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t is raining and the uneven roads have been leveled by puddles of all sizes hiding the deep potholes. Cars driving like motor boats at sea sent the spray ten feet in the air drenching other cars within range. Paedestrians cowered well back.Drs. Pasechnik and Anna Yakubova drove Victor and me into the country to visit her mother Maria Borisko
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who lives alone in a cottage on a small holding. The wheat and rye is growing in fields so vast that they disappear over the horizon. Then the road passed through magnificent pine and birch forests, the roadside lined with acacia trees. Victor says that the scenery is not unlike the prairies of Minnesota. A stretch of wild purple lupines appeared. Dr. Pasechnik told us that radiation zone two is on the right and radiation zone three is on the left.
The village of Vedeltsi, birthplace of Maria Borisko once stood a mile away on the right and was burned out of existence by the Germans in 1943. In a flat empty field on the right had been another village bulldozed out of existence after 1986 because it was a radiation hot spot. We are twenty miles from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
We turned left down a small road to the village of Pakul--which means village of rest. This was the resting place for the hordes invading Europe in the middle ages.
This place is real. Survival depends not on tap water from somewhere or packaged food from a supermarket, but crystal clear water hauled out of a well delivered by a bucket on a chain, animals which are nurtured twice daily, vegetables planted in spring, harvested bottled and stored, pine trees are logged for fuel, vodka is distilled for local currency. To not work is not to eat.
We were greeted by the bent over figure of Maria Borisko her head covered in a the traditional head scarf, her smiling lined face tanned by all the weather. Soon we were talking about the land. The soil is good but it has been ruined by feritlisers and chemicals. Now the swamps are being drained to provide more land but the result is the ecology being destroyed. Where once Ukraine was famous for its wild life, its ducks, geese and singing birds, it is now silent. If there are no insects, there are no birds. No swamps, no life, just silence. The bees are dying and the potatoes are heavily infested with Colorado beetles. The fields are too large to pick off the beetles by hand. Madame Borisko is so close to the soil that she understands the land -- she hears its cries.
In 1929 Madame Borisko lived in the next village, Vediltsi, five miles away. Stalinisation decreed that there should no private property so the Borisko family was ejected from their farmhouse.
On the 3rd May 1943, the village was burned down and 503 men were massacred. German soldiers would not enter the forests or houses for fear of the partisans so towers were erected around villages and the slightest movement was shot at. Ejected by Stalin, her mother and sister were burned alive in their home by Hitler, then Chernobyl. Madame Borisko described her village of rest as the most horrific area in Ukraine. I met Madame Borisko in April and December 1996. She has every justification to be filled with hatred and anger, yet she is always courteous, warm and kind.
Present day politics were discussed. Ukraine would not object to being part of NATO, but Russia objects because Ukraine is a buffer zone for Russian defence. There is more fear in Ukraine of Russian domination than of NATO aggression. There are elements in the high levels of the Russian Government who consider Ukraine as a part of Russia especially after 300 years of occupation. It is hoped that NATO will guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty and boundaries and recently Russia has agreed to the present Ukrainian boundaries and confirmed that the Crimea is Ukrainian, but there is difficulty over Sevastopol which the Russians regard as theirs because it was once Soviet, now Russian naval base. The difficulty has been resolved with a 20 year lease of the naval base to Russia.
Because of its geopolitical position it is necessary for Ukraine to be neutral. Further problems may arise because Rumania is claiming a Ukrainian island in the Black Sea where natural gas has been discovered. Neighbours have envied the wealth of Ukraine for a thousand years. Madame Borisko's husband died 5th August 1995. He was a war hero and genuine and thinking Communist. He shared his produce and was honest in his work. He became head of the Pakul collective farm for five years. She brought out his medals--the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of Labour, and many war medals.
The essence of the tragedy of Ukraine was that anyone who owned anything was destroyed by Stalin with the result that the competent and able were eradicated.
Kurkuls were private property owners and were sent to the taiga in Siberia--the endless forests. Madame Borisko's father was sent there for 25 years. The Vediltsi farm that was taken away by the Government years before was compensated in 1991 when the Borisko's received the equivalent of $30--hardly enough to buy a pair of shoes. To even think of opposing Stalin would result in being collected at night by the Chornyj Voron (black crow) which was a police car, and never be seen again. Starving children would be shot if they were caught picking up the gleanings. Some may now live in big new homes and eat in restaurants, but their wealth is often dishonest and the result of corruption.
Under the Czar, it was not necessary to import food. Up to 1965 the small village of Pakul exported 800 tons of wheat and many tons of vegetables, now there is barely sufficient. All these horrors explain the present poverty of Ukraine. There is a Polish proverb -- under socialism man exploits man; under capitalism the opposite is true.
This time, Madame Borisko said, if we Ukrainians don't get it right, then no one will do it for us. This nation still has the people, but has it the leaders?
The round table was laid and the most memorable and unbeatable meal was served. Borscht cooked in the wood oven, radish salad and hard boiled eggs with herbs, beef marinated in milk and smoked, spring onions and gherkins, potatoes baked in a black pig iron pot followed by bliny which are folded crepes filled with cottage cheese covered in cream, preserved whole apples and pirozhki, which is a dough filled with pear conserve. All with fruit compote, beer and toasts of vodka.
Almost everything was the produce of within 100 yards of the table by one bent over but undefeated elderly woman.
So ended our day of rest in the village of rest.
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