Album 4. Section 2
April - August 1942
Since 26 February 1942, Eufrosinia within six months had walked 1500 kilometres
across the Narym mires, boreal forests, the Altai virgin steppes avoiding
cities and working for anyone so that not to die from starvation. She made her
first acquaintance of life in Russian periphery in the very first year of the
war famine. She saw what the dispossession of kulaks meant with whole villages
disappearing and nobody left to cultivate the land. She couldn't grasp the
wastefulness with all those slogans shrieking of conservation all around. She
couldn't make the mind to the spring burning of spike remains instead of giving
them out to the hungry. At that time she didn't know yet that those in the
collective farms worked not for money but rather for work-day units and not
always got food for them. Under «the law on spikes» (On protection of property
of state enterprises and collective farms) hundreds of thousands of hungry
collective farm workers manually gathering the remains of grain in collective
farms' fields were imprisoned for up to 10 years.
How
Eufrosinia's escape finished? Eufrosinia was arrested three times
and each time released by the skin of teeth. On August 24, 1942, near the city
of Rubtsovsk Eufrosinia
was arrested. The prisoner
transport to the prison of the county town of Krasnozerskoye laid
ahead.
|