Maria (Ukrainian novel)

Maria (Ukrainian: Марія) 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.^[1] Maria, the first work of fiction to treat the Ukrainian famine, has been included in post-1991 Ukrainian school curricula.^[2]

Maria: A Chronicle of a Life

Author	Ulas Samchuk
Original title	Марія: хроніка одного життя : роман
Translator	Roma Franko
Genre	historical novel
Publication date	1934
Published in English	2011
ISBN	978-0-9877750-0-9 English translation

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.^[1] 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".^[2] Behind Maksym, as the 'Other' bearing ultimate responsibility for the famine, lies the Soviet state centered in Moscow. "Our country has not known such a Tsar-like plundering", exclaims one tortured character.^[2]

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

• Samchuk, Ulas (2011). Cipwynk, Paul (ed.). Maria: A Chronicle of a Life. Translated by Franko, Roma. Language Lanterns Publications Inc. ISBN 978-0-9877750-0-9.