Marie Koval

“D. P.: So you were born in Varvarovka… M. K.: Yes. D. P.: And was it a large village? M. K.: Well, just like Kirillka… D. P.: How many people lived there? M. K.: Well, I don’t even know... There was a lot of Czechs, just like in Kirillka. There were about one hundred houses there. None of them lives there anymore. D. P.: And they were all Czechs? M. K.: All of them were Czechs. The Russians were sent in there later, but I don’t remember when. They were called settlers and they were sent there from Voronezh. The kolkhoz first built houses for them and prepared everything for them. They brought them from there to help here. As settlers to live alongside the Czechs. Many of the Czechs have already died by that time and we the young people were leaving. Well, we couldn’t really leave, because we didn’t have passports; they would not give us passports. D. P.: Just like everywhere in kolkhozes… M. K.: The newcomers then lived with us. D. P.: That was already after the war, right? M. K.: It was after the war, and after the revolution, in 1917. Around that time. There were Russian people there as well, and they began to mingle with the Czechs. Originally there were only Czechs. They arrived there, and there was a forest. They were working the land, planting vineyards, lot of wine was produced there. They had nice farms and they farmed there. There was a Czech house in Novorossiysk, and they were bringing things from Varvarovka to the Czech house. They were harvesting smoke bush. You don’t know what it is, right? It’s a kind of plant. They were making a lot of money from it, because they were exporting it to Czechoslovakia. It made nicely coloured clothes. They were using it in the tanning process to make leather, and earning money on it, too. That’s how they lived here.”

“My mom was attacked by a bitch wolf. They were harvesting the smoke bush and the guys had wanted to catch this bitch wolf. They found her den where she had her small puppies, and they dug a hole and threw the puppies in there and expected the wolf to get in for them. The wolf has done a lot of damage and they wanted to catch her. But the wolf was not so stupid as they thought and it didn’t get into the hole and continued to do even more damage. My parents were working on harvesting the smoke bush, it grows in small shrubs, and as she was bent low with the sickle in her hand, she suddenly looked up and the bitch wolf was standing in front of her. Mom froze in horror. Whenever she talked about it later, she was still trembling with fear. She would always say: ‘Don’t go into that forest!’ ‘You think the wolves are there?’ ‘They can be there.’ She always talked about it: she raised her head and there was the wolf standing in front of her. They looked into each other’s eyes. Mom began screaming and all the workers came running to her, and they began beating their sickles against stones to make noise and the wolf then turned around and went away. Were it for one second longer, she would have attacked her, but mom was screaming so loudly that the others heard her, and they realized that the wolf was coming there again and doing even more damage as if in revenge for the puppies. And she came to my mom, as she said: she was standing two metres from me and staring at me. So there had been many animals. But the people still lived there and worked there. But there is no forest there anymore, the mountains are still there, but the nature is not what it used to be when they arrived there.”