In the Web of History: Old Russia and Soviet Union: With Unique Insight into Nikita Khrushchev's Politically Formative Years as a Communist Politician and a Rising Party Leader

By Olga Gladky Verro

In the Web of History is an engaging odyssey of a family caught in the whirlwind of catastrophic historical events and wars sweeping across the 20th century Russia and Soviet Union. It brings to life the not-so-distant past how history, people and events influenced and shaped the family fate.

It is a rich source for m

• Language: English
• Publisher: OGVAM Books
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949748048

Book preview

In Whose Name?

By Antonina G. Gladky and Orest M. Gladky

The winter of 1917 was mild and snowy in the Ukraine, the southern region of Russia. Far away on the western front, in deep trenches covered with snow, Russian soldiers defended their country from their enemy, the Germans. They sacrificed not only their flesh and blood but also their lives in Russia’s name.¹

Those who were on the home front suffered along with them. The war was a heavy burden on the country and its people, but enduring it meant preserving the honor and the glory of Russia. Therefore, the inconveniences and hardships of wartime were accepted by the people as a duty and an inevitable adversity they had to bear. At the front the soldiers suffer much more than we do here, standing in line for provisions. That was how many Russians felt at the time.

It was a calm winter evening. Delicate, fluffy snowflakes whirled slowly as they descended to the ground. They fell on the faces of passersby, on their eyebrows and eyelashes, covering their hats and babushkas with soft down. The snow emanated a radiance of an exceptional, mysterious tenderness that had been sent to earth from a faraway sky. Perhaps that radiance was even holy, but the people on the streets were indifferent to it. Their minds were absorbed with thoughts beyond ordinary, everyday events.

Suddenly the seeming tranquility of the evening was changed by the gusts of a sharp, biting wind. Snowflakes eddied rapidly in the powerful currents of air and blinded the eyes of the hurrying people. But the anxious townsfolk noticed neither snow nor wind. They were engrossed in the foreboding rumors that had already reached the province from the capital. They waited impatiently for paperboys to rush out of the local printing houses into the streets with hot-off-the-press newspapers. They anxiously expected to hear the boys’ ringing voices shouting the latest news. Worried people ran toward them, hastily paid for a newspaper and, without waiting for their change, hurried to an illuminated store window or to a streetlight under which they could read. They wanted to see with their own eyes the words they had just heard in the discordant chorus of naive boys as they proclaimed unexpected, striking news:

"Revolution in Petrograd!² Revolution in Petrograd!"

The Tsar Has Abdicated!

Abdication of the Monarch!

Revolution in Russia!

The piercing, troubling voices of the paperboys spread further and further down streets and alleys, reaching every home, disturbing and agitating an established way of life, frightening the inhabitants and overwhelming them with an awful feeling of uncertainty.

The people received the news in different ways. Those who felt comfortable with the established way of life were stricken with fear of an approaching catastrophe. Those who believed in the promises of the revolutionary slogans were ready to follow the Revolution. Others—the opportunists—kept quiet, waiting for the right moment to fulfill their frustrated ambitions. Some conceitedly believed themselves to be the saviors of the fatherland with new government… And some—the Knights of Honor—joined the ranks of those now marching to save Russia and to preserve law and order. Yes, the Tsar had abdicated, but, in whose name?

The war against Germany continued; however, the front line staggered. Influenced by the revolutionary infiltrators that spread tempting slogans—especially those that promised, All land to the peasants!—soldiers abandoned the battlefields and ran home to their villages, expecting the promised redistribution of land that had been seized from the landowners.

In the cities, towns and hamlets, meetings and endless rallies went on and on. Schools and clubs—their floors littered with cigarette butts, sunflower seed shells, and spittle—became hosts to multitudes of unknown orators, giving them a platform from which they made their speeches. Some of them were revolutionaries; some were social democrats; still others were socialists of every kind and shading; some were young cadets who believed in the promises of the revolutionary slogans; and some were ordinary criminals released now from the prisons by the Revolution. Without end, one after another, using gestures when they couldn’t find words to express themselves, the orators shouted themselves hoarse threatening reprisals and death to the bourgeois, to the fat capitalists, to the exploiters of the working class, to government officials, to merchants, to White Army officers, to policemen, to the clergy, and to the landowners.

Violent mobs were already breaking shop windows and warehouse doors. Savagely, brutally, mob law began to reign on the streets. Anyone could spark the mob’s fury by grabbing the first suspected bourgeois, who was held guilty merely because he owned a house, or a store, or because he was a lawyer, or a judge, or a doctor, or a policeman.

Ominous, threatening voices resounded everywhere:

Death to the dogs! They have drunk enough of our blood!

Those vile creatures deserve it!

Break, hit, steal everything! It is all ours now!

A lone man on the street observed it all, listened with bewilderment and watchfully hurried home, not knowing which side he should be on. And he thought, Haven’t they made a mess of it? Who will put things right now? And, before falling asleep, he pondered over the foreboding words of The Internationale, a hymn borrowed from the French Revolution by the Communists:

"Arise ye workers from your slumbers…³

Servile masses arise, arise,

We’ll change henceforth the old tradition

And spurn the dust to win the prize."

The army, demoralized by all the desertions, began to suffer defeat after defeat. The civil war spread like wildfire into all parts of Russia. The Reds fought for the Revolution, the Whites fought for Russia, and the Greens fought for an independent Ukraine. All these armies behaved as masters of the cities, towns, hamlets, and villages; they plundered the population, confiscated from the peasants grain and other foodstuff to feed their soldiers, and destroyed everything in their path.

The Reds mobilized the youth to increase the ranks of their battalions. The Whites accepted volunteers of all ages to replenish their shrinking forces. Petlyura’s Greens attracted those who for years had secretly yearned for an independent Ukraine. The Red Guards and the White Army fought against each other, and the Greens fought both of them. Towns, hamlets and villages changed hands many times. In these battles, brothers unknowingly killed one another, one dying while defending the Revolution, another while saving his Russia, and still a third dying for a free Ukraine.

