Southern Ukraine, February, 1932

The crowd was assembled outside Mayor Petrovsky’s house near the Headquarters for the People’s Ukrainian Comintern. The village had been without food for six weeks, and the people were now getting desperate. Mrs. Petrovsky was boiling down leather belts, hats, coats and shoes, and then selling the "broth" to villagers for two rubles a bowl. A trapper from the Ural Mountains had, one month earlier, carried in a freshly killed deer on his horse, and he was almost immediately assassinated for "the common good of the town."

During the raging blizzards of the Ukraine’s worst winter ever, the villagers had eaten all of the livestock, pets and other farm animals, and they were now devouring whatever rats and other vermin they could catch inside their cottages. In addition, any "strangers" from outside their community were being assassinated as political enemies, and then they were secretly being cooked and distributed in neatly wrapped, warm bundles by Mrs. Petrovsky for the survival of the starving community.

The four village leaders who were assembled inside Mayor Petrovsky’s house knew they had to come up with some fast solutions. The villagers were again angry and shouting for food outside the mayor’s house, and the four male members of Stalin’s Communist Ukrainian Cell knew that they had to come up with a way to feed the masses, or else they themselves would become victims of this raging community of cannibals standing outside in the snow, drunk on vodka and as hungry as ravenous wolves.

Vladimir Vladiev, 42, was the officer in charge of the national prison compound on the edge of town. Anatoly Lagrosky, 36, was the local postmaster. David Staskov, 28, was the head of the Communist Youth League. Mayor Fedor Petrovsky, 53, a veteran of World War I, was the government-appointed spokesman for the Marxist/Leninist Council in Moscow.

The men stood around a large, pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, rubbing their hands together and stomping their boots to stay warm. Staskov spoke first. He was the youngest and the most frightened. His blonde hair was neatly parted in the middle, and he wore a mink overcoat and cap. David had the largest vocabulary of the group, as he also taught in the secondary school’s gymnasium. "I say we select someone who has already been deemed an Enemy of the People. It is not our prerogative to say who is an enemy and who is not."

Petrovsky wrapped his freckled arm around the youth’s shoulders and gave him a hug. "Nicely phrased, comrade! I couldn’t have put it better myself! But who do we know that is an enemy?"

Vladiev cleared his throat. His long beaver coat had the governmental look of regimental tailors. He was the shortest man of the four, and the lowest in status, and he spoke with a stammer. "There’s a family named Chikatilo who l. . .lives near the p . . . p . . . prison."

Lagrosky, a postal inspector and the Stalin government’s official censor, was a huge man, almost seven feet tall, and he spoke with authority. "Yes, indeed! Chikatilo was a traitor in the trenches during the war with the Japanese monkeys. He was caught selling maps of our military positions while he was in the Jap prison near Manchuria. I concur with Vladiev. This family is a blight on the people. The oldest son has been caught selling pornographic photos of his sister and younger brother. The whole family refuses to attend local cell meetings."

"Then it’s settled," said Petrovsky, tossing more sticks into the flaming belly of the stove.

"Let’s drink on it," said Vladiev, and he walked over to a small table near the door. He picked up the leather-wrapped bottle and took a deep swig, then he wiped off the spout on his fur coat and passed it to Lagrosky. The postal inspector raised the bottle into the air and shouted, "Nastrovia!"

One by one, each man drank from the bottle and swore his allegiance to the evil code of starvation justice brought about by the famine and the world economic depression.