😉 Hello dear readers! Village stories are memories of a small village called Shcheglovka, which has long disappeared from the face of the earth. About some of the cases that occurred in this village in the post-war years.
Scheglov rebels
The small village of Shcheglovka was surrounded on all sides by wheat, barley and beet fields. It was not close to the village where the school was located, but after the war many children went there from Shcheglovka – more than from other villages. And that’s why.
In the 1930s, residents of Shcheglovka staged an anti-Soviet riot. Three peasants did not want to give their cows to the collective farm. They were declared fists, and a show trial was staged over them. In the central village, where the trial was held, came representatives of the authorities from the region. Organized a demonstration meeting in the village council.
A large crowd came from Shcheglovka, armed with truncheons and sawn-off shotguns, and this court was dispersed. There were killed and wounded. The people’s anger was quickly pacified, the rioters, along with their families, were sent into exile.
Not far from my parents’ house lives an old woman, Evdokia Mikhailovna, who was born in exile in the North. Her parents were also involved in that senseless, doomed village riot.
In those days, young men from such unreliable families were not drafted into the army. For this reason, many Shcheglov men stayed at home during the war. They did not die or become disabled. Therefore, there were many children in the village.
The Compliant Forester
Front-line soldier Ilya returned home. The war was over, but the famine continued. They did not eat enough bread, and only the family of this front-line soldier for some reason began to live satisfyingly. Their daughter Ninka always walked on the street with a slice of bread, sometimes spread with butter, then curd or sour cream.
Other hungry children watched and swallowed saliva, at home they did not even eat enough potatoes. They asked Ninka for bread – she endured it secretly so that her mother would not find out. The neighbors wondered: where did such satiety come from in that family?
And then people noticed that women were going to that hut – not local and not empty-handed, but with bundles. Ilya was not engaged in any craft, he himself was illiterate. How could he be useful to them?
The secret was soon revealed. Women from the neighboring village of Banishche, many of whom were widows, went to the nearby grove for firewood in cold weather. Ilya, with a holster on his belt, in military uniform, also walked around these little woods every day.
He will approach an unfortunate woman laden with brushwood, or even with a felled birch or aspen tree, introduce himself as a forester, take out a pencil with a notebook. He pretends that he writes down the name (and he himself did not know how to read or write) in order to determine the punishment for damage.
The times were harsh. For state-owned trees and even dry branches, they could be sent to where the Shcheglov rebels had previously been sent. The unfortunate ones threw themselves at their feet, asked to be sorry: there was nothing to drown, the children were freezing. Ilya, “taking pity,” yielded and agreed not to report the felling to the authorities for a fee.
The widows gave the last, but then they could safely go for firewood – they paid off. Of course, all this was revealed, rumors about the compliant “forester” spread throughout the villages.
Apple
Evdokia Mikhailovna also recalled how, as a girl, running past the garden of a strong owner, who was not in the war, could not resist, plucked an apple that hung on this side of the fence. There were few apple orchards then, because a tax was due for each apple tree.
The girl plucked an apple, and the formidable owner was right there. I caught the “thief” and tied it to an apple tree, wrapping it twice with a rope. I tied a knot behind my back, on the opposite side of the apple tree, to make it safer.
The children who saw this ran to the girl’s mother, they told her everything. She came running. In anger, she tore off the rope and whipped it both the owner and his dog, which rushed at her.
Such were the customs in the central Russian village of Scheglovka. There is no village now. Its inhabitants dispersed, moved closer to the school and the store.
Friends, if you liked Village Stories, please share on social networks! 😉 Check back for new stories!