Categories: Confessional and international relations, Mikhail Hichanski

And what were the relations between the people and officers and police at that time?

But I… we even didn’t see this police. Roughly once a week I could see a policeman riding a bicycle. He dismounted a bicycle... and asked the village head: «Well, do you have here?..» We used to have a look at somebody’s kitchen garden; home-grown tobacco and home-made vodka were not allowed. He just showed up and rode the bicycle off. Once I don’t remember what year it was, a car, first car like a all-terrain vehicle closed with a tent-cloth rode past. And we watched what was it? And we ran behind, kneed to take a smell of plume. The smell was very unusual. We even didn’t understand that it was fuel agent burning, well, petrol.

Were the young people from your village drafted into the Polish military?

Yes, they were. What I remember is... It’s interesting I even knew him by sight, when he, Rutsko Anatoli, came back from the Polish army, he served in the cavalry. He was such a… like a showoff. He was tall, handsome; he had these ... spurs, box calf boots, spurs, a cavalry sword sidewise. He had a nice hat; there was an eagle on it. He was walking through the village like he is not himself, and we, guys, were behind him. And when he started dancing, he even, oh my God… The other such a person was Kolya Yakhimchik. He was a foot soldier. He also had such a belt, a special bayonet. He also wore such a stag-headed hat. They came from… So, what else, when these g…girls gathered together, sang different songs. When I came … to the village at that time so I had a harmonica. We sang such a song «Ruchey plyvyot i ya mechtayu». Well, I don’t know who composed it, but there were just few songs. What would you sing, so they sang it. What should the guys do? So they gathered at the beginning of the vi…village, the street was narrow. There were girls sitting there and the boys were sitting along the outer walls of the peasant’s house «Let’s sing songs!» So they… Sometimes they sang Polish songs, I knew only one Polish song, so they did. «O mój rozmarynie, rozwijaj się». If somebody knew this song they sang along with them; so they sang this song.