometime.’’ The pretty embroi-
dered linen towels are draped over the windows
and the ikon; the samovar gleams from its Satur-
day polish. We assure Stepan that we have not
come for tea. Our visit is an accident—not
official. But it would be interesting to know
something about this village, the first one visited
outside of Grachovka.

‘Within a few minutes the first neighbor re-
moves her boots in the kitchen and steps into the
room. The rest of the village follows, one by one.
They have not been summoned nor invited, but
they saw two strangers entering Stepan’s house.
What is there to do on Sunday afternoon but
pull on one’s boots or one’s galoshes and go over

[14]
















to see what two strangers can be wanting with
Stepan? Quietly they fill the floor of the room
while Stepan tells the story. In his pink cotton
shirt and patched breeches he leans against the
sill of the curiously mended window while he
talks. The story unfolds gradually:

There were about 65 ‘‘souls’’ in the Little settle-
ment last summer; now there are 32. There were
eleven families; now there are seven. In one
family there were eight ‘‘souls.’’ Of them, one
girl is left. She is sitting there on the stove,
- starved at seventeen. Another family had nine;
all are gone but the wife and one child. ‘‘ And
before you are all the men,’’ says Stepan.
‘‘Twelve of us before the famine; now there are
three. The others died.’’

‘ metrie, brother of Stepan, and one of the three
surviving men. ‘‘What have we to sow? Hight
poods of wheat to be divided among us and the
170 ‘‘souls’’ in the main village. We alone ought
to have several poods, for wheat is our big grain.
From it we get our bread. And between the two
groups we have only 20 poods of millet, 36 of
barley and 3 of sunflower seeds, not a fraction
of what we need for our little hamlet alone.
We have eight dessiatines of land ready and we
could prepare more with our horse and two cows
if we knew that more seed grains were coming
from Buzuluk. But that is all rumor and the
roads will be bad for another week, and then it
may be too late to plant. Besides, we need po-
tatoes, and we have none. Of seeds, we have
only among the vegetables, cabbage, melon, and
a few pumpkins, no tomatoes.’’

Then came the review of the food supplies, in-
troduced, as usual by an exhibition of the in-
genious bark-straw bread. On this alone the
peasants would be forced to live, were it not for
the handful of American corn that has arrived.
Four funts of it went to each of 13 adults in
this clump of houses last week. As for the chil-
dren, they just survived during the winter when
the Quaker products were coming. But this was
before the corn arrived and some of the adults
had been taking a little of the child food. In
February when the snows had blocked the rail-
roads and the child pyoks (rations) had been de-

[ 15 ]












Every day as the sun sets, this man, and as
many of his five assistants as are able to raise
a spade that day, wrap the day’s accumulation
in old colored rag carpets and drop them into
the pit. Just a little earth is scattered over them.
Faces and hands and toes show through it.

Near the pit on the snow, partly covered with
a bit of straw, lie the bodies of three children
brought this day from the Patronat. When we
visited there yesterday they were alive. Beside
the children lies Gregor Petrov from Kusminov-
skaya—thirty-five years old and a peasant.

se

RODIMOVKA—-EASTER
| SUNDAY

OUR versts due west from Grachovka lies

Rodimovka—a nest of twelve huts, just be-
yond a swamp and a dark swift stream. We
crossed by a sturdy wooden bridge and reached
the first straw-laden shed. Then we had but to
step off the ‘‘main’’ road, walk a few yards down
the one and only street, slip into a basket-fenced
yard, hump under the door of a stable and knock
at the rag-padded door of a house.

It happens to be the house of Stepan Davido.
Stepan, his wife and his daughters of twelve,
eight and two are at home. It is not nice to carry
mud onto their hard-scrubbed front room floor.
But house, furniture and people give a welcome.
‘‘Come right in,’’ say all of them, ‘‘We were
expecting you sometime.’’ The pretty embroi-
dered linen towels are draped over the windows
and the ikon; the samovar gleams from its Satur-
day polish. We assure Stepan that we have not
come for tea. Our visit is an accident—not
official. But it would be interesting to know
something about this village, the first one visited
outside of Grachovka.

Within a few minutes the first neighbor re-
moves her boots in the kitchen and steps into the
room. The rest of the village follows, one by one.
They have not been summoned nor invited, but
they saw two strangers entering Stepan’s house.
What is there to do on Sunday afternoon but
pull on one’s boots or one’s galoshes and go over

[14]
















to see what two strangers can be wanting with
Stepan? Quietly they fill the floor of the room
while Stepan tells the story. In his pink cotton
shirt and patched breeches he leans against the
sill of the curiously mended window while he
talks. The story unfolds gradually: :

There were about 65 ‘‘souls’’ in the little settle-
ment last summer; now there are 32. There were
eleven families; now there are seven. In one
family there were eight ‘‘souls.’’ Of them, one
girl is left. She is sitting there on the stove,
- starved at seventeen. Another family had nine;
all are gone but the wife and one child. ‘‘And
before you are all the men,’’ says Stepan.
‘‘Twelve of us before the famine; now there are
three. The others died.’’

