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[Discussion by members of the H-Russia List about the new Holodomor
Annotated Bibliography by Cheryl A. Madden is also posted here]
The Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc.
New York, New York, May, 2003
The Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc., New York, New York, recently
published a detailed annotated bibliography, The Ukrainian Famine
(Holodomor) of 1932-1933, and Aspects of Stalinism: An Annotated
Bibliography-in-Progress in the English Language.
This bibliography, compiled by Cheryl A. Madden of Providence College,
Rhode Island, details significant features of more than 100 English sources
regarding the Holodomor.
As its Introduction explains, the Famine did not take place in isolation
from concurrent national and international political, domestic, and
economic conditions. How the Famine took place, and, more significantly,
why, are questions more easily comprehended by examining the ways in
which many socio-political realities combined to cause the Famine to occur,
and to exacerbate its horrors as the victims lost their struggle to survive.
The bibliography provides specific details of charts, graphs,
photo-documents, illustrations unique to each item assessed, and, by doing
so, provides an effective guide to the Holodomor, its origins, and its
aftermath.
The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933, and Aspects of
Stalinism: An Annotated Bibliography-in-Progress in the English Language
can be viewed at the website of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc. at
this address: http://shevchenko.org/famine.
In early April of 2003, Ms. Madden presented the Bibliography during a
panel discussion about the Holodomor at the International Convention of the
Association for the Study of the Nationalities, at the Harriman Institute,
Columbia University, in New York City.
She is compiling a second section of the Bibliography that will be dedicated
to assessing scholarly articles on the subject.
RESPONSES FROM MEMBERS OF THE H-RUSSIA LIST
1. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography H-RUSSIA Response One--
By Grover Furr, Montclair SU
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Pretty" prettyd@winthrop.edu
To: H-RUSSIA@h-net.msu.edu
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: Holodomor Annotated Bibliography
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 11:18:42 -0400
From: "Grover Furr,Fastmail" furrg_nj@fastmail.fm
This seems to be a very selective bibliography.
* It omits H-RUSSIA listmember Mark Tauger's fundamental works
altogether.
* It slights the work by Douglas Tottle, _Fraud, Famine and Fascism_
with a very short commentary, although Tottle's book is the major expose
in print of the film "Harvest of Despair" and also a significant criticism
of Conquest's book _Harvest of Despair_.
* It omits the article by Jeff Coplon, "In Search of a SOVIET HOLOCAUST:
A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right," Village Voice, Jan. 12, 1988,
which quotes renowned historians such as Lynne Viola and Moshe Lewin in
criticism of Conquest's book (on the web at:
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html)
* It omits entirely the series "The Hoax of the 1932-33 Ukraine Famine",
which has normal academic documentation and is no more politically
charged than many of the Ukrainian nationalist works that are cited in
it (on the web at http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/ukfam1.html).
All these works have been discussed on this list, most of them more than
once.
Their omission raises the question of what else may have been omitted.
In any case, it seriously vitiates the usefulness of this bibliography,
and imparts to it a Ukrainian nationalist bias that is as inimical to
scholarly objectivity as a purely communist bibliography would be.
Sincerely, Grover Furr, Montclair SU
2. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography H-RUSSIA Response Two--
By David R. Marples, University of Alberta
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Pretty" prettyd@winthrop.edu
To: H-RUSSIA@h-net.msu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: Holodomor Annotated Bibliography
Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 15:24:15 -0600
From: "David R. Marples" David.Marples@ualberta.ca
Concerning Grover Furr's comments, on the annotated bibliography of the
Ukraine Famine of 1932-33, I would suggest that non-academic works be
excluded from the list altogether. If one does this, however, then while
Tauger's works should be added to it, those of Tottle and Coplon and
"The Hoax" article should not. Tottle in fact denied the existence of the
Famine. His book (Progress Publishers, Toronto) appeared practically at
the same time that Ukrainian party leader Shcherbytsky publicly
acknowledged the Famine in December 1987 and the book was subsequently
withdrawn from circulation. There were published reports about the Famine
earlier in 1987 both in Moscow and Kyiv newspapers.
