Postwar Years

"People ran through the streets, knocked on each other's windows: 'Wake up! Victory!'

Everyone, adults and children, threw their arms around each other, embraced, cried, shouted. We probably all looked like madmen—we had never before felt such great common joy. That morning, people stopped saying the usual everyday 'hello.' When greeting, we kissed, squeezed each other's hands firmly. Children ran with flags, young men and women, hand in hand, walked down the middle of the street, exulting, laughing, singing songs. A harmonica appeared. Within an hour the city took on a festive look."

So people remember those memorable days...

The war was over. Nikita returned home, but his children didn't know him at all—he was a complete stranger to them.

His son Anatoly recalls this story:

During the war, his little sister Nadia lived with grandmother Zhenya in the settlement of Karabut. On his way home, father stopped by. As he approached the house, Nadia, sitting on a tree branch, shouted to him:

"Hey, uncle, take an apple!" completely unaware this was her father.

Upon returning home, Nikita immediately began working hard to feed his family. He left early in the morning and returned late in the evening. Sometimes he had to issue work orders, as he continued to be a foreman in the construction shop. The children barely saw him and he spent little time with them.

The postwar restoration of agriculture became a severe trial for the Ukrainian people. The consequences of four years of German-Romanian occupation were enormous human losses, a plundered and destroyed economy. The earth, pitted with trenches and dugouts, scarred by shells, was overgrown with weeds. There was a shortage of fuel, machinery, labor, seeds, fodder, provisions for farmers. Although by late 1945 sown areas had somewhat increased and the republic could sell grain to the state, it was a third less than before the war. Village resources were minuscule. Difficulties intensified in mid-1946 when a nearly snowless winter gave way to the driest spring and summer in fifty years. Winter and spring crops almost completely died. In autumn 1946, widespread repression swept the countryside. Reviving the "Law of Five Ears of Grain" from the early 1930s, the courts of the republic in just November 1946 harshly punished 2,313 peasants; for collecting grain heads left in the field after harvest, 1,800 starving collective farmers within a month were sentenced to prison terms from one to five years. A terrible famine broke out in the country, causing mass instances of dystrophy. By summer 1947, Ukraine had registered over one million cases of dystrophy; in March-June alone, over one hundred thousand died. By incomplete data from 1946-1947, in sixteen regions of Ukraine about 800,000 people died of hunger. The ration card system returned. People received 100 grams of bread. Children swelled from hunger. Here are some excerpts from letters from Voronezh region:

"Nov. 24, 46: '...We have nothing to live on: no bread, no potatoes. We're beginning to swell from hunger and dying.' (A.I. Endovitskaya, Voronezh region, Podgorensk district, Vyazovoe farm, to S.P. Endovitsky, dispatch no. 90244).

"Nov. 1, 46: '...We live in nightmarish conditions. We have absolutely nothing to eat, we survive only on acorns, and from this food we can barely move our legs. This year we'll die of hunger.' (A.I. Pluzhnikov, Voronezh region, Kalach city, Podgorensk collective farm, Lenin's Red Army collective, to I.I. Pluzhnikov, dispatch no. 09866).

In such conditions people lived, and the Balatsky family was no exception. They had it hard, like everyone, but they laid all their problems and worries before God, and He cared for them. Though often there was nothing to eat in their house, God preserved their lives.

"Once Mom found an old hide from some domestic animal in the attic. She boiled it for a long time, adding various roots to make it something like soup. We wanted meat so badly that we were grateful for even that hide: we chew and chew, but it won't chew," Timofei recalled this incident. But despite all their trials and hardships, their parents taught their children always and in everything to rely on the Lord and not to forget to thank Him for all things.