Ostrog County, Volhynia, Geography

The area occupied by my forefathers in western Ukraine lies at the crossroads of the eastern European regions of Volhynia (Ukr: Volyn, Воли́нь; Russian: Volyn, Волы́нь; Polish: Wołyń; German: Wohynien), Podolia, and Galicia.  Volhynia (to the northeast), Podolia (to the south) and Galicia (to the southwest) meet near Teofipol, about 30 miles due south from Antonivka.  The area is bordered by Poland to the west and north, Belorus (White Russia) and Ukraine (Ruthenia) to the north and east, Moldava and Bessarabia to the south and Hungary to the west.  In the 19^th century, not only was the area inhabited by native Volhynians, Podolians, and Galicians (these 3 nationalities being Ukrainians), but also by Russians, Poles, Bessarabians and Moldavans (Romanians).  Germans, Czechs and Swiss later formed colonies in the area as well.  Muslim Tatars inhabited some areas, leftover from the days of conquest of the Mongols and Turks.  Furthermore, the area sat right in the middle of the Pale of Settlement providing areas of inhabitation to the Jewish peoples of Russia.  Finally, occasional Rom (Gypsy) camps also occupied the countryside and the occasional Finn, Latvian, Lithuanian or Frenchman could also be found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volhynia

http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97_uezd_eng.php?reg=229

Geographically, the northern areas of this region are part of the Polesia (Ukr: Polissya, Полі́сся) lowlands, an area of northern Ukraine/southern Belorus including the Pripyat (При́п'ять) River marshes which is characterized by large expanses of swamps, with many marshes and streams.  This swampy area generally extends from a line north of Lusk-Rovno-Zhytomyr-Kiev.  South of this line the Volhynian Uplands rise and the landscape gains many hills and becomes generally much dryer.  South of the Volhynian Uplands are the Podolian Uplands.  With the Podolian Uplands, the area becomes almost mountainous as far south as Kremenets, as the ground gives rise to the Outer Eastern Carpathian foothills.  Grassy flatlands, steppe or prairie-lands are not to be found in this region that is covered with large expanses of forest.  The majority of the trees are pine and oak, with spruce, beech, birch and locust also forming a percentage of the forest.  Animals found in the area are similar to those found in any wooded region of Europe; deer, boar, marten, beaver, muskrat, hare, fox, and even an occasional wolf, as well as pheasant, quail, ducks and cranes, make their homes here.  The forest at the end of the 20^th century still covers a wide expanse of land; creating an almost unbroken chain of woods 75 miles long and 10 to 15 miles wide through the heart of Volhynia. 

The main river (річка) in the area is the Gorin (Ukr: Гори́нь; Rus: Горы́нь, Horyn; Pol: Horyń; German: Horyn; Yiddish: Horin, האָרין), itself a tributary of the Pripyat, whose headwaters lie in the hills south of the city of Kremenets and which flows in a northerly direction through Iziaslaw (Zaslaw) and Slavuta, westwards towards Ostrog and then sharply to the north and on past Rovno.  The Gorin joins the Pripyat in southern Belorus.  The Pripyat-Gorin system forms one of the most westerly of the river systems comprising the Dneipr River basin (Басейн Дніпра) which covers most of Ukraine and Belorus. 

Tributaries of the Gorin which flow through the area include the Vilia (Ukr: Ві́лія, Russ: Вилия;), which flows in a northeasterly direction from its source near Pidlisne (Ukr: Підлі́сне) and joins the Gorin just to the west of the town of Ostrog and the Zbytynka (Ukr: Збитинка) which flows easterly from its origin east of Dubno, and joins the Gorin at Mezhyrich.  A little farther south, the Huscisko (Riska) flows in a northerly direction from its headwaters south of Husk until it joins the Vilia at Kamenka.  The Zluzie is formed near Pluznoe and flows in a northerly direction to join the Huscisko near Martynie.  In the 19^th Century, before the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant cooling reservoir was built, the Gnili Rig (Rotten Horn), (Ukr: Гнили́й Ріг, Czarna; Pol: Gnily Row) flowed in a northerly direction through the forest to join the Gorin to the northeast of Ostrog, from it’s headwaters near Markzec (Mokrets), but it no longer exists today.  Many marshy, swampy areas surround these tributaries, just as they do the Gorin and the Pripyat.

http://ypef.eu/files/booklet/ang/ukraine.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horyn

Soviet Collectivization and the Eviction of the Kulaks

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the communists began to single out specific societal groups known as the kulaks (кулакс).  Kulaks, although ill-defined, were considered enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Soviet State.  Generally speaking, the kulaks were the landowing class of the Russian countryside.  The Bolsheviks painted the picture that the kulaks stood in the way of the socialist utopia they would create.  Generally, collectivization took away land and possessions from the kulaks.