Industry stood in ruins; fields stood unsowed. The railroads were nearly at a standstill. Famine and a typhus epidemic decimated the population. Amidst all these calamities, from the beginning of the Revolution and throughout the Civil War, people continued to do what they could in order to survive. Some were lucky to have jobs or skills that allowed them to provide to some degree for their families; some searched for food in the impoverished countryside; others engaged in the black market. Despite all, the majority of the population suffered from hunger and disease.

In the midst of the chaos, most of the schools remained open, due to the selfless labor of many teachers. But, little by little, they began closing down due to lack of funds, fuel and the general devastation of the country.

1.    World War One with Germany.

2.    During World War One with Germany, Saint Petersburg was renamed from the German name Petersburg to the Russian name Petrograd (1914–1924); the Bolsheviks renamed it to Leningrad (1924–1991); after the fall of the Communist regime, it was renamed back to Saint Petersburg in 1991.

3.    The Internationale (1871), by Eugene Pottier.

The Black Raven

By Orest M. Gladky

Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna Mikhnyevich¹ was a Muscovite.² In her gray-blue eyes and kind smile always shined the joy of life. She lived by a deep faith in God and in Mother Russia. She guided herself by faith in the family and in school, already teaching a second generation of children. Jokingly, she would tell her adult former students that she probably would teach their grandchildren and to develop their minds and thirst to learn. Her faith came from deep in her soul, heart, and mind without turning her life into an extreme of self-denial and austerity. Within the family and in the company of good friends, one could hear very often the ringing peal of her laughter.

She loved the Russian olden times and held firmly to their time-honored customs and traditions. She perceived extraordinary beauty in that time gone by and was able to present its richness in a symphony of words in which one heard sincere love for mother country.

In a simple child’s story, Kolobok,³ that she often told to her small son Igor, even the adults would escape reality. Her speech murmured as a happy stream, and one didn’t know where one was, in the world of Kolobok of childhood fantasy or in the reality of a comfortable living room chair.

And in velvet tones, which flowed as the waves of the River Don, she would tell a Russian epic, bylina of Illya Muromets. Then from the dead past would rise the ancient Russian heroes with the strength and glory of Holy Russia. That could be followed by the story of Boris Godunov, or by Poltava—the same Russia in the rhymes of poet genius Pushkin—that in her marvelous narration would transform the listener to a participant in past-time deeds.

It was not by chance only that Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna was the reader of the text accompanying the magic-lantern shows for the pupils that were shown in those days before motion pictures. Then the stationary figures appearing on the screen would come to life and the three maidens sitting under the windows suddenly would begin to spin swiftly, their smiles to breathe with life, their eyes to sparkle with maidenly eagerness, and almost could be heard the dear-to-heart Russian voice saying, If I was the Tsarina…

She knew more than anyone all the ancient ceremonies and folklore of good and bad omens. Sometimes, just before the New Year, she would align a dozen of cups with chopped onions and foretell, June will be rainy, and July—dry; there will be good crops and harvests in good weather… And it happened that way.

Life was simple but overflowing with the riches of heritage from the past. It was a good life! And she always raised and poured forth her gratitude to God for granting prosperity to her native land in her prayers.

During the difficult years of war for the honor of motherland and for the celebration of the orthodox faith, her face was overshadowed with indelible wrinkles. Somewhere, far away on the front, Russian fighting men were dying. Was it possible to be indifferent during those years, which weighed so heavily on the country? And in her fervent prayers she was not the only one who with eyes wet with tears appealed in prayers for granting victory to the soldiers of Russia…

But then came the year of 1917—incomprehensible, terrible, and ugly. It resurrected the year of 1905 from the darkness of Hell. Her wrinkles and gray hair tripled. Her rolling and ringing laughter could be heard no more. And there was not even a hint of her sweet smile.

Revolution! Revolution!

And in faraway Saint Petersburg, that by the will of the Tsar was renamed now as Petrograd, a cynical and sinister farce was playing out on the stage of history. Suddenly, a defender of the criminals, who called himself Lenin, emerged as head of the Russian State; he was as a jester in a funeral procession shouting disgusting profane, demeaning drivel.

Thus, did Russia stumble into the abyss…

At times at the dinner table, Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna would take a piece of bread, look at it sorrowfully, and say, "Now even the word ‘bread’ is not the same—without the letter ‘yat’ and without the ‘hard sign’ letter.⁴ ‘Yat’ was the inside of bread, its soft part, and the ‘hard sign’ letter at the end was the crust… One would eat it and know that it is bread in your mouth and not the worthless chaff of revolution."

More gray hair, deeper wrinkles on her face, her heart bleeding from the terrible premonitions…

One day one of the local super-revolutionaries asked her casually, What is the matter, Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna? Why have you become quiet? Where is your laughter full of life? Where is your joy for life?

Russia is on its death bed; one needs to cry and pray to God for salvation!

No, Russia is on the operating table.

That’s even worse. Father Krylov used to say in his fable: ‘It is a misfortune when a shoemaker starts to bake the cakes and the pastrymaker to repair the shoes…’ You will kill Russia on your operating table!

During Christmastime, as usual, the small apartment resounded with the strident voices of youth. From the other towns, students from gymnasiums, royal, commercial and technical schools, and various specialized courses, the sons and daughters, nephews, and nieces, friends and girlfriends would come home and gather together. A place was found for all—only the noise and the energy of youth was not to be contained within the white walls of the rooms and so to burst forth into gloriously frosty days and star-covered nights.

The Christmastime celebrations were over. The year of 1918 was nearing fast—and then, the thirty-first of December. It was the last day of the year 1917, the year that birthed the monstrous child that was destined to grow too evil to be christened.

Toward midnight the ring of youthful voices echoed in the rooms. They had opened wide the porch door and aroused the household:

Mama!

Aunty!

Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna!

Let’s do the fortune telling!

Let me be the first today, said Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna. What will happen to Russia?

