''Maria'' () is a 1934 historical novel by the Ukrainian author Ulas Samchuk. The novel, dedicated "to the mothers who died of hunger in Ukraine in 1932–33", follows the life of a village woman, Maria, between the 1861 emancipation of serfs to the 1932–33

Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...

. ''Maria'', the first work of fiction to treat the Ukrainian famine, has been included in post-1991 Ukrainian school curricula. The book is organised into three parts: A Book about the Birth of Maria, A Book of Maria's Days, and A Book about Bread. Orphaned at the age of six, Maria is illiterate and forced into work when young. Her first three children die of infectious disease. Her son Maksym, before his murder by his father, is a poor farmer who evicts his parents, denounces his brother, and watches his sister starve. Maksym "combines many features of the Holodomor perpetrator: a quisling, communist, profiteer, sadist and Russian-speaking". Behind Maksym, as the ' Other' bearing ultimate responsibility for the famine, lies the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

state centered in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. "Our country has not known such a Tsar-like plundering", exclaims one tortured character.

Criticism

The cruel truth of a cruel time. (The novel Maria is a work about the situation of the Ukrainian peasantry after the 1917 revolution. The author remembered the famine of the twenties and talked to those who were lucky enough to escape in 1933. The writer compared horrific stories, described the lives of Ukrainians, and came to the conclusion that the artificial famine was planned by the Moscow-Soviet empire as genocide, as an attempt on the Ukrainian nation. Of course, the book, which reflected the brutal truth, was banned from publication in the Soviet Union).

English translation

References

{{Reflist 1934 novels Ukrainian novels Historical novels