Гладът на бесарабските българи от Южна Украйна през 1946–1947 г.
The Famine of 1946–1947 Experienced by Bessarabian Bulgarians in South Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: Over the period 2003–2006, while she was a teacher at the Bolgrad Bulgarian Secondary School in Ukraine, the author of this article found out and recorded with the help of her students a number of oral accounts given by people who keep memories of the 1940s. A survey was also carried out, and some of the questions referred to the famine of 1946–1947, such as: When did the famine start in your village?; What do you think were the reasons for the famine?; How did your fellow-villagers struggle to survive?; What was the situation like in your community?; What is your most vivid memory of that time?; How did the people manage to pull through the famine?; Do you often remember those times?, etc. The Bolgrad Secondary School students, who came from different communities in the Bolgrad and Izmail regions, disseminated the survey cards to their parents and grandparents. Not all of them answered the survey questions, but the ones who did outlined a shocking picture of the time of famine, and also some other repressive measures imposed by the Soviet regime on Bulgarian communities in South Ukraine. The field studies show that the Bulgarian communities in Bessarabia were affected in different ways by the tragic period of famine: thousands of people died of starvation; others got ill with dystrophy, septic angina or typhus, or suffered psychological disorders; others still left their home communities and sought refuge elsewhere.

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