I don't think any serious scholar today denies the existence of the
Famine. The disputes centre on its causes. These vary from an authentic
Soviet grain crisis (Tauger), border disputes between Ukraine and Russia
(cited by Terry Martin), and a deliberate attempt to starve Ukrainian
peasants that was linked to a national resurgence in Ukraine (Conquest,
Mace, and others). Among the Ukrainian authorities today the latter reason
is regarded as the most credible, as exemplified by the declaration of the
Kuchma government that the Famine was an act of genocide. The Communists
in parliament oppose this declaration, but they do not deny the Famine
occurred, or the massive loss of lives.
Today there is substantial documentation on the Famine in party archives
in Ukraine in particular. These can be found at both the central and
regional levels. Collections of documents have been published in Ukraine
since 1990, as have eyewitness accounts. A topic of such substance and
horrifying loss of life cannot be dealt with adequately without
consultation of these sources. Mark Tauger has focused on primary source
materials in Ukraine and his opinions--whether or not one agrees with
them--deserve respect. The same cannot be said of the writings of Coplon,
Tottle, and others that are based more on Ukrainophobia and polemics than
a quest for objective answers.
Regards, David R. Marples, Professor of History, Department of History
and Classics University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA T6G 2H4,
Tel. 780-492-0851 Fax 780-492-9125
3. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography H-RUSSIA Response Three--
By Lou Coatney, Macomb, Illinois
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Pretty" prettyd@winthrop.edu
To: H-RUSSIA@h-net.msu.edu
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: Holodomor Annotated Bibliography
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 22:04:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lou Coatney cl52@yahoo.com
I must disagree with David Marples strongly. Nonacademic works
*should* be included on the Ukrainian Famine bibliography, in part
because the tragedy got so relatively little attention in the past and
"nonacademic" work might have information not available elsewhere.
As to revisionist/denial works about the Ukrainian Famine, they too
should be included even if under a heading to that effect. Bibliographers
have every right to judge such works on such topics.
The Library of Congress even has the heading:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Errors, inventions, etc.
for books like Butz's HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY,
attempting to deny the Nazi Holocaust happened.
Incidentally, the Library of Congress has a position paper on the
Ukrainian Famine at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.html
which estimates the dead at 6-7 million people. Is there any serious
question the death toll was that high?
Lou Coatney, Macomb, Illinois, http://LCoat.tripod.com
4. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography H-RUSSIA Response Four--
By Elizabeth Haigh, Saint Mary's University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Pretty" prettyd@winthrop.edu
To: H-RUSSIA@h-net.msu.edu
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 9:40 AM
Subject: Holodomor Annotated Bibliography
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 17:01:13 -0300
From: Elizabeth Haigh Elizabeth.Haigh@smu.ca
In his protest against Cheryl Madden's bibliography on the subject
of the 1932-33 Ukrainian collectivization fame, Grover Furr mentions the
works of Tauger, Tottle, Coplon and an article entitled "The Hoax". He
gives web addresses to the latter two. I read them with great
interest. Their venomous anti-Ukrainian tone is breathtaking. The
vitriol positively crackled on my screen. There are not many national
or racial groups left which one can publicly attack so enthusiastically
with impunity. The authors simply equate "Ukrainian nationalism" with
"fascism". They hurl scurrilous epithets particularly at Robert Conquest
and James Mace, dismissing them as "faminologists", "right-wing plemicists"
and just simply bad researchers - all nonsense! Is Furr seriously promoting
this slander as scholarship?
Dr. Marples argues that Mark Tauger's work deserves more
consideration than the above. As subscribers to H-Net know, Tauger
denies that the 1932-33 famine was specifically Ukrainian or genocidal
in intent. Most intriguingly, he dismisses the multitudes of eye
witness accounts as a kind of "false memory syndrome". (It cannot be
easy in the twentieth century to produce famine in the area of the
world's richest soil, weather conditions notwithstanding. That the
Bolsheviks managed to do so on a truly grand scale at least three times
testifies to a real talent).
Ms. Madden has done an admirable and long-overdue service in
producing the bibliography and she is able to defend what she includes
or rejects in it. However, like Professor Furr and unlike Professor
Marples, I can see the point of adding all of the above works to it.
