Bitter Harvest

Ivan Kachaniuk defends his family in the Central Ukraine wheat and sunflower farming outskirts of Smila. The act establishes a resilient, frontier-minded life for his family and signals the constant pressure from outside threats. His protection sets the tone for the family’s struggle to endure future upheavals.

Years later, in 1932, Yuriy marries his childhood sweetheart Natalka and studies at the Kyiv Art Academy. Their family remains independent Cossack farmers, living off grain and sunflowers as the era’s upheavals loom. The looming collectivization hints at the impending loss of cultural and economic autonomy.

The State Art Institute is forced to replace art instructors with communist officials who censor creative expression and condemn Ukrainian cultural identity as anti-Soviet. Yuriy responds with disgust and storms out, signaling a break between artistic freedom and political control. This shift foreshadows broader suppression of national culture.

During a memorial in a pub for a friend who committed suicide, a half-drunk Soviet captain insults Ukrainian folklore, music, songs, and dance, sparking a street-ready brawl. Yuriy defends himself by stabbing the captain in self-defense, and the incident leads to his arrest. He is imprisoned in a brutal Soviet facility that targets Ukrainian dissidents.

In a brutal Soviet prison, Yuriy shares a cell with Ukrainian kurkuli and other Ukrainians deemed enemies by the state. He witnesses daily mass executions from his cell, underscoring the regime's severity. Commissar Medvedev dictates that Yuriy paint his portrait in exchange for food and survival, a grim bargain that tightens the noose around him.

During a second sitting, Yuriy kills the prison director by stabbing him in the throat with a paintbrush. He then dons the commissar’s Russian uniform, seizes a pistol, and escapes as Bolshevik guards pursue him through a raging blizzard. The dramatic breakout underscores the peril of resistance under the regime.

Back in Smila, Natalka endures the terror of farm director Commissar Sergei Koltsov, who attempts to rape her and uses food as leverage. Natalka poisons his borscht with wild mushrooms and joins other peasant women in a Babsi revolt. Koltsov survives, and he orders Bolshevik troops to crush the uprising.

Koltsov’s forces quell the revolt, and Yuriy’s family and the villagers are imprisoned in the church, which becomes their torture chamber. The church, once a sacred space, becomes a site of fear and control under the regime. The community’s resistance is met with brutal punishment.

In the northern Kyivan forests Yuriy meets Lubko, a desperate, hungry boy, and the two form a bond while helping each other toward Smila. They are soon joined by the Kholodnyi Yar Ukrainian Cossack detachment, creating a renewed surge of resistance. The forest journey marks a turning point in Yuriy's fight for his people.

The detachment engages in a brutal morning battle against Bolshevik forces, with Gatling guns cutting down combatants on both sides. The fighting demonstrates the severe cost of resistance and the ruthlessness of the campaign. Yuriy and his allies endure heavy losses as they press on.

Yuriy and Lubko slip aboard a cattle train filled with starved Ukrainians, witnessing mass starvation along roadsides and in pits. The famine scene underscores the human toll of the regime's policies. Near Smila, they hijack a grain truck with a sympathetic Bolshevik driver to bring relief to villagers, continuing their struggle to survive.

Chased onto another cattle train of corpses bound for pits, Yuriy and his companions flee toward the Soviet border and the Zbruch River. They dive underwater to cross into Polish-controlled West Ukraine and push toward Lviv, hoping priest Andrey Sheptytsky might exchange Ukraine's vast pastures for the prairies of Manitoba, Canada.