IN THE LIGHT OF A BAT LAMP
Who would ever think that it would be not a big organized village with a solid name like Horodok [Town], Krasnovolia [Red Freedom], or Velyky Obzyr [Big Sight] to rebel? What kind of sight can a small Polissia village of sixty households under the name of Semky be! However, in most houses the census takers met a flat refusal. Why did the well-disposed and industrious peasants resort to such an act of civil disobedience?
The light went out in Semky on October 26. Several times that evening the electricity turned on again, and the peasants were not surprised. Patient Volyn residents have become used to electricity cutoffs several times a week with no schedule or announcement and for God knows how long.
For three more days people had a naХve hope that there was some break in the line. But then somebody conveyed the news: at the forest cutting above the Styr River the wire was chopped from all the poles. At first they did not believe what they heard. How can it be that the wire was taken away not from just a couple of poles but from the whole 21 kilometer long power line?
Vasyl Ivanovych Horbach, an electrician by training, whom we met one December day in the village street, could say only, “Only a powerful group could have done this.”
The wire that was so insolently and shamelessly stolen would probably weight over five tons. The line is under high tension. It is impossible to throw the wire upon one’s shoulder or climb the pole without a special device or professional help. Semky peasants mark that the robbers knew only too well precisely what wire they could take: there was only one thread (namely the one leading to Semky) with no steel core inside it and thus the only one suitable for pilfering.
In their six weeks of life in the darkness the people have adapted to everything. They produced their old bat lamps from the storerooms, which had been last used maybe fifty years ago, after the war. They found their kerosene lamps in the garrets, though there is no kerosene for them anymore, so they have to fill it up with an infernal mixture of straw oil and gas.
“My son put in too much gas and the wick caught fire. There was such a bang, the house almost exploded,” says one of the women.
“Our houses have turned black with soot. How are we supposed to breath with this stuff for all nights? I have a one year old grandson, and others also have grandchildren,” complains Halyna Vasylivna Shkabko.
Those who don’t have a lamp or batteries for their flashlights buy candles. The local store immediately raised the prices for them to two hryvnias apiece.
WOMEN’S REVOLT
If it had not been for this sad event that made people invite us to Semky, the village would seem to us a true winter’s tale. It is not a poor one, though the soil here is almost the poorest in the whole Manevych district: it is pure sand. However, the industrious peasants plow it, and there also are mushrooms and berries in the neighboring forests. That is how they make their living. The households do not look like poor Polissia ones; there are stacks, cattle sheds, and bee gardens in each of them. In summer Semky might be buried in verdure. Not far from it there is a popular resort preserved from the Polish times, Bily Bereh [White Bank].
There are hardly two hundred people in Semky. Six or seven houses stay derelict, unneeded even by the descendants of their late owners. There still is a nursery school for the twelve local children and a first aid post for the aged. The ruins of a club are evidence that Semky has known better times. A good roomy house left by the officials to the mercy of fate; the doors, windows, and the floors were taken to pieces by the locals.
The village seemed deserted. Peace and quiet. However, as soon as our car stopped in the village center at the store, people hurried to us from all the near by houses, buttoning their clothes while running. It is unknown how the news is broadcast here, but in ten minutes we were surrounded by a noisy crowd.
The notorious Ukrainian mentality could be easily traced in the crowd. Men stood aloof, as well as young people most of whom are somewhere in search for a job (the whole village population is in fact unemployed). Instead, the women poured out their hearts.
“It is six weeks we have now lived without electric lights. I cry when I wake the children in the morning. Now we have no day, it’s night all the time. At 3 p.m. it is time to turn on the lamp and after that the darkness lasts until seven,” says Vasylysa Horbach, the only mother of seven in the village.
Simultaneously laughing and crying, the women show us a hundred years old iron, luckily avoiding being donated to some museum. Now this Semky’s Phillips, working on coals, is passed from one house to the other like a treasure.
The women are exhausted with work in collective farm fields; their palms are coarsened, many lack teeth, but they are still sharp-tongued. How did the idea to boycott the all- Ukrainian census occur to the villagers? He shocked census takers who at first came to each household two or three times, but the whole village except for some lonely aged women not knowing about the boycott, refused to answer their questions.
When Semky was deprived of electricity, people started sending letters to various authorities. The militia was at a loss, as if such a grand theft could just disappear. They did deliver these tons of wire somewhere, didn’t they? Then, on the village patron St. Michael’s day in late November, a plot has been outlined in the local church. Elderly women who have lived through many regimes advised the younger ones to ignore the census. They understood how much this action meant for the authorities.
On the second day of the census ignored by Semky residents in an organized way a bunch of cars arrived in the village. They say there were all sorts of bosses. They promised at a meeting in the school that next week the electric line would be fixed (no matter that it will cost 100,000 hryvnias): just register please.
“Weren’t you afraid to revolt like this?”
“Are we against the census? Aren’t we human beings, aren’t we Ukrainians?”
***
“What do you think, will we have lights next week?” the villagers asked, once again making us believe in the boundless, perhaps too boundless, endurance and trust of our people. The day after the census Semky men and young people were gathered in the village of Kolky from where electricity specialists were to take them to repair the stolen power line. They were there all day freezing in their light clothes and returned home with nothing. That time the car was broken, next there was no care available. So now Semky residents are still waiting for their lengthy night to end.
