Ірина Білик Iryna Bilyk

You know, I was still very young… and… um… about… and… those events… and… where I was born, in fact, what would i know - we just lived, you know. I saw my parents, I saw what they were doing, I saw their environment, I saw those people. ...A-And for me, personally, no much drama y-y-y... so... i-i-in ... the young age, in the childhood, I did not feel any, you did not feel it – we lived the way we lived. A-And... the main thing was that we loved each other – it was very important. We respected each other – I saw it: how to love, how to respect, how to... um... and... well, to give some basic help, to do a favor to someone, well, but those were my parents, you know, and their environment, actually consisted of the same people as them, mostly intellectuals, and then highly... such highly educated people who had to interact with my father, who graduated from seven classes, you know, those... and-and... to saw the trees, well. So it was their life, and so it went... errr... the history of the society where they lived... Errr, well, you know, first of all it is alwasy good, when you, heh, are little, when you have parents around you, young and strong, and beautiful, and then already, and from the height of this bell tower of life, you look back at that as something good because, of course, it makes a huge difference to compare the material benefits of today's society and what we used to have even some twenty years ago. But you have to understand, and appreciate that we had such a generation... of really interesting people, the idea-obsessed people. Now I'm more shocked by people's indifference to each other and to what's going on around us. I do have some great hope for young people, for your generation... and-and that there must come that critical moment when you will understand that you need to rise up and do for yourself what is necessary, you understand.

I already had two brothers, and-and Vasylko was the youngest, and those two children were under my care, because my mother had to cook, wash cloths... earn... earn a penny, however she could. Well, imagine, in February, my dad brought twenty-two rubles, even if the bread cost sixteen kopecks at the time, in order for a family of five to live for a month, the twenty-two rubles was not enough. That's how, how much he was paid for his work. Or... and-and... in the Khrushchev period of '62 to '63, when we got up early, at six o'clock, we went to take a queue in the bread shop, about eleven or twelve, a truck brought the bread...And they gave a loaf of bread for one person, one bread per person; therefore there was such a big counter, and such a gap in it, and such a big knife. They cut "chah", half of the bread that was stuck, and it came to us as a quarter, and they gave one loaf for us three! one quarter! of bread, you see, and the middle was sort of flowing, and a crust was on top, the little Vasyl, the rickety one, the small one... and he would "well" pinch that skin, Roman would pinch from the other side, and until we reached home there was a little bit of pulp left, you know, the flowing part. You would not even give it to the chickens, not to mention to eat yourself, but my dad had to go to work, and my mom... I don't know how she survived, you know. I can't imagine. Now, coming to Kosiv and finding ourselves in this terrible situation, it was a shock for my mother. My mother said it many times: "Ivan, why did we leave Siberia, at least we could make some fish there in Biryus river... err... we could catch, we could kill some elk, or something, at least you could get something. There was already your own potato, and here until..."– during the pre-harvest time goes when everything is over, errrrr, you have something available already in the orchard, in the garden patch. When we came there, I was eating raw potatoes for three years. There were apples, but I ate raw frozen potatoes, as I used to in Siberia. And there's was no job, and there was no food to eat, and-and-and-and, the school, I had to go to first grade, and there was no money to buy the school uniform.

I kept asking myself, "Why-why...well...in such unusual conditions... did Dad survive?" Because he told about so many adventures from that life that, well, there seemed to be no chance for life. Well, that's a fact. They walked...and... seventy-five kilometers on foot from...and-and...Borzovo in Khandalsk to register their marriage, and me, as a child who was born. So seventy-five kilometers (laughs), my mom and dad carried me in turns, but they walked there on foot! And back, my mother says, she was completely exhausted...(stutters)...how to get home, and they did not want to stay forever in the middle of that taiga forest, that's all. Dad made up the raft...and, uh, floated it off to the water. And he said, “We sail downstream,” and they got to the whirlpool. And my dad says: "I don't know how on earth... and-and... well... I had such a long big stick, because the river was deep, and we sort of moved along the edge, and on along the edge, but we got into such a whirlpool that I only had time... to navigate and figure out what to do, and an idea struck me: ‘God save us!’" - do you understand? - “Save us!” And then he says, “We could all die. You, and your mom, and me.” But we still stayed alive (laughs).