The kulak (кулак) “class” consisted of land-owners who were of foreign nationality or who became landed after the Stolypin agrarian reforms of 1906.  The Stolypin reforms dissolved peasant communes, bought land from nobles, and divided the land among peasants, creating “land-owning” peasant class – the muzhiks (мужчин).  These muzhiks received small parcels of land from the government, on a mortgage type system – it was intended that they would have to pay for the land.  Muzhiks were those who were serfs before 1861 and became free peasants after the emancipation.  These kulaks generally supported the Whites in the Russian Civil War.  The kulaks understood that the Bolsheviks would probably take away their land if they won the civil war.  In the 1920s the civil war (the war, creating the first wave of inefficient collectivization) created famine in Russia and Lenin began to confiscate grain from peasants.  Anyone accused of being a kulak had his grain taken, as well as his seed-grain.  Kulaks were doomed.  After the civil war, the Bolsheviks considered only the poorer classes of landless peasants as allies.  During the period after the civial was, the Soviets official defined the kulak class as: 1) those who hired others for labor, 2) owners of mills, creamerys, or other processing equipment with a mechanical motor, 3) those who rented out agricultural machinery or facilities, 4) those who were involved in trade, money-lending or commercial brokerage (i.e., anyone who sold a surplus for money).  Bolshevik revolutionary thinker, Grigory Zinoviev, once said that a kulak was any peasant who had enough to eat.

Stalin continued collectivization and used the kulaks as scapegoats for ineffective practices.  Offical policy of 1930 approved extermination of kulaks.  Kulaks began to be transported to Siberia or Kazakhstan.  Many were simply dropped off in the middle of nowhere without supplies, food or shelter.  Others were forced to work their farms, but not allowed to keep any of its production.  4 to 8 million kulaks died.  Many kulaks didn’t even know what crimes against the state they may have committed.  Even ex-kulaks weren’t safe.  But the Soviet machine saw them as obstacles to the collectivization process; the real heart and soul of communism in the countryside.

Collectivation, however, was such a failure that shortages of food continued to occur into the 1980s.  The Russian Army was forced to help farmers till the land at periods between the 1930s and the 1980s.  By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration ramped up military spending in the US that the USSR had to try to match.  Money that should have gone to propping up the Soviet economy had to be put towards the military. The US’ victory in the Cold War was in part due to economic shortages in the USSR caused by collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks.  Economic shortages that could have been averted had the kulak class been allowed to keep their land and help produce food to feed the countryside.  Kulaks became the missing link in the economic chain that brought the USSR to its ruin.

http://www.indepthinfo.com/russia/kulaks.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

The Soviet Bolsheviks continued to press their authority over the countryside, however, and Joseph Stalin’s NKVD (The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs; the Soviet administrative body used to fight crime and maintain public order)  roamed the country rounding up kulaks and setting the groundwork for collectivization.  Exorbitant taxes were levied.  Kulaks by the hundreds and thousands were seized and exiled deep into Soviet controlled Siberia.  Many Germans and Poles were taken from Volhynia too, and the Counties of Ostrog and Zaslaw suffered as well.  Churches were closed and schools were consolidated.  Villagers were forced to give up their traditional languages and customs.  The numbers of Polish and German kulaks exiled from the villages in the neighborhood of the Volhynian Mennonite villages in the 1930s was thus:

• Borisov: 12 families
• Choten II: 150 families
• Kunev:10 families
• Dorohosch: 35 families
• Old Husk: 30 families
• New Husk: 20 families
• Kamenka: 48 families
• Kustarna: 21 families
• Lisna (Leeleva): 30 families
• Martynie: 9 families
• Michailivka: 25 families
• Little Radohosch: 30 families
• Siever: 16 families
• Stanislavka: 11 families
• Storonich: 27 families

http://www.myslenedrevo.com.ua/uk/Sci/Local/Zaslav/Empires/AdminDivision.html

A firsthand account of a Polish kulak family exiled from the nearby village of Belotin can be found here:

http://sybir.blogspot.com/2005_09_28_archive.html

Stalin’s collectivization policies fundamentally changed the countryside.  The villages in Ostrog and Zaslaw counties, as well as the other Volhynian Counties and Russian provinces, were formed into collectives.

Directly affecting the Karolswalde villages, the Russian Civil War was followed by the Polish-Soviet War, after which the victorious Poles took control of the northwestern half of Volhynia; cutting Ostrog County right in half.  Ostrog then fell under Polish control and the Soviet-Polish border lay along the Vilia River, passing directly through the village of Karolswalde, which was then named Prikordonnoe (Russian: Прикордонное; Ukrainian: Prykordonne, Прикордо́нне), after the Ukrainian adjective for ‘border’ (прикордонний).  During this time, the administrative center of the Polish half of Ostrog County was moved to Zdolbunow.  The southern half of Ostrog County, under Soviet control, was consolidated into Zaslaw County.