Five Stalks of Grain

The opening page of Five Stalks of Grain is an illustration depicting harvest time in Ukraine during the early 1930’s. Farmers cut the ripened grain with scythes, and some stook it using large pitchforks while others bundle the sheaves, ready for loading onto wagons. It's a community project. Even the very young and very old offer whatever help they can. Superimposed on the rendering of the scene are two quotations: Primarily, it is so-called dead souls that are withdrawing from the collective farms ---, It is not even a withdrawal but rather the revelation of a vacuum ---. (p. 1) The next page is a portrait of a happy family, parents, a son and daughter, standing in front of a shock of wheat, smiling under the warmth of the shining sun. They look happy, content with their lives, their facial expressions completely at odds with the next quotation: Do we need dead souls? (p. 2) The answer to the question stands alone on the following page: ... Of course not. (p. 3) The question and the answer are the words of Joseph Stalin.

Implementation of Stalin's policy of collectivization, ending individual ownership of family farms and consolidating them into large agricultural estates, began in the late 1920’s and continued into the early 1930’s. The kolkhozes – the collective farms – were intended as triumphs of Soviet ideology, with efficiencies of scale making the collectives far more productive than the small farms on which generations of Ukrainian families had worked. Instead of hand tools and horses, tractors and other machinery would optimize the entire process, from seeding to harvest. It was also a political weapon, aimed at abolishing the class of land-owning peasants. Finally, and very important to Stalin, it was intended to destroy the Ukrainian population’s spirit, culture, and sense of nationalism.

Faced with both radical change to centuries of providing the grain for Europe’s breadbasket and a threat to their society and culture, Ukrainian farmers resisted. Soviet pushback was brutal, and the above excerpt are the words of Nadia, one of two children whose story is told in the novel. Arrested by Soviet army officers, their father is one of the nameless many who are loaded into unheated wooden box cars, bound for execution or imprisonment in Siberia. It gets worse. That night, a group of Soviet officers knock on the door of the family's cottage. Nadia is working on her homework by candlelight, and Taras is lying on his bed, disconsolate at the loss of his tato (dad). As the knocking continues, their mama tells the children to hide in the skrynya, the large wooden trunk in which the family stores blankets, linens, and extra clothing.

One of the officers accuses their mother of hoarding grain, and, although she denies the charge, they seize her, and the accusing officer stabs her with his bayonet. Peering through a crack in the trunk, Nadia watches in horror. Much later, after the officers are gone, the children crawl out, and Taras asks, “Where’s Mama?” (p. 20) The answer is in the pool of blood on the floor. Nadia decides that they will leave their home, and they depart, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a packet of matches in Nadia’s pocket and a single keepsake: their father’s medal, the Red Badge of Honour, awarded to him for his bravery and service in the revolutionary war.

As they walk the road out of their village, they see more army officers on patrol, and, after awhile, they encounter an old man who states, “You two look like you want some fresh bread.” (p. 30) Taras is hungry, the elderly man seems harmless, and so, the two accompany him. He sings a folk song as they walk along, passing people who are thin and hunched wraiths. When they reach the forest, Nadia hears a crunching sound; underfoot are the bones of those who have been cannibalized by this man. He pulls out a knife, and Nadia defends herself and Taras, stabbing their attacker in the eye with the sharp end of her father’s medal. The children are saved when the same officer who killed their mother appears from his patrol of the forest and shoots their attacker. He picks up the medal, which has fallen into the snow, and, in a moment of human decency and at no small risk to himself, offers the children some bread, and directs them to follows the train tracks that will lead to the next town.

The man in the forest is the first of many perils Nadia and Taras face along the way. When they reach the city, they encounter a charming young woman who realizes that they must be very hungry from their journey, and she offers to take them to her home where her mother is making borscht (beet soup) and varenyky (perogies). But Nadia notices that on the woman’s coat there is a large pin bearing the image of Lenin and a motto in Russian, “Always ready!” When the girl tells Nadia that she’s a member of the Young Pioneers, Nadia grabs her brother, and they’re on the run again. They reach the wrought iron fence surrounding a graveyard, and Nadia squeezes through, but Taras’ boot gets stuck in the ironwork. The officers that pursue them tell her, “Let go of him and come with us. We only want to take you two to an orphanage in the city.” (p. 71)