Indeed, I would go further and suggest including citations to the
contemporary reports which the notorious Walter Duranty wrote for the
_New York Times_ denying the famine altogether, for which he was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Such a section supplementing the bibliography
could be entitled something like "Holocaust Deniers" or "Useful Idiots."
Elizabeth V. Haigh, Professor of History
Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
5. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography H-RUSSIA Response Five:
by Grover Furr, Montclair, SU
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Pretty" prettyd@winthrop.edu
To: H-RUSSIA@h-net.msu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: Holocaust Annotated Bibliography
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 09:25:06 -0400
From: "Grover Furr, Fastmail" furrg_nj@fastmail.fm
Prof. Haigh wrote:
"In his protest against Cheryl Madden's bibliography on the subject
of the 1932-33 Ukrainian collectivization fame, Grover Furr mentions the
works of Tauger, Tottle, Coplon and an article entitled "The Hoax". He
gives web addresses to the latter two. I read them with great
interest. Their venomous anti-Ukrainian tone is breathtaking..."
[Grover Furr writes in reply.]
There are not many national or racial groups left which one can publicly
attack so enthusiastically with impunity.
It's important to realize that the Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated
with the Nazis were a very small percentage of all Ukrainians, the vast
majority of whom fought on the Soviet side during WW2.
Outside the USSR there were strong pro-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists
groups -- for instance, in both Canada and the US. Tottle drew much of
his information about Ukrainian nationalism in Canada from contacts
among the PRO-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists there, particularly in
Manitoba. The pro- and anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist organizations
were very hostile to one another.
Therefore, to criticize the right-wing Ukrainian Nationalist groups is
not at all to attack Ukrainians generally as a "national or racial
group," as Prof. Haigh alleges.
Robert Conquest's work on the Ukrainian famine has been sharply
attacked not only by pro-Soviet researchers like Tottle, but also by
mainstream historians such as Moshe Lewin, Alexander Dallin, Lynne
Viola -- who cited in Coplon's _Village Voice_ article and in the PLP
series. The case that Conquest's scholarship is bad cannot simply be
dismissed as evidence of bias.
As for racism, Prof. John A. Armstrong, an authority on Ukrainian
nationalism and a staunch anti-communist, has written: "The theory and
teachings of the Nationalists were very close to Fascism, and in some
respects, such as the insistence on `racial purity,' even went beyond
the original Fascist doctrines."
[Prof. Haigh wrote:]
Is Furr seriously promoting this slander as scholarship?
[Prof. Furr writes in reply:]
It's not "slander" at all. And, yes, it is serious scholarship. Tottle
did his homework, identifying many of the photos used in the Ukrainian
Nationalist film "Harvest of Despair" as having been taken from the
Volga famine of 1921. Tottle successfully debunks the film as history.
The fact that Tottle is pro-Soviet no more disqualifies his work as
scholarship than an anti-Soviet bias would.
Sincerely, Grover Furr, Montclair SU
6. Holodomor Annotated Bibliography Response Six: by James Mace, Kyiv, Ukraine (Was not posted on H-RUSSIA)
H-RUSSIA LIST DISCUSSION OF THE NEW UKRAINIAN FAMINE
(HOLODOMOR) OF 1932-1933 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Letter to the Editor of UKRAINE REPORT 2003, E. Morgan
Williams
Ukraine Market Reform Group, Washington, D.C.
By Prof. James Mace, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 2, 2003
Concerning the discussion on H-Russia List about Cheryl Madden's
"The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 and Aspects of
Stalinism-New Bibliography: A Detailed Annotated Bibliography-in-
Progress in the English Language
Dear Morgan,
Thank you for disseminating the H-Russia discussion of Cheryl Madden's,
"The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 and Aspects of
Stalinism-New Bibliography: A Detailed Annotated Bibliography-in-
Progress in the English Language" in your UKRAINE REPORT,
Number 49, May 25, 2003, Article 12. In that material I have seen
the comments and discussion by Grover Furr, David Marples, Lou
Coatney, and Elizabeth Haigh.
Bibliography is by its nature a thankless task because one either fails to
find something or leaves something out that somebody else thinks ought to
be left in.
