Bread lines could be seen everywhere during the famine. You had to wait in line for three days to get your particular allotment of bread. We would go to a so-called ‘gastronome’, which at that time was a commercial store where all of the provisions were sold at inflated prices. You could buy bread there, but you had to pay fifty rubles a loaf for it Sturgeon there sold for twenty rubles per kilogram, while sausage went for fifty rubles per kilogram. As soon as my brother and I received our wages, we headed for this store to buy food. We would generally get two kilograms of fish, a loaf of bread, and two gallons of ’sitro’ (a drink resembling ginger ale which came in different flavors). By the time we finished our shopping, our entire salary was gone.

My mother had many different ways of preparing the weeds I brought home. My father would take the bark from an oak or a linden tree, grind it to a pulp with a mor¬tar, and from this mixture my mother would make patties which we ate in addition to the other foodstuffs. My brother and I were unable to take any food with us on our way to work. Later in the day my mother would send our younger sisters, Vera and Marusia, with some bread for us. By the time the little girls arrived at the plant, however, there was hardly any bread left—all the corners were bitten off and the fill¬ing was licked off. I would always tell Marusia, “Here, eat it.” And she would grab the remnants of the bread and gulp them down gladly.

The Soviet government told officials on the oblast and raion levels that they must never write on a death certificate that someone had died of starvation. Since the authorities had to account for every single death, even the people who died on the roads and streets, they would make up all sorts of illnesses—intestinal disorders, heart attacks—as causes of death.

Many people who had fled from their villages died of starvation before ever reach¬ing the Donbas. Dead villagers lay on the roads, along the roads and paths. There were more bodies than people to move them. There was hardly a yard that didn’t have bodies on it. The stench was overwhelming.

In 1934 the famine was over, although we still used ration cards. The harvest of 1933, which I helped plant, was a very good one. Bread began to be sold. Commer¬cial stores opened up everywhere. The people realized that the famine had been caused by Moscow.

Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much.
You mentioned in your statement a law entitled—something to do with inviolability of socialist property—a law in 1932. Can you explain what that law was.
Mr. KEIS: On August 7, 1932, this ‘Law of the Ear of Grain’ came out which made the taking of a piece of produce, such as a stalk of wheat or corn from a collective farm, a crime against socialism and punishable by ten years. This law was called ‘Death for Ear of Wheat’. This law included not only the taking of an ear of wheat, but also anything that you could manage to pick up in a field, such as some beets, a potato, anything at all My friend had four children, but nothing to feed them with. He dug up a few beets at the collective farm, and for this particular crime he spent seven years in Siberia. One lady had a little child, and she went to the field to gather ears of wheat, and for this she was caught and sent to prison for seven years. Trials for offenders of this law occurred almost daily and people received very severe sentences.
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much.