On the upside-down dinner plate, a crumpled piece of paper burns in the yellow flame. It emits smoke, becomes black, and transforms into a fragile mass of indefinite form. Dozens of eyes intensely seek to catch and identify the contours of its shadow from the candle light. Suddenly the contrast is clear, and contours on the wall appear as a burial mound, atop of which a black raven is sitting…

Sorrow engulfed the hearts of all present, and the fortune telling on the eve of 1918 went without the usual laughter, without secret expectations and joy, without the nebulous desires of love and youthful dreams…

Russia is going to perish. With this painful thought, Nadyezhda Vikyentyevna left from this life to ask the Omnipotent in the next life to save her Mother Russia.

She left not without hope. She believed that the spirit of the Russian heroes would arise and that the courageous, epic heroes would awaken and enter the fight with the Fiend of Hell to raise once more that great Russia with her immense richness of her past.

1.    Mother of Orest Mikhailovich Gladky.

2.    Resident of Moscow.

3.    Russian folk story about many encounters of a curious rolling dough-ball, named Kolobok, with all kinds of animals and who at the end was swallowed by a cunning fox.

4.    The two letters that the new Soviet government had banished from the Russian alphabet as symbols of the old Church Slavic language. Both letters were a part of the old spelling of the word khlyeb (bread).

PART ONE

Life in Old Russia

Have your parents tell you about their own parents and what they can remember about their grandparents… All you have to do is make a record of the simple, everyday things and pass them on to posterity.

—Robert G. Voelker, How to start a family history, Modern Maturity, Aug.–Sept. 1981

The Origins of the

Berezhnoy Family

As Remembered by Antonina G. Gladky

The origins of the Berezhnoy family can be traced to the village of Nikolskoye in the Nikolsky Rural District of the Isyumsky Provincial District that was then under the jurisdiction of the Kharkovsky Province. It was located in the southeastern part of Russia, which long ago was known as Malorussia¹ or Okraina² and later became known by its present name Ukraina, or the Ukraine. The village got its name from the family name of its first landowner, Nikolsky, who long ago had received this land along with a number of peasant serfs from the Tsar as a reward for his services to the Crown. This was the customary recompense in feudal Russia for many years until the Agrarian Reform of 1861 liberated the serfs.

During this period of serfdom, peasant serfs were attached to the lord of the manor who owned them, and, according to the existing law, could sell them and punish them at his own discretion. It was well known that in feudal Russia some despotic serf-owners mistreated their subjects, used harsh corporal punishment, and divided serfs’ families by selling their members to other landlords located far from their native villages.

But the peasants in Nikolskoye had no such bad recollections about several generations of landlords in their village. They didn’t remember that anyone was ever sold, and the original serfs’ families remained in the village for many years; they didn’t recall, either, that any of their landlords used corporal punishment or in any way mistreated their subjects. Also, there was no record of any mutinies in the history of the village.

It appears that for many years the landlords in Nikolskoye treated their serfs fairly and provided for their subjects according to the prevalent customs. Their interest was to have healthy, strong, and contented serfs to work on their land and to take care of the manor. Then they could expect the serfs to perform their duties according to the existing rules. This way, the serf-owners preserved their status quo, to which they believed they were entitled, and the serfs accepted their status quo, to which they believed they were born. For several generations the wise landlords in Nikolskoye had maintained this equilibrium.

All the landlords in feudal Russia provided sustenance and living quarters for their serfs, but each landlord had his own system of taking care of his subjects. Nikolskoye was a prosperous village, and peasant serfs lived with their families in cottages on land owned by the lord of the manor. They depended on their owner for their basic provisions. They then had to supplement their family’s needs by cultivating small vegetable and fruit gardens near their cottages and by keeping a few chickens in their sheds. And some, who were also skillful at the trades of carpentry, blacksmithing, or wheel and barrel making, exchanged their services with other peasants for whatever they needed. In general, bartering was a common way of getting needed products and services among peasant serfs.

Having heard³ what was happening to serfs owned by cruel and despotic landlords in some villages, Nikolskoye’s peasant serfs considered themselves lucky and used to say, "We should be grateful to our good barin⁴ who feeds us and treats us fairly as we deserve to be treated."

1.    The Small Russia.

2.    The outer boundary of the country.

3.    As recounted by Antonina G. Berezhnaya Gladky, who heard it from her grandmother Anna Berezhnaya.

4.    This is how Russian peasants addressed their landlords.

The Ancestry of the

Berezhnoy Family

As Remembered by Antonina G. Gladky

The village of Nikolskoye was located in a valley¹ near a small river, a tributary of the River Torets.² The peasants’ neat, clay-walled, whitewashed cottages peeped out like white handkerchiefs from the dense cherry trees that surrounded them. Thatched roofs resembled big straw hats sitting atop the white walls of the cottages that stood on high clay zavalinkas³ and small windows winked here and there reflecting the sun’s rays. Fences made from interwoven branches looked like huge baskets scattered in picturesque shapes along the streets. These fences divided the vegetable and fruit gardens and courtyards from the dusty unpaved roads, where a horse pulling a slow, squeaky cart rarely disturbed barefoot children in plain linen shirts playing a simple game of trundling hoops.

On the southeastern edge of the village, the scattered peasant cottages ran down toward the riverbank, stopping on a small hill where the sun’s rays bathed the multicolored carpet of melon fields. Farther down, near the river’s shore, the waters of the river nourished flourishing vegetable gardens that belonged to the lord of the manor.

For many years several generations of one family of serfs lived in one of the cottages near the banks of the river. The original landowner had given their ancestor the surname Berezhnoy,⁴ which was appropriate since it meant the river-shore-dweller. The Berezhnoys were not field serfs who tilled the soil. Rather, they were manor serfs responsible for the maintenance of the manor and the manor house of the barin.

Usually, the landlord selected as his manor serfs the keen-witted peasants who were masters of one or more trades, who were good laborers, and who were strong and healthy. Traditionally, the position of a manor serf was passed on from father to son, if the son demonstrated that he would be good at that kind of work when he, as a boy, helped his father with the chores.