Posting a bibliography in progress on the Internet is very brave but also
very clever, in that it allows the author to consider all the objections
before the work is hardened into a book. She has my compliments and
support, whatever that might be worth in view of the discussion that not
only leaves a bad aftertaste but could be a foretaste of something even
worse to come.
The argument made by Prof. Furr is a continuation of one originating in the
1980s. It first appeared in a document largely drafted in Kyiv, where I now
live, in the then Institute of Party History under the CC CPU, an affiliate
of the All-Union Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CC CPSU.
I know, because I later worked in that institute in a later incarnation, by
then already under the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, and met
some of the authors.
The institute, like all those inherited from the Soviet period, has evolved,
mutated, and trying hard to adapt to the new realities of a newly
independent state of a nation that has been deeply traumatized by one
of the two truly evil regimes of the twentieth century. Or perhaps, my
alleged Right-wing prejudices are showing through.
For drafting nineteen conclusions of the late unlamented US Commission of
the Ukrainian Famine, of which I was staff director, based primarily on an
analysis of the official Soviet Ukrainian press of the period along with
whatever else we could find, which is what historians, as I was taught the
craft, are supposed to do, then try to see how the fit together and try to
figure out what happened and why.
I heard that the research was sloppy and biased, that I was even falsifying
history, but nobody ever really explained why in a way that I could
understand. But it has often taken me some time to understand many things.
The second document was a statement made by one Ivan Khmil, a sometime
historian who had written about how the toiling peasantry had all wanted the
Bolsheviks to come and give them all the blessings of War Communism, but at
that time a member of the Ukrainian SSR delegation to the United Nations.
In 1983 he responded in the UN Third Committee to a remark by the
American representative mentioning the Ukrainian Famine, now called
Holodomor in these parts, with an outburst of which he was so proud that
he had it released as a separate press release and a couple of appearances
on the Foreign Service of Radio Kiev recorded in FBIS.
The specific references will be found in the Commission on the Ukraine
Famine, Report to Congress published in 1988 and available in any
repository of government documents, of which every state has to have
at least one.
Only later after moving here did I learn that Dr. Khmil had lost his own
parents in the Holodomor, but he showed himself to be a true soldier of
the Party, and if he wants his single appearance on the stage of his
nation's history to be so remembered, that is his affair and his posterity
are free to judge it accordingly.
The argument both in the Canadian press release issued over the signature of
then Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Yakovlev and Khmil's statement are as
follows, there was not famine but there was some hardship because of terror
and sabotage by kulaks (kurkuly in Ukrainian) along with bad weather. This
nonexistent famine was a lie made up by Nazi collaborators first to serve
their nefarious masters and then to justify their illegitimate presence in
the West.
Then came Coplon's article in The Village Voice. Both Robert Conquest
and I published our responses in subsequent issues of that publication, and
anyone interested can look them up.
This time the author went to a number of scholars from the then-fashionable
school of Soviet history dedicated to discredited the totalitarian model,
Cold War ideology, and maybe even get that next Soviet visa and carefully
limited archival access such as (1) Steven Wheatcroft, who in the mid-1980s
argued in "Problems of Communism" that when I argued what happened to
the Ukrainian countryside might have had something to do with what had
been happening up to that time in Ukraine as a country; (2) Roberta Manning,
who had written a number of interesting things about the pre-Revolutionary
Russian peasantry but whose major claim to expertise on collectivization
was a study published in the University of Pittsburgh's Carl Beck Papers
based on the archives of the Belyi raion suggesting that the collective farm
system had actually evolved due to some kind of informal dialog of power
between the regime and the peasants, which enabled the collective farm
system to evolve basically the way the peasants wanted it to; (3) Lynne
Viola, who only later came to the realization that those village women
resisting collectivization might have actually had a point; and (4) Moshe
Levin, who for all his classic work on early Stalinism seemed to have
some sort of problem with Ukrainians.
Coplon's response, was that nobody cited my works - strange that some
still do - and Wheatcroft had published in Soviet Studies, which I had as
well. The main argument, however, was once again that this was all a hoax
mage up by Nazi collaborators and Jew-killers, for who else could possibly
want a Ukraine independent from the Soviet Union or Russia?
