Editorial comment: “We had to go our separate ways when I was seven. I will try to give you an account of the road taken without you — to recall some of the events and the people who walked that road with me...” writes Anna Mirjam Kaber in her vivid memoir of her family’s deportation to Siberia in June 1941. Her account is given more poignancy in that it is addressed as a letter to her missing father, the Estonian industrialist Joakim Puhk, arrested by the Soviet authorities in 1940. Anna Mirjam Kaber was recently awarded the Red Cross of Estonia for her work on behalf of the victims of repression.
The public silence around the “Siberian odyssey” has only been broken in Estonia since 1991 and details are only now becoming known to the world-wide Estonian community. The editors would welcome readers’ comments on this series, by e mail if you wish: eestielu@sympatico.ca
The city of Molotovsk (now Nolinsk) was 10 km. away from us. Mother managed to get some work from a knitting collective there. You could do this work at home. Here there were quotas as well, you had to knit and assemble five sweaters a month, and if you could fill the quota you were guaranteed food rations: 5.3 kg of flour and 5.3 kg potatoes a month.
I learned how to knit. They did not weigh the sweaters; they were measured. We began to knit very loosely, wet down the knitted pieces and stretch them as far as they would go. Thus we were able to fill the quota. Our landlady also taught me how to spin. When I had some time left over from the knitting, I could spin tow-yarn for her. I didn’t mind doing this for a change. They were unfamiliar with the spinning wheel.
Advertisement / Reklaam
Advertisement / Reklaam
You twisted the spun yarn by hand onto a rotating wooden spool. It was apparent that the landlady was pleased with my work, because she paid for it with a potato now and then. There was a market in Molotovsk, where the Estonians traded their clothes and other things for food. In spite of all this, we were eventually faced with starvation. Sooner or later it hit you — it depended on how much you had brought with you from Estonia. The winters were especially hard — long, cold and snowy. By spring the snowdrifts came up to the eaves. Spring always came as a saviour. As soon as the snow melted, something edible would sprout. First came the field horsetail, then the nettle, and then the new shoots of the spruce and fir trees. There were enough of those for all, and there was no problem in getting them. As spring turned to summer, the number of edible things increased. The children ate all kinds of carrot-like plants, and chives grew wild in the marsh. In the summer strawberries could be found in the woods, and in the fall — mushrooms. Florets of sorrel and clover were valued the most. They were dried and ground, and added to flour. The sorrel made the food bitter and gray in colour, but added to the bulk of the food. When the wheat started to ripen, we sneaked into the field and squeezed grains out of the ears of wheat. This constituted theft, and if you were caught, things could go very badly for you. Stealing peas was a crime of the same magnitude. Peas were planted as far as possible from the village. An armed man guarded the plot and the paths leading up to it. Stealing peas from the plot was a risky business, but we managed to bring it off a couple of times. It was much safer to get peas when they were hauled from the plot to the threshing machine just behind the village. We would lie in ambush for the peas sufficiently far from the village. When the load was hauled past, you had to run to it from your hiding-place, snatch the stalks of peas, and run like mad.
Advertisement / Reklaam
Advertisement / Reklaam
I didn’t go by myself on such food-stealing expeditions, but I didn’t go with Estonian children either. There was nothing I could learn from them about such expeditions. I chummed around with many a Russian child, and went with them. There was a shortage of food all around, and the local people were starving, too. Horses that had died were consumed as well. One day in early spring, when I was strolling near the willow grove by the river, I saw a big fish — a pike — stranded in the water that had formed on top of the ice near the shore. It could still make feeble movements. I took my jacket off, and after a little while I had caught it in the jacket. When I arrived home with my magnificent catch, I was told that I had committed a great crime (theft). All the fish in the river were the property of the state. You were allowed to fish, but you had to turn what you caught over to the collective farm office. Otherwise you could end up with a jail sentence. Since only one other person — our landlady, who had also explained the local laws to us, was aware of the fish theft — we ate the fish. Now we knew why you never saw anyone fishing in the river. There seemed to be lots of fish in the river.There was a tragic incident in the village, that was connected to us. When they saw us picking mushrooms in the woods in the spring, and eating them, the local people followed suit. Consequently, many families suffered from poisoning. One little boy died even. The mushrooms had to be parboiled; they were turbantops. We were blamed. Later the whole thing blew over.
(To be continued)