The ancestral names of the serf families were preserved by the peasants by word of mouth from one generation to another. It was known that in the last decades of the 1700s, Ivan⁴ Berezhnoy was the manor serf of landlord Nikolsky. Ivan had inherited from his father the surname Berezhnoy, the position of manor serf, and the right to live in his cottage. Later, Ivan’s son Osyp followed in his father’s footsteps. Osyp’s son, Danil, began working as a young boy alongside his father for the barin.

Danil Berezhnoy⁵ married Anna, the daughter of another manor serf named David. They lived with Danil’s parents and served at the manor. By his merit, Danil earned the right to inherit all the privileges of the manor serf after his father’s death.

But Danil had a better destiny than his father, Osyp, did. He received his freedom while he was still young, shortly after his father’s death. The freedom came about a year after his marriage to Anna, and soon after the birth of their first son, Stepan, who grew up a free man.

As a result of the Agrarian Reform of 1861, when serfdom in Russia was abolished by a decree issued by Tsar Alexander II, Danil received from his landlord ownership of the cottage, the same one he lived in as a manor serf, along with the adjoining courtyard and garden, and he continued to live there as a free peasant with his family.

Additionally, the village community, called Mir, received a portion of the landowner’s land, which was then divided into strips for each family unit. Danil received a strip of land in the fields and began to till the soil for himself. For the use of the land, all free peasants had to pay the government a tollage, a tax levied in kind, consisting of a certain portion of their crop.

Now that the peasants had received their freedom and with it the land to cultivate, they also assumed the full responsibility of providing for their families, a new task that most peasants in Nikolskoye took in stride.

The soil in that part of Ukraine, called chernozem, or black earth, was naturally rich and produced a plentiful crop. On their allotted land, the peasants planted wheat, rye, sunflowers, and potatoes, which made them self-sufficient in their basic needs for bread, potatoes and oil for their families. Each peasant family also planted some other kind of grain, such as rye, oats, corn, buckwheat, or millet. Those grains were also part of their food staples and provided feed for poultry and livestock. Some also planted hemp for weaving cloth. These products they bartered with one another, an old custom of the peasant serfs that continued for many years among the free peasants. Now that they were free, they also took their products to sell at the markets of the nearby towns of Isyum and Slavyansk.

All the peasants in the village cultivated, around their cottages, small vegetable gardens, as they had done before receiving their freedom. There they planted peas, beans, onions, garlic, dill, and parsley. Cherry and apple trees surrounding the cottages of Nikolskoye provided fruit for family consumption and for sale at the market.

Also, now that the landlord no longer had serfs, he leased out vegetable garden lots close to the river. Since it was not far from their cottage, Danil and Anna took the opportunity to lease a lot on the sunny side of the riverbank. There the soil was rich, and water from the river for watering their garden was close by. On the gently sloping hillside they planted melons, watermelons, and pumpkins. Further down, near the shore, they had a vegetable garden, where they grew a variety of vegetables: cabbage, cucumbers, carrots, and sweet peppers.

After the serfs became free peasants, the life in the village slowly underwent some changes. The Nikolsky Rural District had a small Office in the village and was in charge of government administrative business. Besides enforcing the government’s laws, recruiting for military service, and maintaining order in the village, now it was also collecting taxes from the peasants.

The State religion was Christian—Russian Orthodox⁶—and the church continued to function as a repository of all local civil registries of births, christenings, marriages, and deaths. All family contracts were legalized—for the government and for the community—in the church after they were consecrated before God, by being blessed by the Batyushka,⁷ as the Parson was referred to.

The Orthodox Church remained the center of social, spiritual, and community life in the village: all the peasants attended Sunday services; all christenings and marriages were celebrated there, and funeral services were performed there. The peasants also consulted both Batyushka and Matushka⁸ about such matters as what name to give their newborns, about the engagements of their daughters, or about any other matter of a personal nature.

The village church and the Parson were now in charge of the religious education of the peasant boys. They were taught to recite prayers as well as to learn the Old Church Slavonic alphabet, which would then enable them to practice rudimentary reading from the Bible and the New Testament. Attendance was not compulsory, and every father was free to decide whether or not his son should attend lessons and for how long he would send him there to learn.

However, not all changes that happened after the liberation of serfs produced the best results for everybody. After receiving their freedom and the strip of land, not all peasants in Nikolskoye prospered at the same pace. Some were not ambitious and were satisfied to provide only food for the family; some were just lazy and neglected their fields, resulting in bad crops; some got sick and couldn’t take care of their land; some had big families with small children and couldn’t produce enough to sell on the market. But the worst problem now was that the peasants had money to spend, and some of that money went into buying alcohol that before was not as easily accessible to serfs. Some spent all their money on vodka and samogon⁹ and had to sell their strip of land, becoming farmhands. Working for hire for the landlord and for the other peasants, they barely could provide for their families.

But Danil and Anna were ambitious; they worked hard and were among those peasants in Nikolskoye who were successful in their farming business. They didn’t have a big family and many children to feed. But most important, Danil kept himself sober, although he liked to have a glass of vodka on Sundays and holidays.

1.    As remembered by Antonina G. Berezhnaya Gladky (portions heard from her father, Gavriyl Danilovich Berezhnoy, and from her grandmother Anna Davidovna Berezhnaya).

2.    The River Torets is a tributary of the River Donets, which is a tributary of the River Don.

3.    Flat, narrow mounds of earth along the outer walls of the cottage providing support for wooden columns sustaining the roof.

4.    The names of the ancestors passed in the family by the word of mouth from one generation to another.

5.    Grandfather of Antonina G. Berezhnaya Gladky.

6.    After the Christian Church Schism of 1054, the Orthodox Church didn’t recognize the supreme authority of the Pope.

7.    Father, as commonly used to call a clergyman.

8.    Parson’s wife.

9.    Moonshine.

How Danil and Anna

Berezhnoy Lived

As Remembered by Antonina G. Gladky

Now that they were free and worked for themselves and not for the landlord, Danil and Anna, like most other peasants in Nikolskoye, worked diligently from sunrise to sundown. Danil’s family was growing.¹ In 1865, when their first son, Stepan, was about five years old, their second son, Gavriyl,² was born and was nicknamed Gavryusha. A few years later their daughter, Kateryna, was born. Danil’s old mother now looked after their three little children, as did most grandmothers in peasant families. When in her old age the grandmother became sick and frail, Danil and Anna took their children with them into the fields.

