Elzyata Sukhotayevna Badmayeva

“I remember when the soldiers arrived. Then there was a truck. A train. Siberia. Me, mama, and my sister. Cold and hungry. Stoked the stove with reeds. Sister was 14, and she had to work in the kolkhoz same as the adults, else we’d go hungry. They paid us in food. 300 grams of food per day. Ate frozen potatoes. Mama crushed them and baked these lepeshki on top of the stove with nothing. And we ate. People lived worse than pigs. In 1945, Father returned from Shiroklag.* They let him out to die. Skin and bones. When I was studying in second grade, Mama got very sick, and I started to work. There was no more need for study. Father was totally illiterate, but worked honestly and well his entire life, he was a hard worker. In 1956, he received a car for all his work. They did not want to let him go back to his homeland. The head of the kolkhoz convinced father to stay, proposed building him a house. But father always only wanted to live in his native land, in Kalmykia. In 1957 we returned.”