Download or read book Memories of the Dispossessed written by Olga Litvinenko and published by Drake International Services. This book was released on 1998 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book tells the story of the fate of those branded as kulak, and rounded yp in 1929 and 1930in the Kurgan region of Russia. What is more, the works are those of the children and grandchildren of the yeoman farmers who suffered dispossession. The Kurgan lies just beyond the Ural Mountainns. Despite its harsh climate the area has always been one of Russia's foremost producers of food. It is renowned for its tough, stubborn, hard-working farm population. Kurgan kulaks were faced by formidable conditions - temperatures of forty degrees and more below zero, hostile forest, inhuman gaolers, starvation and cruelty beyond belief. Yet they did not give up. They banded together to survive. Where parents succumbed, their children battled on to tell the tale. Recorded by Olga Litvinenko, herself a granddaughter of kulaks and a Kurgan sociologist, the accounts have been translated and introduced by Professor James Riordan of the University of Surrey. This is the first book to be published which presents the dekulakization story in the words of its victims and their families. Their stories are harrowing, but true and memorable.