The Layers

Unbearable Story

When I was little, I have heard a story from my mother which was told her by her half Polish half Russian grand father.

The story of “Unbearable Story” series is base on the story about a peasant woman who breastfed a bear cub…

I am not sure if that woman was somehow related to us (that is painful enough to get used to a bear feeding on human milk and more humiliating to know that some of you ancestors were slaves). The story was about gruesome Landlord that went hunting… Mind you that I am talking about Imperial Russia of 18-19 centuries – Russian Serfdom.

So, the Landlord (pomeschik) went hunting and killed a bear.
Later he realized that it was a so called shebear and there was a small bear cub left behind screaming of hunger… That cruel man somehow felt sorry for a bear cub and took it to his estate where was a young peasant woman - a mother. The human baby was replaced by a bear cub, so it could survive…

Shocking!

On one side I had that maybe great, great, great, grand mother – bear cub feeding peasant who was freed from Serfdom in 1861. On other side in my distant relatives fighting for the freedom of poles from being conscripted to Imperial Russian Army. In the aftermath of the uprising many Poles were deported to Siberia.

Mother told me how Mitrofan (her grand father) was a head of a huge family; he had five sons and 2 daughters. They also had their own families. With so many hands in a family Mitrofan had a substantial income from the land they owned. This extended family (2-3 layers of generations) lived in a huge house owning a number of stock.
Mitrofan’s brother was a bolshevic. When the “Second Serfdom” came – era of collectivization (when the land and everything was taken away from people to combine it into common ownership…) People who had “plenty” were so called “kulaks” it defines better-off peasants who were labeled as a class enemy of the poorer peasants.

Brother decided to warn Mitrofan that he will be soon “raskulachen” – means taken everything and send to a labour camp with the whole family…which happened indeed with the family from my father’s side…

Mitrofan decided that by splitting his property between individuals in a family they separately will not qualify as “kulak” – that move really saved the family…
But not for long until another disaster came… WWII took all 5 sons

My sister thinks that it is one of those stories which are anecdotal and full of post revolutionary propaganda to showcase how bad it was in Russian Serfdom.

I am deeply sorry for the souls of those who kill, enslave and command millions of souls.
I believe that they possess a dead soul themselves. The Unbearable Story is to remind of inhumane acts made against humans and animals. It is also about the power of love and humanity.