The first two decades of research famine in Ukraine: peculiarities of sources and historiography - Статья

THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF RESEARCH FAMINE IN UKRAINE: PECULIARITIES OF SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY Gudz Viktor The communist authority concealed the fact of the artificial famine of 1932- 1933 and banned its investigation until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because the truth about this terrible event first extended studied only in the countries of the «free world». The aim of the presented paper - study to analyze the features of the Holodomor in Ukraine in the first twenty years after the tragedy. Subject reviewed on the basis of the whole complex of historical sources available, taking into account the latest achievements of world historical science. The features of the formation of scientific discourse on the history of the famine of 1932-1933 in the first historiographic stage clarifyted and its chronological limits exactled. The process increment amount of historical sources and the development of scientific knowledge on the history of hunger observed. We concluded that the source base on the history offamine during this period was limited chifly memories of eyewitnesses of the disaster Ukrainian village and abroad periodicals materials. However, in the first twenty years of studying the history of the Great Famine, were thorough analytical work that laid the conceptual basis for further research topics. Emphasized that the vast array of publications on topics in 1933-1952 requires further analysis of sources and historiographical reflection. Keywords: historiography stage, Holodomor in Ukraine, source, scientific publications. The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор) was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed an officially estimated 7 million people (other estimates range as low as 5 million). Yet, in the private conversation with the directors of the great Britain Embassy Mr. Duranty stated that the population of Ukraine because of the famine reduced by 4-5 million, and the total number of the famine victims was about 10 million [40, 310]. Sergio Gradenigo, an Italian royal consul, who was in Ukraine for a long time, considered the famine purposeful genocide of the Ukrainian people. «The Ukrainian problem should probably be closed down within some months with the sacrifice from 10 to 15 million persons», this diplomat suppose [4, 38]. He gives a lot of horrible details of difficult life conditions of the urban population, of the terror unleashed against the peasantry, of their attitude towards the authorities. The American F. Tavdul, Mykola Skrypnyk’s old friend, after visiting Ukraine, in the newspaper «New York American» gives the number of the people, died of hunger, in Ukraine and in Northern Caucasus (according to V. Balytskyi’s and M. Skrypnyk’s assessment): over 8 million inhabitants [38]. The postwar foreign famine historiography was enriched by Pac klen’s «A White Book» published in Munich in 1948, where a file of official Soviet documents and evidences of the eyewitnesses, who managed to escape from the USSR, is used. In this work, the imperialistic character of the Moscow Centre policy on national republics was reasonably exposed, planning the starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants by the Communist authorities was proved [17]. Besides the new books written by W. Chamberlin and A. Koestler [32], the postwar foreign famine historiography was enlarged by the works mainly written by emigrants from Ukraine. Memoirs of eyewitnesses of the tragedy and scientific works, based on them, were issued. Among them there are some English-language editions - «The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book», a two-volume book edited by S. Pidgainy, the eyewitness O. Woropay’s evidence «The Ninth Circle», a collection devoted to the 55th anniversary of the tragedy whose title interprets the Communist Famishment as a genocide, as well as an author research by F. Pigido-Pravoberezhny [39]. A number of special proceedings on the famine and repressions in the thirties were published in Ukrainian, where the artificial character of the famishment is mentioned [24]. Thus, I. Rozhin and V. Rozhin, the authors of the article in the Canadian periodical «Novi Dny», stressed: «The cause of the famine was, the factor that is still unparalleled in history, the power itself» [19, 10]. In the first postwar years emigrants promulgated new details of the famine eyewitnesses, especially about horrors of famishing in some regions of Ukrainian SSR and Kuban in 1932-1933, about the facts of cannibalism and corpse-eating among the maddening peasantry, about the Communist power’s mockery of dying Ukrainian villages and Cossack settlements [1]. In the published works there are some data which confirm the selective character of the famishment, aimed at Ukrainian enclaves beyond the administrative borders of the republic. K. Omelianovych, an eyewitness of the events, wrote: «Throughout Starobilsk District, from Rubizhne to Milove, from Urazove to Luhansk, like all over Ukraine, there were dead bodies inste