Forgive me, most people in independent Ukraine, where I now reside find
this argument difficult to understand, but I think I have stated it fairly.
The argument was then brought to its fullest flower in book form by Douglas
Tottle, "Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler
to Harvard." The book was published in 1987 after a delay of over a year by
Progress Books of Toronto, the publishing outlet of the Communist Party of
Canada.
The delay had been caused, I later learned, because the opposition of
certain Ukrainian Communists in Canada and the US. Obviously, they
must have had something to do with Hitler as well, but due to their
continued opposition, it was then withdrawn from circulation.
I agree with Grover Furr in that such works should be included with
appropriate commentary in a bibliography on the Ukrainian genocide,
just as any bibliography on the holocaust should have an appropriate
selection on Holocaust denial.
What might be considered a transition work appeared in 1989: Stephan
Merl, "Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot von 1932-1933 zur Ausläng des
ukrainischen Nationalismus?" Jahrbücher für Geschichte Ostauropas,
XXVII:4 (1989), which, relying on Tottle, describes my work and
Conquest's as part of a campaign by Ukrainian nationalists to discredit
the Soviet Union and pillory liberal journalists like Walter Duranty.
His main argument was that the famine in Ukraine could not have been
aimed at Ukrainians because there was also famine in other parts of the
Soviet Union.
He dismissed the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, as part of the
Reagan campaign against the USSR as an evil empire without having
bothered to look up the legislative history and its work without having
bothered to read it, especially the chapter on famine outside Ukraine.
Is this serious scholarly discussion? Or is this simply an otherwise serious
scholar of the Russian peasantry dismissing something about which he
knows nothing without bothering to learn what the issues are?
How could the fate of Ukrainian peasants possibly have anything with the
political situation in the Ukrainian SSR of the period? It must be my bias
showing through again.
The work of Mark Tauger began with an article in Slavic Review in 1991
which makes the hardly original argument that the 1932 harvest was smaller
than anticipated or admitted. This was not even news when it happened,
because at the summer 1932 Third All-Ukrainian Party Conference the
Communists in Ukraine were making it as clear as they possibly could that
the quotas being imposed on them by Moscow could not possibly be met.
I wrote about this in the 1988 Report to Congress, that nobody seems to
have actually read. Now we have learned that Stanislav Kosior appealed
to Stalin as early as June of that year to lower the quotas.
However, Prof. Tauger goes on from this less than original discovery to
argue that since there was a "famine harvest," famine was unavoidable
and Stalin had no alternative but starve the peasants in order to feed the
cities and sell as much grain as possible abroad to pay for his grandiose
plans of industrialization.
Serious journals sometimes publish silly arguments, so please bear with me
while I explain why I did not take the argument seriously in 1991 and cannot
bring myself to do so today. There is a discipline called economics that was
once dubbed the dismal science because it tells you that you can't always
have everything you want when you want it.
You have to decide what you can afford now, what you will have to do
without, and what you would like to get rid of. The argument then becomes
why one choice or another is made and what the person making the choice
wants to happen given the range of possibilities at a given point in time.
Did Stalin have to take so much food from the countryside after the harvest
of 1932 that millions of people starve to death, blame the failure to find
non-existent grain on the local Communists being infiltrated by Petliurists,
Makhno supports, various other enemies, and use this to break the
Ukrainian SSR as a thing that had earlier been able to do things its own
way to at least some extent?
Did he have no alternative but orchestrate a mass hysteria against enemies
in general in connection with the Shakhty trial of 1928, force the peasants
into collective farms against their will while destroying the most
prosperous segment of the peasantry?
Did he have no alternative but to unleash the Great Terror of the Yezhov
period or turn against the Jews after World War II? Maybe we could also
argue that Hitler had no alternative but to kill the Jews because he needed
their property and gold teeth for his war effort to take over the world.
Somehow I find this line of argumentation prima facie specious. Yes, he
has done work in the archives, but the argument, even if one accepts his
facts, remains lame.
Sincerely, Jim
Letter to the Editor by Prof. James Mace, Kyiv, Ukraine
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