My great-grandfather Artem Maximovich Chibalo was born in the Golovkivka village in Cherkashchyna, Ukraine. It's hard to imagine how hard things were back then, but things were hard. In 1867, which may or may not have been the year he was born but is close, record-keeping was neither good nor complete. The Tsar controlled things, but for all his control, not much or many of the benefits accrued to the country's rural people.