Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Twelve-year-old Nyl Chorny and his father Tato have just returned from inspecting their wheat field when they see hundreds of uniformed young people, part of the Young Communist League, marching into their village of Felivka, near Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine. Also marching are the Young Pioneers with their red ties, and adult marchers in city clothes. 

When Nyl and his father reach their house, he sees his nine-year-old brother Slavko and eleven-year-old sister Yulia along with his mother seated at their kitchen table. With them are two visitors from Canada, George White and his daughter Alice. They have come to assist with Stalin's "five-year-plan", to modernize the Soviet Union. But instead of helping people like Nyl's family, they are taking away their farms and forcing them onto one large collective farm called the kolkhoz. Now Comrade White and his daughter Alice are taking an inventory of everything in their house including "the decades-old pysanky - colorful hand-decorated eggs". Alice is disturbed at the presence of the icons on the walls and the prayer corner and advises Nyl's family to remove them or at least hide them. Comrade White, sounding like the lead shock worker, Tupolev, tries to convince Nyl's father to join the kolkhoz, the farming collective. He tells Tato they will give him tractors and modern equipment for farming, and that they will be able to grow more grain and be better off. When Tato refuses, Comrade White calls him a traitor and calls the farmers who won't join, kulaks. 

Everyone is called to the village square where they see many soldiers and a tractor being driven into the square. Tupolev tells them that the Soviet Union is the only country in the world that manufactures tractors, but Nyl is skeptical when he notices English letters on the tractor. When Tupolev's speech is interrupted by the ringing of the church bells, he incites the crowd to murder Father Ivan and his wife and tear down the church. Nyl and his family along with the villagers watch in horror at the brutal murders and their church being destroyed by a frenzied mob. Comrade Tupolev doesn't allow the villagers to have a funeral for the priest and his wife, however Nyl's mother leads them in singing Vichnay Pamyat, an ancient chant sung for funerals.

 

The violence continues with the murder of Nyl's Uncle Illya outside his own home by Comrade Chort. A shock worker enters the house telling them that Illya's wife and baby daughter, Auntie Pawlina and Tanya, must leave the house immediately. He states that Comrade Chorny was killed because he resisted arrest for being a kulak. He also  begins emptying the house of all the Chorny's belongings. The shock workers destroy the compilation of old folk songs the Chorny's were collecting. 

When Nyl returns to his own home, across the street, he finds their house too has been looted; the bowl of pysanky destroyed, their icons missing along with their altar. In its place is a Soviet flag, a framed portrait of Stalin and miniature toy tractors. Nyl's sister Yulia volunteers to bring home the atheist altar she made at school, something that shocks Nyl. Nyl's family decides to move their hidden stores of grain in the hopes they can save some for themselves. That night Comrade Chort and his wife Yelena move into Uncle Illya's home.

A few days later, Tato tells his family they need to escape but Nyl's mother believes there is more danger in leaving. Auntie Pawlina suggests they go to Polish Ukraine, to Ternopil where she has cousins.  

Then one day after school, everyone is ordered to be at the meeting hall in the village council building, both villagers and the kolkhozniks. After Tupolev reads a speech by Stalin stating that steeling property and killing people was not part of the plan, the villagers demand the return of their livestock and property. Led by the women, they raid the kolkhoz to retrieve their stolen property. Comrade Berkovich tells the villagers that the government wants to send in troops to settle down the village. To avoid this, he suggests they need to show that they are working together. He encourages people to farm their land this summer. so there will be a good harvest.

The summer of 1930, Nyl and his father plant fields of corn, millet and wheat and harvest a bumper crop. Tupolev's estimate of wheat they will be paid for leads Nyl's family to once again debate whether to stay in Felivka or leave.

As it turns out, Stalin betrays the people of the Soviet Ukraine including Nyl's family. After a harvest supper and dance celebrating the bumper crop, at the invitation of Tupolev and hosted in the kolkhoz, the landowners are tricked into meeting in the village council room. While they are locked in the building, the military arrives and steal the villager's entire harvest including their stored grain and their vegetables and potatoes. 

Faced with a winter of starvation, Nyl and Slavko decide to travel to the Kharkiv tractor factory seeking work. After working there they learn that the tractor factory won't be functioning for at least a year and return home. Their family decides that Aunt Pawlina and Tanya will travel to Ternopil with the money they have saved. Meanwhile Yulia decides to abandon her family and move to the kolkhoz, against her family's wishes.