Danil knew farming well and was handy with all the maintenance chores, which he’d learned when he was a manor serf, and Anna was a thrifty, hard-working woman. They were able to pay a tollage for the field strip to the government and a lease for a lot on the riverbank to the landowner, from whom they also leased a horse.

They used every piece of land for what it could grow best and had enough vegetables, grain, and sunflower oil for the family, as well as feed for the horse and their poultry. This included the winter reserves. From the sale of vegetables at the markets in the neighboring towns of Isyum and Slavyansk, they saved money for other expenses. Soon they had enough to pay for a new thatched roof on the cottage and then enough to build a new barn. They added more chickens, ducks, and geese that they also sold at the market and started raising pigs.

Anna took good care of her khata—that’s what a peasant’s cottage is called in Ukrainian. As did many peasant women in the villages, every summer Anna painted the inside and outside walls of the cottage with whitewash, to make it look neat and tidy. She regularly cleaned the clay floor inside the cottage as well as the zavalinka outside by skillfully spreading with her hands a freshly made, soft clay mixture on the surfaces to make them level and even. Then she dipped her hands in a bucket of water and patiently smoothed the surfaces until they became neatly polished. In those days, the peasants considered a clean and tidy cottage a beautiful place to live.

The major feature inside Danil and Anna’s khata—and in most Ukrainian peasant cottages—was a large, hollow, multi-purpose brick construction that divided it into two rooms and took up a lot of space. On the kitchen side, a brick stove was built against this wall with the chimney leading into it. The stove had a cast-iron top with two round holes that were covered by three sizes of circular covers. This allowed fitting various-sized pots into them to be heated directly over the flame for faster cooking. On one side of the stove, there was a built-in oven with a metal door.

Next to the stove, stretching all the way to the cottage’s back wall, there was a big baking oven, called pyech, with its chimney incorporated into the hollow wall. It was heated with wood and was used primarily for baking bread.

In the other room, incorporated into the hollow brick wall, were two warm sleeping nooks. One place, called na-pyechy, or an over-the-oven nook, was located high over the baking oven and next to its chimney. It was a wide and roomy chamber with an opening so that one could climb up into it by stepping on a bench. It provided a large, warm place where all the children slept on a layer of soft hemp. For the elderly who had too hard a time climbing up to the over-the-oven nook, there was another warm place to sleep called a lezhanka, or a stove-couch. It was a low nook inserted into the hollow brick wall behind the kitchen stove and its chimney. In the second room there was also a large family bed, consisting of a low wooden platform upon which several people could sleep lying sideways or lengthways, facing all in one direction or in opposite directions.

In the fall, all the sleeping places were covered with a soft layer of hemp. The hemp was changed often, and when it was removed, a layer of straw was used in its place. During the long winters the used hemp was made into yarn and woven into linen cloth on a simple loom. Most of the peasants’ clothing—shirts, breeches, skirts, and aprons, as well as their towels—were made from this homespun linen cloth. However, Anna managed to purchase inexpensive cotton muslin with a small flower print for a blouse to wear to church on Sundays.

To cover themselves during the cold winter nights, each one used his winter coat, either a kozhuch made of sheepskin and worn woolly side in, or a quilted coat, both were also worn outdoors during the day. Later, when the family had some money to part with, a quilted blanket was purchased for the bed, and the loose straw was replaced by a straw mattress. The pillows were stuffed with either hemp or straw, because any feathers plucked from chickens or down plucked from geese was sold to make additional income for the family. Near the walls were several long, wide benches and a long trunk in which Anna kept linen towels and clean clothes. These were used for sleeping on during the hot summer nights.

Like all of their neighbors, Danil and Anna were not pretentious about their furniture, most of which had been passed down from father to son. They had only a few rustic functional pieces made from unfinished wood by the village carpenter. In the kitchen against the back wall stood a large, open cupboard where Anna kept pots and pans, kitchen utensils, and a few cups and bowls. She also stored on its shelves staples such as flower, grains, dry beans, dried peas, oil, and salt. Near the stove there was a small table where she prepared food and mixed bread dough for baking. In the kitchen stood also a low, round table, which Anna diligently scrubbed every week and where they had their meals, sitting on small, low benches. Above the table, in the corner, hung a small icon adorned with a linen towel, called a rushnik, and from the ceiling hung a little candleholder. Anna lit the candle only at dinnertime on Sundays and on holidays, as the candles were expensive.

Water was kept in a big wooden barrel standing near the outside entrance. Anna had to fetch water from a well that served many families. She hauled it in two buckets hung on the ends of a wooden yoke placed across her shoulders.

Usually the family ate the evening meal together when everyone had returned from work. There was only one individual utensil to use during the meal—a large, round, wooden spoon. There were no individual plates, bowls, knives, or forks. Anna would put a big, round loaf of dark, coarse, homemade bread in the center of the table and a long knife, and next to it a large bowl full of steaming-hot borshch.³

When the family sat down to eat, nobody would start eating until Danil said thanks to God for their daily bread. Then, each person would cut a thick slice of bread from the loaf, take a bite out of it and then scoop borshch from the bowl with the wooden spoon that could hold more than one mouthful. To keep the liquid from spilling onto the table, each person would carefully accompany the spoon with a slice of bread and hold it under the chin while sipping liquid and eating vegetables until the spoon was empty.

When everyone was finished eating borshch, Anna would place either kasha—a porridge made of any kind of cooked grains, millet, buckwheat, wheat, or oats—or boiled potatoes on the table, and they would eat it with a piece of salted lard or with a condiment of coarsely chopped onions golden-fried in sunflower oil.

In the winter, when they didn’t go to the fields, at midday they also had steaming-hot boiled potatoes with a piece of salted lard and sauerkraut, pickles, or pickled tomatoes. Or they had kasha served with a fried onion condiment; or later, when they had their own cow, kasha was served with milk and mashed pumpkin baked in the big oven. In the winter, when there was no fresh fruit or melons, Anna also baked large slices of sweet pumpkin in the oven. She roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and everybody kept enough of them in their pockets to snack on at any time. Poultry and eggs were reserved for the big holiday dinners and for sale.

