Our Others. Olesya Yaremchuk

      © Sergiy Polezhaka

      APPLES FROM A FORGOTTEN GARDEN

      “It was like this: When the Czech boys were taken off to the war, they enlisted in General Ludvik Svoboda’s army corps,” Yosyp Mykhalchyn, from the village of Hrushvytsia Persha just outside Rivne, explains loudly and expressively. “The Czechs saw right away what a collective farm meant and what real Soviets were all about. And one of the Czechs told the commander, ‘We want to leave the Volyn colonies and go back to our country. We’ll liberate Prague, just let us go back.’”

      The Prague Offensive, which ended on May 11, 1945, became the Red Army’s final offensive operation in Europe during World War II. During the operation the Soviets took over 850,000 German soldiers and officers captive, as well as thirty-five generals. The Volyn Czechs too participated actively in the liberation of Prague. General Svoboda had no choice but to honor his promise and allow the colonists to return home.

      The Czechs waited for permission for over a year and finally, on July 10, 1946 in Moscow, signed a document with a never-ending title: “A Treaty Between the Government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Right of the Option for and the Reciprocal Resettlement of Citizens of the Czech and Slovak Nationalities Residing in the USSR on the Territory of the Former Volhynian Governorate and the Citizens of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian Nationalities Residing on the Territory of the CSR.”

      That’s how almost forty thousand Czechs who had settled in Volyn in the 1860s were granted the right to leave Ukraine. And the majority of them took advantage of this right. They had fared rather well in the Ukrainians lands: Dozens of years of labor had borne good fruit. The Czech households here were the wealthiest, their houses were the best built, and there was no shortage of either Czech churches or breweries. But this life of theirs proved incompatible with the Soviet order.

      “It’s hard to part with where we were born, with the place where we and our parents toiled to secure a better future for our children,” Vladimir Šrek, a Czech, said at a mass at the local Czech church in 1947. “Everything here was made by our hands, moistened by our sweat. We thought that all of it would belong to us until the end of time. But now we’re leaving Volyn with satchels over our shoulders. Almost penniless, we’re leaving everything behind. Though did our parents come to Volyn with greater wealth than that with which we’re leaving? The fruits of our labor will remain here.”

      “Who of us hasn’t known a Czech we happily spent time with and talked to? We’ll miss them when they leave,” the Orthodox priest added.

      After the sermon, the congregation, as did the priest, began to cry.

      Rivers of Milk

      “Jozef Gavliček, 1932. There should be a plaque here somewhere,” Yosyp Mykhalchyn repeats, making his way through the overgrown shrubbery. “Here, alongside the road, is where our first house stood. And over there,” he waves his hand in the direction of a thicket, “all the houses were Czech. And further that way Czechs, and in this direction Czechs—all in all, there were twelve hundred Czechs living in this area. Some of them got married here, so they stayed. Not so long ago, we buried Karolina, a Czech, and Raček, another Czech, stayed too. But all of them have died already.”

      “There was a road right here. Oh my, everything’s so overgrown now. It’s good that there’s a path at least,” he sighs, vigorously making his way through the bushes.

      Yosyp’s family moved here from Eastern Slovakia to take up the place of those same Czech colonists who left after World War II.

      “When we arrived, all you could see was sky and nothing else. I was seven years old then, I remember. The women were raising their hands to the heavens in lament. It was only later that we moved into houses. Ours was that Gavliček’s: That’s what was written on the cement foundation. This here was our plot of land,” he says, motioning at a vast field. “Work it to your heart’s content.”

      Before that, back in Slovakia, Yosyp’s father had heard the government calls: “Dear brothers and sisters! We have a great idea and goal—the unification of the entire Russian nation so that it no longer suffer either social or national oppression. The Soviet socialist order and system are the highest form of democracy in the whole world. The working people have taken power into their own hands and are performing miracles under the guidance of the Communist Party.”

      Leaflets under the heading “If You’re Russian, You Belong to Russia” and bearing the above text, which was studded with grammatical errors and haphazardly adapted to the local language, appeared in the villages of Eastern Slovakian in February 1946. The Soviet authorities were trying to motivate the local Slovaks to move to Volyn. They were needed to fill the demographic void that had opened up after the Czechs’ departure.

      “The propaganda was brazen,” narrates Yosyp. “No one could’ve even suspected that such blatant lies could be generated at such a high government level. The Soviet emissaries painted a picture of rivers of milk flowing here.”

      The government of the USSR promised to quickly and conveniently move not just the Slovaks to Ukraine, but also their cattle, furniture, and farming equipment. They guaranteed the following housing plan: A family sells its house in Slovakia or gives it over to the Czechoslovak government and receives an “assessment certificate” in return—namely, a confirmation of the property’s approximate value. At the new location, they then buy a house, either for “real money” or by trading in their assessment certificate. Whatever the specifics, the propagandists assured the people that the living conditions would be wonderful, since they would be leaving behind spacious, well-built brick homes. And if on top of it they were being offered large plots of fertile soil and an opportunity to take part in the building of a perfect society, who could say no to all that? If it wasn’t to their liking, the Slovaks were reassured, they’d be allowed to return within two years without any problems.

      Mikula Mihalčin—the father of Yosyp, or little Yošek, as he was called back then—listened to his fill of propaganda and grew fixated on the idea of moving “to Rusko,” that is, to Volyn. He became one of approximately twelve thousand optants—people who elected to change their citizenship on the basis of the treaty between the two countries.

      “Our people signed up. Why wouldn’t they? They described such a paradise. They were supposed to provide everything—the farmland, the house, the horses,” says Yosyp.

      From his native village of Chmel’ov just outside Bardejov, one third of the population left.

      “Trains, wagons, farewells, tears,” he recalls. “The journey was long, almost a whole week! Because there were all kinds of problems with the trains. What’s more, we rode in cattle cars because there were no passenger trains. We slept in them too. And just imagine, we had to eat and cook and keep warm all in those same cattle cars. Each family had one car. We had to bring grain to plant and chickens to raise with us. And in another car, there was the cattle. People took all kinds of poultry, whatever they had. It was just the Czechs who traveled with nothing, only the sacks on their backs.”

      The Slovaks were promised to be delivered to their destination quickly. But due to the poor coordination between Soviet functionaries in both countries, the trains of resettlers would spend several days at a time sitting at intermediate stations or on sidetracks. The journey could stretch out into a week, sometimes two. Yet the travelers had only brought a few days’ worth of food for their cattle. The situation was difficult. At the final stations the optants often had to find trucks to take them to their villages themselves, even though the Soviet Union had promised transportation all the way to their new homes. Sometimes the search for a carriage