In the spring of 1931, after the death of Tato, Nyls, Slavko and their mother decide to plan to leave for Ternopil. During the summer, they forage and save, storing  much food for their journey. However, their plans are thwarted by Comrade Chort who has their food confiscated and their mother jailed. After being released from jail, Nyl's mother is never the same again.  The following winter is spent hungry and then Nyls' mother is murdered by Chort in the spring of 1932. Nyls now realizes he and Slavko must leave Felivka if they are to have any chance of survival. Somehow they must make the journey to Ternopil to meet up with Aunt Pawlina and Tanya. But a chance meeting with Alice, changes everything for Nyls.

 

Discussion

 

Winterkill is a timely novel that explores the Holodomor,famine of 1932-33, a man-made catastrophe orchestrated by Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union in the 1930's.  In Ukrainian, holodomor translates to "death by hunger". The main victims of the holodomor were Ukrainian farmers and rural villagers. Stalin, fearful of the growing Ukrainian culture in Soviet Ukraine began to systematically murder Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders and those who supported previous Ukrainian cultural initiatives as well as the Ukrainian peasant class. As part of Stalin's Five Year Plan to collectivize agriculture, Ukrainian farmers were forced to give up their small farms, their livestock and their grain harvest. Any resistance was met with brutality, murder and forced deportation. Those who resisted were labelled kulaks and punished with deportation or simply murdered. Stalin instituted strict grain quotas that could not be met with the dissolution of the smaller farms; his collectivization of farms was a failure. When villages could not meet their quotas, the Soviet Red Army prevented people from leaving to find food and many starved to death.

 

In Winterkill, the story opens with the residents of Felivka being pressured to join the collective farms called kolkhoz, by giving up their farms and their land as well as their livestock. To effect this change, "shock workers" went from house to house inventorying everything possession, including foodstuffs and livestock. One of the workers was Alice White and her father.

 

Skrypuch incorporates many historic events known to have occurred in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, including the murder of Orthodox priests and the complete destruction of churches and family altars, the labelling of Ukrainian farmers unwilling to join the kolkhoz as "kulaks" , a demeaning term that meant "rich peasants", who were then deported or murdered, and had their property taken from them. the stealing of almost every scrap of food produced by the farmers including their own vegetable gardens, and the murder/deportation of those who resisted. Skrypuch wants her readers to know the reality of the Holodomor, which was not recognized as a genocide until 1953, based on the conditions set out by Raphael Lemkin, an international criminal law expert.

As events play out in the novel, eventually Nyls and his brother Slavko are left to fend for themselves and they realize they must flee if they are to survive. However, Slavko decides to stay at the factory while Nyls is determined to escape to what he hopes will be the chance at a better life. With the help of Alice, who has come to understand that they too were duped by Stalin, they encounter a Canadian journalist named Rhea, who advises them to escape to Russia.

Several characters in the novel are based on either real people or from the testimony of people who lived through the Holodomor. Rhea is based on Rhea Clyman, a Polish- Canadian journalist who was reporting on the Soviet reforms in the late 1920's. She soon became disillusioned with what she saw. Her travels by car in 1932 with two other women, through what she called the "Famine-Lands", from Moscow to Kharkiv revealed abandoned villages, starving people, and empty stores. Rhea was one of the first to report on the famine and she managed to publish forty-four feature articles in the Toronto Telegram from 1932 to 1933. Rhea also reported on the large number of "kulaks" who had been deported and were working as slave labour in the Soviet Union. Skrypuch has dedicated Winterkill to Rhea Clyman and her determined effort to get the truth out about what was happening in Soviet Ukraine.

The character, Alice White is based on a real person, Alice Mertzka whom Rhea and her companions met in Kharkiv. Alice explained that she was from Toronto and that she and her father who had been employed at Massey Harris in Canada, had come to work at the tractor plant in Kharkiv. However, they too found themselves starving. In Winterkill, Alice is confronted by Nyls who explains to her what is really happening and how her simple "inventory" resulted in the destruction of his own family. This leads Alice White to attempt to make amends by helping Nyls to escape the famine.

The main character and narrator, Nyls is based on Skrypuch's interviews with survivors and her research of survivor accounts of the Holodomor. Nyl's is an intelligent, thoughtful boy who witnesses the complete destruction of everything he has known: his village and his way of life, as well as the betrayal of his family by his sister and the loss of his beloved parents. Through his eyes, young readers come to experience this loss and hopefully learn more about this historic genocide.

Winterkill is well-written but does contain a some violence including brief descriptions of brutal murders and starvation. For that reason it is recommended for older readers aged 12 and up. Skrypuch  has provided an Author's Note at the back as well as a map of Soviet Ukraine and the loss of population as a result of the Holodomor genocide. Young readers are to be encouraged to explore this topic further. Another excellent offering by this well known, award-winning Canadian author, timely, in light of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Book Details:

Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
New York: Scholastic Inc.     2022
266 pp.