[hourislate]

I really doubt there is any truth to that. I'm pretty sure they would have sustained themselves on Buckwheat, Boar, other game, cabbage, and over the last few hundred years, Potato.

They may have all slept together in one room around a fire and spent more time indoors during the winter but there is no way they hibernated. If that were the case millions in Ukraine would have survived Stalin's intentional famine (Holodomor). Families could have simply just rode it out sleeping and eating a piece of bread.