Krum Grigorov

I was very young when I heard the October Revolution and Lenin's name mentioned. It was at the end of World War I. I heard that things were not going well for us at the front, and in our village the number of widows was increasing. A week would pass and a cry would be heard from some house. Grandma, dejected and despondent, would begin to cross herself - she had three sons who were soldiers - and grandfather would look down on her and, as dry and witty as he was, would snarl through his teeth: - And pray to your God - all that. War, a human slaughter.... Whoever conceived it, his mother's fault. Hunger was roaming the poor houses, hungry throats were hard to fill, and the mayor and the secretary-tax collector would go around the neighborhoods and requisition any draft animals they could find.