‘In a week it will be time to plant,’’ says De-
metrie, brother of Stepan, and one of the three
surviving men. ‘‘What have we to sow? Eight
poods of wheat to be divided among us and the
170 ‘‘souls’’ in the main village. We alone ought
to have several poods, for wheat is our big grain.
From it we get our bread. And between the two
groups we have only 20 poods of millet, 36 of
barley and 3 of sunflower seeds, not a fraction
of what we need for our little hamlet alone.
We have eight dessiatines of land ready and we
could prepare more with our horse and two cows
if we knew that more seed grains were coming
from Buzuluk. But that is all rumor and the
roads will be bad for another week, and then it
may be too late to plant. Besides, we need po-
tatoes, and we have none. Of seeds, we have
only among the vegetables, cabbage, melon, and
a few pumpkins, no tomatoes.’’

Then came the review of the food supplies, in-
troduced, as usual by an exhibition of the in-
genious bark-straw bread. On this alone the
peasants would be forced to live, were it not for
the handful of American corn that has arrived.
Four funts of it went to each of 13 adults in
this clump of houses last week. As for the chil-
dren, they just survived during the winter when
the Quaker products were coming. But this was
before the corn arrived and some of the adults
had been taking a little of the child food. In
February when the snows had blocked the rail-
roads and the child pyoks (rations) had been de-

[ 15 ]














layed, the adults decided they could not touch
the eight child rations that came. It. was those
first two weeks in February that 14 adults died!

It was Stepan who summed it up this time:
‘‘It is you who keep us alive; if you leave us,
we are done for’’; and then after a silent pause,
‘©All we have to offer in thanks is our ‘clean
hearts.’ ”’

Be

A DOCTOR ON THE
FAMINE FRONT

ATALIE LAVRENTIEVNA is always wor-

rying about the health of the Quaker relief
workers and saying, ‘‘the dark, miserable peas-
ants aren’t worth it,’’ and yet she herself is on
her feet in the service of these very peasants
sometimes twenty-four, sometimes thirty-six
hours on end.

Natalie Lavrentievna is the doctor in charge of
Grachovka Hospital, the central medical point for
five volosts (townships) and 40,000 Russian peas-
ants scattered in a hundred villages. It’s really
not a very important position for her to be occu-
pying. During the imperialist war she was in
full charge of a Red Cross Hospital of the first
rank, a hospital of 2,000 beds at first in Tiflis and
later in the capital of Armenia. In field surgery,
in bacteriology, in epidemic diseases she had a
wealth of experience there in the Caucausus
under the old régime when Petrograd ladies acted
as patronesses of the great hospitals in which she
worked and carried on her researches.

After the fall of the Tsar and the November
revolution she worked in the armies defending
Russia against the Whites. At the Red front she
married and had a child. She kept on working
without ceasing. Some days she would inoculate
a thousand soldiers against infectious diseases.
Finally, when she was demobilized from the Red
Army, she worked in Buzuluk Uyeed (County )
as a specialist on epidemic diseases and later she
was sent to the Famine Front, in fact to the very
worst salient—Kusminovskaya Volost. There she
has worked for two years, struggling with the
famine and the diseases that come from starva-
tion.

[ 16 ]



Bi


Dis



She tells us how on one day last winter seven
of those who had been driven to cannibalism were
brought to her door. Unlike in some other volosts
of Buzuluk County where they were shot immedi-
ately, Grachovka Hospital regarded them, not as

-eriminals, but as temporarily sick and insane.

Natalie Lavrentievna tells us how two children
killed a third and then quite calmly related to
her just how they had done it. She went into
the homes of people mad with hunger. She saw
the human bones about; she saw them in pots on
the stove. She was never once afraid. She was
never once attacked. She weighs only 95 pounds.

She comes to see us on a September evening,
talking as usual just a little faster than her hur-
ried walk. |

‘“My, what a clinic I’ve had today, Anna An-
tonovna. Two hundred and twenty. Only two
typhus; the rest malaria.”’

Some days as many as five hundred patients
pass through her clinic, but two hundred and
twenty makes the day busy enough; especially
when three of them are poor souls who, tempo-
rarily out of their minds with the stupefying
likoratka (malaria), poured scalding water on
their backs and legs to take off the chill!

‘““They were a sight,’’ says Natalie Lavren-
tievna, ‘‘and there was another little fellow who
was so cold he backed up against the stove and
burned himself terribly.’’

“‘But what do you give these people who have
simply malaria?’’ we ask.

‘“One pellet of quinine’’ says the doctor, ‘‘and
the next time they come: ‘Nothing for you today.
You had yours,’ we have to tell them.’’ Which as
she herself is the first one to point out is nothing
less than waste, for one small dose of quinine will
help none of these mujhtks (peasants) out of the
elutches of malaria. But Natalie Lavrentievna
can give no more. The Quaker Medical Depart-
ment could give her only twelve thousand qui-

nine pills; three thousand of this number she

handed over to other medical points in her dis-
trict. She had only nine thousand quinine pills
left for her patients, and this will only carry her
clinic for about twenty days even with such inetf-
fectively small doses.

ela














Last year after three months of famine only
seventeen hundred came to her clinic in the month
of September. This year, in the full tide of this
malaria seven thousand have come during the
same period, and the quinine is all used up and
to no purpose in a few days. Before the famine
she says, yes, only two years ago, she had pails of
quinine and no malaria.