Since Danil and Anna left home before dawn, there was no time to cook breakfast; everybody hurriedly ate leftovers from the previous evening’s meal. At midday in the spring, summer, and autumn, they ate in the fields where they worked, or in a hut in the middle of the melon field. The food was simple—a piece of coarse bread and a slice of lard brought from home with a cucumber, a tomato, or green onion picked from the garden. In season, they ate lots of melons, watermelons, cherries, and apples.

One of the most important, time-consuming chores for Anna, as for all peasant women, was preserving vegetables. This had to be done as soon as they were harvested. Each vegetable had to be preserved in its own special way and placed in an earth cellar dug deep into the ground and then covered with more earth.

For pickling in large wooden barrels, pounds and pounds of coarse-grained salt were purchased in town. Cucumbers were picked before they became yellow and full of mature seeds. These were carefully washed and placed in a barrel with fresh dill branches and cloves of garlic cut in half.

Green as well as red ripe tomatoes were pickled in separate barrels. A handful of garlic cloves were thrown between the layers of the green tomatoes, and only the red tomatoes had whole sweet red peppers placed here and there among them. Then the right amount of salt was mixed with warm water and poured into the barrels to cover up the cucumbers and tomatoes.

Cabbage and carrots for sauerkraut were coarsely cut with the big knife in even, thin slices and then placed into a large wooden trough, the same one that was used for laundry and bathing. When all the cabbage was cut, Anna would dampen the palms of her hands on a wet cloth and then place her hands on some salt in a deep bowl. Then she would scoop out a handful of cabbage and a few slices of carrots and rub them between her palms, making the salt adhere to the vegetables and then drop the mixture into a barrel. Bay leaves were sprinkled here and there. Divided by layers of cabbage several rings of sweet-and-sour apples, called Antonovka, were placed around the edge of the barrel—this made it easier to retrieve them. Water was not added when pickling cabbage, as it made enough of its own juice.

The pickled vegetables in the barrels were covered with a white linen cloth, over which was placed a loosely fitting wooden disk. On top of the disk, a carefully washed, heavy stone was placed. Each week the stone and the wooden disk were lifted, and white mold, which had formed during that time, was removed by collecting it in the cloth. The cloth, stone, and wooden disk were then washed thoroughly in a bucket of clean water and placed back in the barrel.

Potatoes were preserved in the cellar in wooden crates and were checked once each month in order to remove any sprouts that were beginning to grow. Spoiled ones were given to the pigs. Carrots were buried in a sandpit dug into the earthen floor; fresh cabbage and beets were carefully placed on wooden shelves built along the walls of the cellar.

Onions and garlic with their wilted leaves left on were dried in the shade. Then the dried leaves were woven into long braids, by which they were hung on the kitchen walls. Ears of dry corn, the husks of which had also been similarly braided, were hung in the attic. Pumpkins and bags of sunflower seeds were preserved inside the cottage anywhere they would fit, under benches, under the bed, or in the corners.

At that time, peasants felt they were living well if they had their own piece of land to cultivate and to work by themselves and could meet the basic needs of their families. This common Ukrainian peasant saying demonstrates their simple contentment:

Did you all have enough to eat?

Thank God!

Did you all have a warm place to stay?

Thank God!

Did you all have clothes to put on?

Thank God!

Are all in the family healthy?

Thank God!

What else one could wish for one’s family?

Thank God!

Like all peasants in that part of Russia, Danil and Anna spoke Ukrainian, but they also understood the Russian spoken by their barin and by their customers at the markets in the towns of Slavyansk and Isyum where they sold their produce.

When Danil was a young boy, as a son of the manor serf, he worked alongside his father at the landlord’s manor. From the other manor serfs Danil quickly learned how to count well enough to keep track of his farming and household needs and the skills needed to keep his farming prosperous.

As the years went by, keen-witted Danil and Anna listened to their customers’ requests for new kinds of produce. They planted some new vegetables that their sophisticated customers in the nearby towns were willing to pay good money for: summer squash, eggplants, hot red peppers, cauliflowers, green salad, and radishes. While Danil was in charge of the fieldwork, Anna took care of both vegetable gardens and melon-field, and they helped each other when needed.

Danil and Anna’s hard work paid off, and by the time their son, Stepan, and his wife worked beside them, they had prospered. Later, they bought two horses and a cow of good breeding that produced enough milk to make cottage cheese, sour cream, and butter for the family, as well as for sale at the market.

1.    As recounted by Antonina G. Berezhnaya Gladky, who heard it from her grandmother, Anna, and from her father, Gavriyl Danilovich Berezhnoy.

2.    Father of Antonina Gavriylovna Berezhnaya Gladky.

3.    Ukrainian vegetable soup made from potatoes, beans, carrots, beets, cabbage, tomatoes, and onions that were fried in sunflower oil and flavored with dill.

Gavryusha Learns a Trade

As Remembered by Antonina G. Gladky

Danil and Anna’s second son, Gavriyl, nicknamed Gavryusha, was a skinny boy with wavy, dark-brown hair and lively, inquisitive brown eyes.¹ Gavryusha showed absolutely no resemblance to his blond, broad-shouldered older brother, Stepan. Even as a young boy, Stepan was quick-witted as a good peasant and had the strength to work with his father in the fields. He knew how to handle the horses, when it was time to sow the fields, and when it was time to harvest the crops.

On the contrary, Gavryusha was of a very different nature; he liked to help at home with daily chores. He was very observant and curious, always asking for explanations regarding things he did not understand. For example, he wanted to know why, after rubbing the end of a match against the black side of a matchbox, the small ball at the end suddenly became a beautiful light. Nobody could explain this to him.

One day, he climbed into na-pyechy, or over-the-oven nook, where he slept at night and where nobody would disturb him. He sat on the soft, dry hemp padding, examined the matchbox from all sides, rolled the match between his fingers, rubbed it in the palm of his hand, then struck it resolutely against the rough side of the box and… Akh!

