VIDEO // Famine of 1946-1947: Tragedy seen through eyes of the then children

The famine of 1946-1947 left deep scars in the memory of those who experienced it, and the children of that time felt it the most. "At school, they gave us a tiny piece of bread, just to put on our tongue, not to fill us up. At home, we made food from lamb's lettuce, coltsfoot, and anything we could find around," recalls Ioana Cotovan, now 87 years old, in an interview for MOLDPRES.

Ioana Cotovan remembers the first difficult moments of returning to her native village after the forced deportations of the Second World War.

"In 1941, I was deported’ I was just a child, and in 1946, I returned home an orphan. I had no one. Only an old man from the village took pity on me and brought me up as he could. When I came back, the famine was severe, people were literally starving to death," she says.

During the famine, life was extremely harsh and food was a rarity. The Soviet regime, through its repressive policies, imposed excessive food taxes, confiscating the population's food supplies.

"At school, they gave us a tiny piece of bread, just to put on our tongue, not to fill us up. At home, we ate what we could, we made food from lamb's lettuce, coltsfoot, and anything we could find around."

The economic hardships and food shortages were so severe that people resorted to extremely meager resources.

"From the town hall, we received a fistful of rye. We mixed it with flour made from acorns; it was sweet, but that's what we ate. Some even ate tree bark or grass brews," Ioana Cotovan also said.

The entire community was left to face the tragedy alone, making this period a nightmare hard to forget for the survivors.

"In the village, people died one by one. We didn't even have gravediggers anymore. The dead sometimes lay for days until someone strong enough was found to dig their graves. Sometimes, there were mass graves... they were buried together, covered with soil and whoever could, prayed over them."

After a period of suffering, signs of hope began to appear.

"The hunger started to recede with the blooming of the acacia. It was as if God took pity on us. We ate the raw, sweet acacia flowers... and tricked our hunger. Afterwards, people started to sow. There wasn’t much to sow, but they sowed what they found in the attics, between the rafters. And so... that's how we got through it. But we haven't forgotten. You can never forget," concludes aunt Ioana, reflecting on the hardships and how people managed to survive despite the harshest conditions.

The famine of 1946-1947, caused by the totalitarian-communist regime, led to the death of approximately 200,000 people, about 10 per cent of the population of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (RSSM) at that time.

"It was a crime against humanity, because the population was deprived of food reserves through the excessive taxes imposed by officials. About 200,000 people died, which accounted for about 10 per cent of the republic's population at the time. Most of these victims were from the districts on the right bank of the Dniester. The entire population suffered, except for the party nomenclature. The Stalinist regime is responsible for this atrocity against completely innocent people. Civil society, the academic environment and state authorities have a moral obligation to keep the memory of the victims of the 1946-1947 famine alive,"  Lidia Pădureac, PhD, associate professor at the Alecu Russo State University of Balti told MOLDPRES.

According to the National Archives Agency, the famine of 1946–1947 was one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes that struck the current territory of the Republic of Moldova in the 20th century. It was not an unavoidable natural disaster, but a tragedy worsened by the authoritarian and repressive policies of the Soviet regime. According to data provided by the National Archives Agency, in just a few months, more than 123,000 people died of hunger, representing about 5 per cent of the RSSM’s population. Proportionally, Soviet Moldova was the most affected region in the entire Soviet Union, with mortality rate ten times higher than in Russia and five times higher than in Ukraine.