Five years for a bit of butter

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When the Soviet army invaded Volhynia in 1939, Emílie Jarmarová was 18 years old. Living in her native Bakowce was no longer the same. The soldiers stole everything they could from the shops. Many people were taken from the village to gulags. Mrs. Jarmarová’s cousin was also imprisoned. “A Polish woman with a little child came to his shop and asked him: ‘Please leave at least a quarter of butter for me, I have nothing at all to give my child.’ She had already got some bread elsewhere, so he gave her the butter.” At the moment, there were also two Russian soldiers and Mrs. Jarmarová’s father in the shop. As soon as the Russian soldiers left, he told her cousin: ‘Go home, get one of the coats that sold here not long ago, and stitch patches of old rags onto it. You will get arrested. If they saw a new coat, they would take it away from you then you’d be left with nothing, so its better to let them think that it’s an old one.’ They actually came the next day to get the sympathetic grocer. He was sentenced to five years for giving a little butter to a Polish woman and her child.

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Volhynian Czechs

Emigration from the lands of Bohemia caused by unfavorable socio-economic situation aimed primarily for the United States, but then an ethnographic exhibition held in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1867 showed the possibility of emigration to the czarist Russia. The first community considered to be one of the Volhynian Czechs was founded in 1863 (Luthardovka), bur organized emigration did not take place until between 1868 and 1880. The czarist Russia promised the comers religious freedom, no taxes for five years, and exemption from military service for the comers arriving by 1874. Czechs settled primarily in the area of the towns of Luck, Rovno, Dubno and Zhitomir. They founded Czech schools, breweries and cultural centres in their new homes, brought new farming machinery (such as hay cutters), and knew advanced farming techniques (crop rotation). Due to Russification in the 1880s, Czech schools were eliminated and Czechs were forced to convert to the Orthodox Church. The area was divided into the western Polish part and the eastern Soviet part after World War I and the Peace of Riga of 1921. Czechs in the area of Luck, Rovno and Dubno lived in a relatively democratic state and retained their institutions – fire brigades, Sokol and village bands, whereas Czechs around Zhitomir experienced NEP, the unsuccessful soviet programme, and the great famine of 1932–1933. The Soviet Union occupied the Polish part of Volhynia on 17 September 1939 in connection with the fourth partition of Poland, and both parts of Volhynia reunited under the Nazi German regime in June 1941. The soviet army came to the area again in early 1944 and some 10,500 Volhynian Czechs joined the forming 1st Czechoslovak Armed Force led by Ludvík Svoboda, and they went through the battles of Krosno, Machnówka and the Carpathian-Dukla Operation. After the war, most of the survivors settled in Czechoslovakia and their relatives, children, spouses and parents followed them in another re-emigration wave in 1947. The total number of re-émigrés is estimated at 40,000. These two waves were followed by the re-emigration of landsmen from the Chernobyl area between 1991 and 1993.

Bakivtsi, district of Luck

Available in: English | Česky

A small village in Volhynia near the town of Luck. In the second half of the 19th century, the area was colonized by Czechs who had left Austria-Hungary for the promise of a better life. In 1939, the village was part of the territory which, by agreement with Germany, was occupied by the Soviet Union. On August 23, 1939, in Moscow, the conditions for this occupation were laid down in a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The pact included a secret protocol which contained – among other things – a provision stipulating a de facto partitioning of Poland running along the line of the Narew, Vistula and Sanu rivers. The Soviet troops only invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, after the German attack had already gotten well under way, and they didn't occupy all of the territory that had been agreed.

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Five years for a bit of butter

Volhynian Czechs