Deportations from the Region of Chernivci (Ukraine) and Edinets District (Moldova)

The main amount of time for interview we have spent in the Toporivtsy village. This big Ukrainian village has deeply felt those changes, that the Soviet Union brought. We have had here two interviews with the inhabitants of the village, who have been the witnesses of those events and of the incoming changes. They also could render the existing atmosphere of those post-war years. We should emphasize, that in this case we deal with the representatives of the remembrance of two different generations. If the first interviewed, Danka Pirogova, at that time was a young woman, then the second interviewed, Petro Afanasiyovich, was a child. So that the last one told us about his childhood impressions and about his parents’ experience.

This fact conveys his understanding of those events, especially in the question of his departure to the military service, to the Siberian regions. It was a result of the mistrust which existed in the ‘60s, towards the native population from that region and could also be a punishment in connection with the following generation of the Bukovina inhabitants.

We also took two interviews concerning the deportation events from the ‘40s. One of this contains the remembering of Afanasiy Grigoriyvich Tryfonenko, who spent his childhood with his parents in special settlements for the deportees. He relates in details about the deportation reasons, connected with the dramatic fate of his elder brother - participant in UPA. Than he describes the deportation itself, to the Udmurtian ASSR in July 1945, the life in that labour settlements locations. The story is full of information about the people’s daily life, in the hard conditions of those locations, the relationships inside the village and the connections with the outside world. Also, he touches the question of the juridical and civil restrictions of the deported people, especially the judicial consequences and the influence of the deportation fact on the social position, after returning home.

The narration of the second interviewed goes a little bit out of the line of the researched group. Maria Tsibulyak-Bondar was not deported, but accused by Court, for link with the nationalistic partisans (her husband was UPA’s member). She was condemned to camps. Though Maria’s story proved to be interesting enough and factual - she spent the imprisonment 110