Nadiia

Nadiia was born on July 13, 1920, in Antoniv village in the Kyiv countryside. The Russian Civil War had swept through the region twice in the previous two years, but by that summer the fighting had moved south and the fields could be planted again. Her family were Ukrainian-speaking middle peasants who farmed their own land and kept livestock. The house held three generations: her parents, Hryhorii and Kateryna, and Hryhorii’s parents, Andrii and Marfa.

Kateryna had already buried a first baby, Mykola, in 1918. After that loss she watched Nadiia closely: quick hands for wiping a runny nose, a palm on the child’s chest at night to feel her breathing. Hryhorii worked the fields from spring through autumn; in winter he repaired tools and harnesses in the barn while Andrii fed the livestock. When Nadiia learned to walk she followed her grandfather to the cow shed, and he let her hold the bucket while he milked.

Religion stayed quiet and indoors. The new authorities had sent officials to inventory church property, and the village priest, Batiushka Oleksii, visited families less often than before. Marfa kept an icon corner in the house with a small oil lamp and images of Christ and the Mother of God. Before meals she crossed herself and murmured short prayers, then set bread on the table.

The yard was busy: hens underfoot, a cow to be milked, water carried from the well. In the spring of 1923 Nadiia followed Marfa to scatter grain and insisted on bringing her own little cup of feed. She named a yellow chick “Kurka” and checked it each morning, pushing past the threshold to peer into the nesting box.

Petro was born in 1922, and Nadiia treated him as a toy and a duty. By late summer 1924 she brought folded cloths when Kateryna asked, then patted Petro’s back too hard while trying to hush him. She dragged him by the hand to the doorway to watch carts creak along the road.

That same year Kateryna delivered another son, Ivan. He took a fever within weeks and died before autumn. Marfa kept the icon lamp lit longer after dark, and Kateryna watched her remaining children with sharper attention through the winter.

Measles reached Antoniv in early March 1925. Several children in the village fell ill within days. Nadiia broke out in rash and then developed pneumonia. Kateryna rubbed her chest with goose fat and kept her wrapped in blankets near the stove. Petro caught a milder case and recovered within the week. Nadiia did not. She died on March 16, 1925.

Kateryna and Marfa washed her body, dressed her in a clean embroidered shirt, and laid her before the icon corner. Batiushka Oleksii came to read prayers, and they buried her in the village cemetery beside her brothers.