People were strictly forbidden to glean for kernels of grain left in the fields after the harvest This was considered stealing state property, and those caught doing it were subject to heavy punishment

Left without bread, the villagers at first subsisted on the remnants of garden vegetables. Then they ate the bark off the trees or sunflower stems, which they cut into tiny pieces, or they ate corncobs. Those who lived near a pond or a stream ate whatever they could catch. All dogs and cats were eaten, and the villages fell silent, doomed to extinction from hunger.

Those who survived the spring of 1933 did so by subsisting on broth made from net¬tles, dandelions or sorrel mixed with pigweed. They looked for such food everywhere, and those who lacked the strength to do so died quietly in their houses. Themselves starving, the villagers had nothing to bring to town.

What little food there was in urban markets could no longer be purchased for money. People had to barter for it, trading an article of clothing, shoes, a bucket, a sewing machine or some other such thing.

In mid-winter huge stores appeared called torgsins (acronym for torgovlia s ino-strantsami, i.e., trade with foreigners). These stores had mountains of all kinds of bread, noodles, sugar, butter, bacon, ham, smoked geese, and other things. But it could be had only in exchange for precious metals or special certificates sent from abroad by persons having relatives in Ukraine. Very few people had any precious me¬tals, and then only in small amounts, because the state had requisitioned all gold and silver in the 1920s. Emaciated people walked by the torgsins. Later the police forbade hungry villagers from entering regions where the torgsins were located, but as spring approached more and more villagers came to town nonetheless.

In March the state opened the commercial bread stores, which sold bread to per¬sons without ration cards, but only one kilogram per day and at high prices. Bread cost 70 kopecks (35 cents) per kilogram if obtained with a ration card, while the com¬mercial bread cost 3 1/2 rubles ($1.75) per kilogram. Despite the fact that workers only earned 60 to 200 rubles ($30 to $100) per month and thus the bread was very cost¬ly, incredibly long lines would form each evening of people who wanted to make sure they could purchase bread the next morning. Police broke up the lines several times each night, but the people still waited.

Starving villagers who had managed to reach the village would wait in the lines. Many had hoped to take a train, but the trains were reserved for those with internal passports (issued in December 1932), and such passports were not issued to villagers or for those who had documents proving they were undertaking a work-related trip. Unable to take trains, only those villagers who lived nearby were able to reach the city. With the approach of warm weather, more and more came. Often an emaciated woman would bring her small children to the steps of some apartment building or es¬tablishment and order them to stay there ‘until she could buy bread’, hoping that some¬one might rescue them from the certain death they would surely have faced in their na¬tive village. Sometimes such children would be picked up by the police, who took them to orphanages, and sometimes the children would leave to look for their mother. Many such children went to railroad stations to beg; their bodies covered with sores and their puny arms, with which they swatted away the flies, gave mute testimony to their deteriorating condition.