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Book Review by Dr. James Mace, Professor of Political Science
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University, Kyiv, Ukraine
Written for UKRAINE REPORT 2003
www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS)
Kyiv, Ukraine and Washington, D.C., Monday, July 28, 2003
The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933: The Eyewitness Accounts of Those
who Survived, Compiled by Yury Mytsyk, Kyiv, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Publishing House, in Ukrainian 2003, 296 p.
Mytsyk, Rev. Iurii, ed. Ukrains'kyi holokost 1932-1993: Svidchennia tykh,
khto vyzhyv. Kyiv: Vydavnychyi dim "KM Akademiia," 2003. 296 pp.
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"Sometimes the most brilliant thing is to do the most obvious. Yury Mytsyk,
a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox priest and professor of history of the
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University, did an obvious and simultaneously
brilliant thing. A specialist in the Cossack period of Ukrainian history,
which is devilishly complicated, he told his students before vacation that
they could make up for one paper - students do not love having to write such
things - if they would go home, find someone old enough to remember the
things that happened in 1933 to them and those around them, and turn it in.
"The result is a book that deserves to be read by all who know Ukrainian.
Father/Professor Mytsyk, a gentleman who is good at both the scholarly and
priestly professions, gave some guidelines and sent his students out to see
what they could find. They found a great deal.
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PROF. JAMES MACE
Photo By Mykola LAZARENKO, The Day
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"The art and science of history in the former Soviet Union has been skewed
by what might be called the cult of authoritative sources. It all goes back
to one Mr. Trotsky, who in 1923 wrote a quite interesting book called The
Lessons of October, which the then ruling triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev,
and Kameniev ganged up on him to discredit by sending out a directive that
only officially approved collections of documents are authoritative and thus
permissible for use by historians.
"This quickly served the purpose of demonstrating that the Red Army was
organized without the presence of any Comrade Trotsky and training
historians to believe that their job was to think only what superiors wanted
them to think but to be able to find all the relevant documents in the
archives needed to show how correct the latest decision of the Central
Committee might be. Of course, these documents were written by clerks,
who wrote them according to the formulas demanded by their superiors,
framing the relevant facts in the required manner.
"In the West, history is not considered a hard science on the order of
chemistry or physics, but something like a detective novel in which one
tries to piece together all sorts of sources of information in order to get
at the most likely explanation of what really happened. My post-Soviet
colleagues sometimes express amazement that their Sovietological
colleagues could find things out from newspapers.
"The fact is that in a totalitarian regime, the newspapers might have a
great deal of propaganda, but they also tell people what the regime wants
them to know and what is expected from them. The archives then give us
a great deal of information that the people in general were not supposed
to know. And then - while it lasts - we can turn to the memories of people
who sometimes knew more than they were officially supposed to.
"Memoirs, of course, have to be handled with care. Memory is selective;
sometimes people lie to themselves the same as they cheat at solitaire, and
sometimes they simply forget things we might prefer that they remember.
Nobody is a villain in his own mind, even if other people might have viewed
him or her as such. Still, the fact remains that memory can tell us thing
that the clerks writing their documents, dutifully preserved in archives,
cannot or would not. Interviews are a substitute for memoirs from people
who would otherwise not write them. People die, and we try to get from
them what we can and what they deem worthy of passing on.
"The documents presented in the volume under review were clearly edited.
Whether is was due to the efforts of the students themselves or at a later
stage, old people in the village simply do not speak such flawless literary
Ukrainian as presented here. Still, the content is broadly in conformity
with and thus confirms The Oral History Project of the Commission on the
Ukraine Famine (Washington, GPO, 1990), which is easily available in any
repository of US government documents.
"There are those who argue that the 1932 harvest was so bad that Stalin had
no choice but to starve the peasants to death in order to feed the workers.
They even cite literature to indicate that eyewitnesses sometimes make
mistakes, which, of course, they do. Let them read those who lived through
this period.
"It is unlikely that so many people unknown to each other made the same
mistake or agreed upon the same lie. Asking people about what happened
in order to critically utilize it in order to ascertain what happened is an
old methodology going back to an ancient Greek called Thucydides. His
work has stood the test of time, as I trust will that of my colleague and
friend, Yury Mytsyk." [UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 75, Dr. James
Mace, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 28, 2003]
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The following information taken from the book
"Ukrainian Holocaust 1932-1933" was translated from Ukrainian to
English by Vlad Lavrov for the www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service
(ARTUIS) in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The book "Ukrainian Holocaust 1932-1933. Testimonies of Those Who
Survived" compiled by Rev. Yury Mytsyk contains more than 200 testimonies
of the witnesses to the Famine of that period from all of the regions that
were part of Soviet Ukraine at that time.
The testimonies were recorded over the period of 10 years by students of
the Donetsk State University and the National University 'Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy' where Yury Mytsyk taught history classes.
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(Click on image to enlarge it)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
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1.Dmytro Tabachnyk. The tragedy of Holodomor in witnesses' recollections;
2. From the compiler; 3.Vinnytsia Region; 4.Donetsk Region; 5.
Dnipropetrovsk Region; 6.Zhytomyr Region; 7.Zaporizhzha Region; 8.Kyiv
Region; 9.Kyrovohrad Region; 10.Mykolayiv Region; 11.Odessa Region; 12.