Natalie Lavrentievna is no panic-crier, but she
sees, as no one else in the district can see, how
slender is the thread between life and death for
most of the people, particularly in Kusminov-
_ skaya Volost. She measures and tests that thread
dozens of times every day of her busy life, and
as the autumn advances she witnesses too often
the snapping of that fragile filament. Usually
it is malaria or its after effects.

‘“You must take better care of yourself,’’ she
says every time as she 1s leaving—she, who never
thinks of herself, who scarcely has time to care
for her own child. She is always confident of her
own strength and endurance and frightfully dis-
trustful of ours.

She goes about her business complaining of the
ignorance and uncleanliness of the peasant, the
deadly monotony of the village, the difficulties
of life under the famine. She dreams of the time
when she can get back to the city, to Kiev or
Moscow or Petrograd, to her laboratories and to
her old student friends. And yet she goes on
working for the ‘‘dark people,’’? working and
never tiring, never stopping.

32
SOOSLIKS

| ae is the open season for soosliks. Pend-
ing the arrival of more Quaker food and
American corn, the villages of Kusminovskaya
volost are literally living on them. You see a
little boy sucking the last atom of flesh from the
back of one of them. You see a tall peasant girl
with long slow stride moving along the crest of
a hill, a bag of them on her shoulder.

Soosliks are field rats. In Ignashkin the other
day four men died from devouring them raw.
They were so starved, to begin with, and so ex-

[18 ]

+


4



hausted from catching the little beasts, that they
died almost immediately upon eating the raw
flesh.

Any member of the family may be selected to
go ‘‘soosliking.’’ If all but one are too sick or
too weak to walk, that one goes. Usually it is a
boy or girl whose strength has been preserved
by the Quaker food. Armed with one, or prefer-
ably two buckets and any kind of a knife, the
hunter plods off to a field as close to some water
as he can find, for the water has to be carried to
the sooslik. He cannot be led to it. Once the
water is at the mouth of the opening to the hole
the drama is very decisive. The water goes down,
the sooslik comes up. The starved urchin is
waiting for him. He seldom misses him. Once
caught, a slit at the neck and it is all over for the
sooslik. But not for the hunter. He must go on
carrying more water, investigating other holes,
until he has enough dead soosliks to feed the
whole family.

That night, there may be raw meat for the
family or possibly cooked meat. It depends upon
how hungry they are. The boy will lie on the
flat-topped stone stove almost too exhausted to
eat. They will hand him up a back or a head
to chew. And they-will say: ‘‘If it were not for
the sooslik, we should all have died.’’

.
THE GLEANERS

OU find them along any road out of Gamaley-

evka. They are men and women. They are
bending over. They reproduce in their postures
every feeling in the Millet picture—and more.
For they are not the steady, sturdy, confident
creatures unhurriedly gathering the scatterings
from the fields after the real harvest is assured.
They are not the owners of these fields. Their
attitude toward this land is different.

They are the people who had nothing. Who
sowed nothing because they had no seed, who
reaped nothing because they had not sown. They
are gleaners, not by virtue of ownership, but by
virtue of necessity. They glean from the fields
of others who, having harvested something, are

[19]














ERTL TT RU NEL RTE ea ae ae

willing to give their unlucky brother a concession,
so to speak, on the leavings. They are willing
to share the crumbs that fall from their own scant
pickings with the neighbor who had no pickings
at all.

So we see the gleaners in the fields where the
rye and wheat have been cut; bending, stooping,
kneeling, combing the stubble for the precious
and thinly scattered heads and broken stalks.
They will take home to the village what in normal
years no Russian peasant would think of sal-
vaging—indeed it would be poor economy to
waste time in gathering it by hand. But what
have these gleaners but time? They have no
cow, no horse, no sheep, no goat, no means to
plow, or earry the load of the labor of late
August. They have nothing left but time. Time
to crawl and hunt for a little food on the fields
of the scarcely more fortunate. Time to save the
last head of barley that another has missed.
Time to make a last desperate struggle for life—
a struggle that may continue until December, or
possibly until February. Then it will end, un-
less the Quaker pyoks (rations) are given out,
and unless the gleaner is on the list.

The foodless peasant is not sure that the
Quaker will or can feed him this fall and winter.
So he gleans and gleans with the terrible fear in
his heart that he may not glean enough. And he
seldom, if ever, does glean enough. :

Gleaning is a desperate business. It pays
poorly. It means great expenditure of energy for
meagre returns. But it means—if the Quaker
help comes later—the margin between life and
death.

[ 20 ]






-NHE aim of the American Friends
Service Committee is to serve others
in such a way that selfish nationalism,

class distinctions, racial prejudice, and com-
mercial antagonism may give way to friend-
ship and goodwill.

We ask your moral and financial support.

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE
COMMITTEE
20 South 12th Street,
Philadelphia, Pa.