Wonder! The beautiful light flashed and illuminated the whole space. He moved the flame closer to the hemp and small, crackling flashes of light began to run all over the hemp. Then suddenly the crackling lights turned into flames.

Gavryusha got scared. He jumped down and ran to his mother, screaming, I set fire to the hemp! I set fire to the hemp!

Where?! Where?! asked his frightened mother.

"There—na-pyechy! There—na-pyechy!" He pointed the whole arm toward the house.

By the time they arrived with pails of water, the entire padding was on fire. They were lucky that the sides of the nook were made of brick, and they were able to extinguish the fire before it could spread to the cottage walls, which were made of wood covered with a mixture of clay and straw.

After the fire his father asked him, Why did you set the hemp on fire, Gavryusha?

I wanted to find out what fire was made of. But I couldn’t… replied Gavryusha with disappointment.

Danil concluded that, unlike his robust older son, Stepan, for whom farming was a natural choice for the future, his skinny younger son, Gavryusha, was not fit to work on the farm. He talked with his wife concerning Gavryusha’s future, and they decided that he didn’t have a peasant’s nature. He even played differently, not like other children in the village. Although, at that time, he was only seven years old, he was always busy making all kinds of small things. He liked to carve wood to make figures, and he loved to make cages from cane; he also used pieces of leather to make adornments for horse harnesses. But he didn’t care to go into the fields.

As a good father, Danil made up his mind to look in town for a reputable craftsman with whom he could place Gavryusha as an apprentice so he could learn a good trade.

One day, when their daughter, Kateryna, was sick, as happened often, Anna and Danil had to take her to the doctor in the nearby town of Slavyansk. They also took Gavryusha with them, just in case they found a master who would be willing to teach him a trade. In town, Danil visited a carpenter and a shoemaker. The carpenter told him that the boy was too young, but the shoemaker agreed to take him the next year when he would turn eight.

So, the next year Danil placed Gavryusha with the shoemaker to learn his trade. But Gavryusha had bad luck with the shoemaker, who was a drunkard. He used to send him to buy his vodka and, when he was drunk, he whacked and hit him for no reason; besides, he didn’t teach him anything. Gavryusha was not used to this kind of treatment and soon ran away from his master, and, making more than a dozen miles on foot, returned home. He resolutely told his father, I am not going back to the shoemaker!

While Danil was searching for another tradesman in town, he talked with the village Parson to ask him to accept his son for prayer lessons. To start, the Parson read to the boys from the Book of Psalms and from the Prayer Book, and the children learned to say the prayers by heart. After that, the children were taught the Old Church Slavonic alphabet because the Book of Psalms and the Prayer Book were both written in the Old Church Slavonic language. Gavryusha quickly learned the prayers, and it didn’t take him long to recognize letters and put them together to pronounce written words. Although he attended the class for a very short time, it was enough to give him the basics of reading and to enable him to learn later to read and write Russian.

Soon his father placed Gavryusha in Slavyansk as a boy-apprentice with the hatter. There Gavryusha slept on the worktable and was responsible for such chores as cleaning the shop, carrying wood, and watching the stove. When he had spare time, he watched the older apprentices sewing caps and the Master cutting out fabric. But the Master did not allow him to try any tasks of the trade.

You are too young, he told Gavryusha, Wait a year or two. For now, just watch and learn.

But Gavryusha’s hands were itching to start making something. So, without a word to anybody, he found a remnant and, in the evening, when nobody could see him, he cut out and sewed a cap for himself. The master didn’t like his disobedience and complained to Danil about it. But Danil had good common sense and understood that his son was eager and ready to learn a trade. He removed him from the hatter and found him another tradesman.

This time, he placed Gavryusha with the best men’s tailor in town, Master Gaydukov, who was very well known in Slavyansk. Danil told his son, Be obedient, keep both eyes open, and learn all the tricks of the trade. Tailoring is a profitable trade—nobody goes around naked—all people need clothes. If you learn the trade well, you will be your own master, and you will earn enough to provide for yourself and your family.

And this time Gavryusha was in luck. Gaydukov was not only an excellent Master tailor, he was also a good teacher and a very kind man. He liked Gavryusha right away because he was obedient and wanted to know everything about the trade. The questions he asked made sense, and most of all, he liked him because he was diligent and patient in his work and tried to make everything exactly as the Master showed him.

Gavryusha very much liked staying with Master Gaydukov, not only because he treated him well and always had an answer to his questions, but especially because he always taught him new, more complicated tasks and challenged him to do perfect work.

As was customary in those days, most boy-apprentices lived in the shop, usually slept on the shop table or on the bench, and had their meals of whatever the Master or his wife gave them. In exchange for all of that and for being taught a trade, boy-apprentices had the duty of performing certain chores for the Master in the shop and for his wife in the household. Each master would establish what kind of chores he wanted done.

Gavryusha slept on the tailor’s table with the pressing ham² serving as his pillow. He ate in the kitchen with the maid and the older apprentices. One of his chores was to get up early in the morning and start a charcoal burning in the big tailoring iron. In the winter, and during the still-cold weather in the fall and early spring, first he had to bring in wood from outside and start a fire in the shop stove. Then he would watch the stove during the day and add wood when needed. Also, in the morning, he had to bring a pail of water from the well to the kitchen and another to the shop. In the evening, he had to sweep the floor thoroughly and to collect all the pins and needles that had fallen there. Once a week, he had to wash the wooden floor in the shop.

During the day, he had to keep a supply of wet pressing cloths next to the pressing charcoal iron and sharpen the tailor’s chalk used to draft patterns onto fabric. He also had to thread all the hand-sewing needles with basting and sewing threads and remember to wax the buttonhole and button-sewing thread. Then he had to stick all the threaded needles neatly to one side of a big pincushion and stick all the pins to the other side. After the Master had finished cutting out the garment pieces, he had to collect all the remnants of fabric and make neat small rolls of them to be given to the customers for any future repairs.