Poltava Region; 13.Sumy Region; 14.Kharkiv Region; 15.Kherson Region; 16.
Khmelnytsky Region; 17.Cherkassy Region; 18.Chernihiv Region; 19.Ukrainian
districts of the Russian Federation
APPENDICES:
From the family chronicle of the compiler
From the article by Y. Mytsyk "History Not By the Textbooks"
From the article by Vasyl Skrypka "Eradication by Hunger"
From the book by D. Chub "The Echo of the Great Famine in Recollections
of Witnesses and in Ukrainian Literature"
From the article-memoir by H. Suhak "A Piece from the Dump"
From the materials discovered in the archives by F. Shepel'
Our Hope in
God. Address of the Ukrainian Catholic Bishop's Office In Relation to
Famine 1933 in Ukraine 1946-1947
Testimonies of Witnesses
Article by Y. Mytsyk "To the native, not one's own land"
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ONE TESTIMONY FROM THE BOOK:
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Vinnytsya Region: Rodionova (Matejko), Daryna Arsentievna, b. 1920
(Recorded by Pavlo Korenchenko, a student of the Donetsk State University)
"I was born in the village of Sadova, Mohyliv-Podilsky district of Vinnytsya
Region, now living in the city of Dnipropetrovsk. Finished seven grades.
We had a four-grades school. Afterwards we had to walk five kilometers to
the neighboring village of Skazentsi. There was a small Orthodox church in
the village.
Parents: Matejko Aksentiy Yefremovych, and Natalka Fedorivna-kolkhoz
members. The village was large, 350 houses. Either in 1928 or 1930 the
kolkhoz named after Stalin was organized. Until 1930 we had been
individuals farmers]. We did not have Communists in our village then. We
were sent the head of the kolkhoz, Slavinsky. The supervisor was ours,
Harafon Malifanchuk.
We had a warm summer, no draught. The hunger was terrible. People were
swollen because of hunger and were dying out in the streets, the corpses
were scattered down the fences. My close relatives survived. There were also
cannibals in the village. Mother, grandmother, and daughter ate their sons
and grandson. Don't remember their last name.
Activists [of grain confiscation] were both ours and sent ones, they were
walking into all the huts. The activists: Huba Fedir-the sent one,
Herasymliuk Yavtukh, Herasymliuk Semen, Totarchuk Yavtukh-ours. Nobody
moved to our village. Nobody run away during the famine. We were surviving
on the beet roots, nettle, [...], sometimes we happened to have grain.
The campaign against the kulaks had taken place since 1928-1930. They were
sent to Siberia, undressed and barefooted. The kulaks: Franchuk Astafiy,
Franchuk Andriy, Franchuk Sava, Bilokin' Yavtukh, Bilokin' Fedir (he had a
small hut, almost ground-level). The one who had a horse and a couple of
oxen, or vice versa. And our kulaks neither had large huts, nor mills, nor
hired hands." [End of the personal testimony found on page 19.]
Each student wishing to participate in the assignment was advised to use
the following basic questionnaire that was developed by the Canadian and
Ukrainian scientists:
1. Name, middle name, sex of the respondent.
2. Date, place of birth.
3. Where were you during the famine?
4. Education.
5. Did you have a passport during Holodomor?
6. Name, size, location of the village.
7. Was there a church, school at the village?
8. When did collectivization began at the village? When a Kolkhoz was
created?
9. Who was the head of a Kolkhoz?
10. Were you a member of the Kolkhoz? Since when?
11. What amount of the produce you had to give to the state?
12. Did you have a Motor Tractor Station in your village?
13. Did you have a bread procurement station in your village?
14. What was the size of your land plots?
15. Was there a deportation of village people?
16. What were the climate conditions?
17. How people survived during the famine?
18. How many people died during the famine?
19. Where did the bread disappear?
20. Did anybody go out of the village to search for bread?
21. Did anybody come to your village to search for bread?
23. Do you agree to publish or archive this data?
To this basic questionnaire the students were suggested to include data as
to the campaign against kulaks, and one's own impressions about the
famine. It was recomended to document the testimonies as fully as possible.
The publication of the book was supported by the Program of Eastern
Ukrainian Studies named after the Kovalskies of the Canadian Institute
of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta (Edmonton); Ukrainian Studies
Departments Foundation (USA); Closed Joint Stock Company "Rise";
"Siveriansky Litopys" Magazine; and the Congregation of the
Annunciation Cathedral (Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv
Patriarchy) at the National University 'Kyiv Mohyla Academy.'
EDITOR'S NOTE: COPIES OF THE BOOK ARE AVAILABLE
Copies of the new book The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933 in
Ukrainian are available from ArtUkraine Information Service (ARTUIS).
If you are interested please send an e-mail to ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
and we will send information to you about how to order the book.
The above book review, information and distribution of the new book is part
of our extensive work during 2003 to provide information around the world to
commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-1933.
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