With Taras taken by the officers, Nadia is now alone and takes refuge in a wooded area. Although her name means “hope”, she feels sad, angry, and hopeless. She is ready to throw away her father’s medal, symbol of a regime which has caused her and her people nothing but grief. Night falls, and she imagines that she sees a group of animals and, in the sky, an owl. The owl comes to rest in a gnarled tree outside an isolated cottage where Nadia knocks at the door and is greeted by an elderly woman who states, “So she brought you here.” “Who?”, Nadia asks. The woman replies that it is the owl, Zorka (“star”). (p. 83) There’s a pot of soup on the hearth, and a famished Nadia sips slowly as she relates the story of Taras’ capture. The walls of old woman’s cottage are covered with several crucifixes and many icons of saints, representations of Biblical scenes, and, of course, the image of the merciful Mother of God, Mary. One of the icons draws Nadia’s attention. It depicts the journey of a soul to heaven. The old woman asks Nadia if she has ever heard of “toll houses” and tells the girl that “some say that when your soul leaves your body it goes on a journey and travels past different toll house occupied by evil spirits and demons, where they accuse the dead soul of sins and try to drag it down to hell.” (p. 88). That night, Nadia dreams of her brother and envisions a horrible scene in which Taras struggles to escape those demons.

The next day, the old woman takes Nadia to a man who has access to a truck that can take her to the city. The truck is inside a massive, government-controlled storehouse of sacks of grain, and there the man speaks the words of the book’s title: “Five stalks, that’s all it took to get you ten years in the Gulag . . . or worse.” (p. 99) “The Law of Five Stalks of Grain”, enacted in August, 1932, decreed that anyone hiding that paltry amount would be punished by death or 10 years in prison because grain was state property. Nadia hops aboard the truck, hiding in the back behind the spare tire, and the driver picks up the officer who is accompanying him to the city. But the trip goes awry: snipers shoot at the truck’s tires, and, when the driver goes to get the spare, he’s shot. The officer who’s along for the ride is shot and wounded, but Nadia asks the snipers not to kill him. Yes, he killed their mother, but, because he allowed Nadia and Taras to escape, she asks that he be shown mercy and allowed to live. He’s killed anyway, and, when the armed men see her father’s Red Badge, they assume that she’s a Young Pioneer and want to kill her, too. She’s spared, only to leave with a young man who claims that he’ll take Nadia to her brother.

As they walk in the forest, he tells her the truth about Taras’ likely fate. Nadia and the resistance fighter come to a pile of bones prowled by wolves looking for edible remains. The young fighter shoots one; it will be his meal, “not bad when you get used to the taste.” (p. 127) Although he promises protection, she decides to go it alone and heads for the railway tracks. She stops to feed a few stray grains to a bird perched on the ground and then slowly stands up, smiles at the sunlight, and walks the railroad tracks, following the bird in flight.

Sixty-one years later, a teenaged Canadian girl named Katya sits on the ground on the edge of a forest. The words, “Here it is!” (p. 134) brings her, her brother, and a middle-aged man (her tato, perhaps?) to a ruined cottage. The older man tells the girl and her brother that it was the home of their great-great aunt and uncle’s home, but that no one knows what happened to them or their children. All three enter the building, and, on the floor, Katya finds Nadia’s notebook/diary. Nadia wrote, “Shortly after the collective farm started, they took my father away . . .” (p. 138) Katya stops reading, her attention drawn to a bird chirping at the windowsill, and, when she looks out the broken glass of the window, she sees a bird in flight, just like the one that Nadia followed.

A story of the Holodomor, a Ukrainian word which means “death inflicted by starvation” (p. 113), Five Stalks of Grain recounts the impact of a government-orchestrated famine on the lives of two children orphaned by the state. Nadia and Taras’ harrowing journey is like a grim fable, in which two children are desperate to find rescue, only to be victimized at every turn. While collectivization was enacted throughout the republics of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was a specific target. Millions are known to have starved, but readers are left wondering what happened to Nadia and Taras.

This graphic novel is one in which dialogue (English, but sometimes with Ukrainian subtitling) is counterpointed with frames in which only the pictures continue to tell the story. Ivanka Galadza’s stark black and white line drawings are reminiscent of woodcut engraving, a graphic art for which Ukrainian artists achieved renown from the sixteenth century onward. In addition to presenting the story of Nadia and Taras, Adrian Lysenko also provides a brief history of the Holodomor as well as suggestions for further reading and research (both text and online).

Five Stalks of Grain is not an entertaining story. It is a reminder that food can be weaponized by an authoritarian regime and can be used to bring a nation to its knees. Although Nadia and Taras are probably not older than 12, this is a story that would probably be best for a readership of 14 years and up. For high school students of 20th century history, it offers an approachable perspective on the human impact of the Holodomor. This is a book that deserves acquisition in high school library collections and especially in schools with a significant population of Ukrainian heritage. As Canadian communities experience the wave of Ukrainian immigrants who are escaping the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Five Stalks of Grain is a timely work.