Of course, he also had to run errands for the Master, notifying customers that their garments were ready for a first or second fitting. He also had to run errands for the Master’s wife, if she needed something right away from the store. And, he had to perform any other chore as the need arose. In between all his chores, he observed the work done by the apprentices and the Master—there was no time allowed for playing with other children.

Master Gaydukov and his wife treated Gavryusha well, and they required that their servants and the apprentices treat him the same way. All the apprentices had enough to eat every day, and for holidays all the apprentices and servants had a special dinner.

Master Gaydukov required all the apprentices to be clean and neatly dressed, especially on Sundays and holidays, when they all went to church. Every week one of the servants washed the apprentices’ clothes, but they had to iron them themselves after working in the tailor shop. For Christmas Gavryusha always received a present from his master: a pair of new shoes, or a pair of pants, a shirt, or a jacket, whatever he needed as he grew up.

Gavryusha stayed with Master Gaydukov for many years. When he was promoted to the status of apprentice, he was paid accordingly, and he continued to live with the Master. Along with the skills of the trade, he also learned from Master Gaydukov the Russian alphabet; the Master taught him to read and write all words pertaining to tailoring, as these were needed to make records of customers’ orders. Gavryusha also learned enough arithmetic to be able take accurate customer’s measurements, and not only write them down, but also calculate the fractions of inches needed for drafting the patterns to the customer’s size.

In time, he learned the trade well and became Master Gaydukov’s best senior apprentice. Now he knew how to tailor all kinds of outfits: suits, dress coats, tailcoats, half-seasonal and winter coats with quilted or fur lining; he even mastered the craft of cutting and sewing fur coats and fancy fur collars, as well as leather jackets and coats. And most important to his mastery of tailoring, he learned to calculate the fractions of measures and how to draft patterns for an entire garment directly onto the cloth with the precision of a skillful patternmaker, using only a yardstick and tailor’s chalk. The Master was very happy with his apprentice’s work and promoted him to master’s assistant, increasing his wages accordingly.

Gavryusha grew into a handsome young man with wavy, dark-brown hair and a slender build. He was always well dressed, as he could afford to make his own clothes. Having daily contact with wealthy customers who came into the tailor shop, he acquired the good manners of a town dweller and learned to speak Russian. On Sundays, in church, the young girls admired him, and Gavryusha thought it was time to think about marriage. He began to work harder, beyond his regular hours, whenever there was a need to finish some work for the customers; he saved some money and started to get acquainted with the girls.

While Gavryusha was learning his trade in town, his older brother Stepan got married. He remained to live with his parents together with his wife and five daughters, who were born one after another. Only the names of three of their daughters are known: one of them was Fevroniya, nicknamed Khavroshka, another was Alexandra, nicknamed Sasha, and the third was Domna, nicknamed Domochka.

Stepan took over farming in the fields before the time that he was called up for military service. Meanwhile, his parents continued to cultivate the vegetable garden plot and melon field. As an older son helping his parents with the cultivation of the land, and as breadwinner for his large family, Stepan was excused from military service. In time, Stepan’s daughters were able to help with the household chores, to look after the cow, pigs, and poultry, and were handy in the fields during the busy harvest time.

Gavryusha’s sister, Kateryna, once she married, went to live with her husband’s family. They were very poor, because the men in her husband’s family were drunkards and sold their strip of land. Therefore, they didn’t cultivate the land for themselves but were farmhands who worked for hire for the barin, as a landlord was called, and for other peasants.

Kateryna was sickly all her life and couldn’t do the work required in a peasant family. She had only one daughter, Khrystina, nicknamed Khrystya. Kateryna stayed in bed for long periods, and her daughter Khrystya, at a very early age had to start helping with household chores, garnering the hay and taking care of the few pigs and chickens they had. In her youth, Khrystya fell from a wagon while she was hauling hay. After her fall, she, too, was sick for a long time, and it left her barren. Danil and Anna helped their daughter, Kateryna, as much as they could, but because their son-in-law was a drunkard, they had to limit their help to foodstuff and to paying for doctors. If they gave her money, her husband spent it on samogon.³

1.    As recounted by Antonina G. Berezhnaya Gladky, who heard it from her father, Gavriyl Danilovich Berezhnoy, and from her grandmother Anna Berezhnaya.

2.    Ham-shaped form, padded and stuffed with sawdust, used in tailoring to give shape to fronts of wool garments by pressing with hot iron, steam, and clapping with a wood clapper.

3.    Moonshine.

Gavriyl Danilovich Berezhnoy

As Remembered by Antonina G. Gladky

In 1886, when Gavryusha turned twenty-one, he was called to undergo a physical examination by the military medical commission, which found him healthy and fit to serve in the military service. He was officially registered as Gavriyl Danilovich Berezhnoy and from his first day of military service was addressed by his military rank snurovshchik (rank for tailors and shoemakers) and last name, Berezhnoy. He was attached to the Fortieth Kolyvansky Infantry Regiment, where he was assigned to the military tailor’s unit. His skills were immediately recognized, and after a short period of training, he began tailoring the officers’ uniforms, greatcoats, and other special military outfits made of leather and fur.

In the military tailors’ unit, Gavriyl Danilovich had everyday contact with the officers as they came in the shop for fittings. By observing them he refined his manners, and his Russian became enriched with more sophisticated words and polished speech patterns.

For four years Gavriyl Danilovich served in the Imperial Army and, in 1890, returned to Slavyansk as a First Class Senior Rank Noncombatant snurovshchik of the Fortieth Kolyvansky Infantry Regiment.

Immediately upon his return, he went to visit his former Master Gaydukov, who right away offered him a job as a master tailor. Being the best tailor in town, Gaydukov had too many customers to handle on his own. The town was growing, and new customers had to wait a long time for their orders to be completed. Gavriyl Danilovich was very grateful to his former Master for the offer. But he told him, During my four years in the military service, I made up my mind, that when I return home, I would start to work for myself and look for a bride. I decided that it’s time for me to get married and to settle down.

Next, Gavriyl Danilovich visited his father and mother in the village of Nikolskoye. He told them that he