Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

   49. Testimony of Stepan Kharytonovych Vasiuta, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 465–6.

   50. Testimony of Mariia Ivanivna Korniichuk, in ibid., 489–90.

   51. TsDAHOU 1/20/6277 (1933), 233–5, in Pyrih, ed., Holodomor, 798–800.

   52. TsDAHOU 1/20/6275 (1933), 182–6, in ibid., 833–5.

   53. Ibid.

   54. DAVO 136/3/71 (1933), 127–9, in Ukraïns’kyi Instytut natsional’noi pam’iati and Latsyba, eds., Natsional’na knyha pam’iati zhertv Holodomoru, 1,245.

   55. DAKhO, 104/1/123 (1933), 2, in Ukraïns’kyi Instytut natsional’noi pam’iati and S. H. Vodotyka, Natsional’na knyha pam’iati zhertv Holodomoru 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni: Khersons’ka oblast’, eds. I. P. Iukhnovs’kyi et al. (Kherson: Vydavnytstvo ‘Naddniprians’ka pravda’, 2008), 527.

   56. DAKhO, 116/1/141 (1933), 19–22, in ibid.

   57. DAKhO, P-1962/1/973 (1933), 9, in Pyrih, ed., Holodomor, 841–2.

   58. Drazhevs’ka Liubov, ‘Interview with Liubov Drazhevska’, conducted on 22 July 1983 in New York by Sviatoslav Novytsky, UCRDC.

   59. RGASPI 17/162/14 (1932), 17, in Pyrih, ed., Holodomor, 412; Graziosi, Lysty z Kharkova, 128–30.

   60. Osokina, Zoloto dlia industrializatsiï, 96.

   61. Ibid., 227.

   62. Lubomyr Y. Luciuk, Tell Them We Are Starving: The 1933 Diaries of Gareth Jones (Kingston, Ontario: Kashtan Press, 2015), 103.

   63. Malcolm Muggeridge, Winter in Moscow (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1934), 146.

   64. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, 391–2.

   65. Okosina, Zoloto dlia industrializatsiï, 250–1, 255, 293.

   66. Testimony of Vira Iosypivna Kapynis, in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 7, 193.

   67. Testimony of Ivan Iakovych Khomenko, in Veselova and Nikiliev, Pam’iat’ narodu, vol. 2, 746.

   68. Testimony of Nadiia Illivna Babenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 558–59.

   69. Testimony of Ivan Kyrylovych Klymenko, in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 6, 142–5.

   70. Testimony of Hryhorii Fedorovych Sim’ia, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 510–11.

   71. Tetiana Yevsieieva, ‘The Activities of Ukraine’s Union of Militant Atheists during the Period of All-Out Collectivization, 1929–1933’, trans. Marta Olynyk, Key Articles on the Holodomor Translated from Ukrainian into English, Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, http://holodomor.ca/translated-articles-on-the-holodomor.

   72. Osokina, Zoloto dlia Industrializatsiï, 151–3.

   73. Ibid., 162–3.

   74. Diary of Oleksandra Radchenko, in Klid and Motyl, The Holodomor Reader, 182.

   75. HDA SBU 13/40/-- (1932), 167–73, in Bojko and Bednarek, Holodomor, 91.

   76. Testimony of Ihor Vasyl’iovych Buhaevych, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 454.

   77. Testimony of Hryhorii Pavlovych Novykov, in ibid., 530.

   78. ‘Schedule A, vol. 32, Case 91/(NY)1124 (interviewer M. S., type A4) Female, 56, Great Russian, Stenographer’, 1–3 June 1951, Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Slavic Division, Widener Library, Harvard University, 65.

   79. Testimony of Pavlo Feodosiiovych Chornyi, in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 1, 92.

   80. ‘Schedule A, vol. 36, Case 333 (NY) 1582 (interviewer J. F., type A4). Male, 29, Ukrainian, student and worker. Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Slavic Division, Widener Library, Harvard University, 26. See for more, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:5608007$1i.

   81. Kis, ‘Defying Death’, 53.

  13. AFTERMATH

    1. Mykola Rudenko, ‘The Cross’, trans. Marco Carynnyk, in Wasyl Hryshko, The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933 (Toronto: Bahriany Foundation, 1983), 135–6.

    2. Oleh Wolowyna’s research project on the demographic characteristics and consequences of the 1932–3 famine in the Soviet Union, especially in Ukraine and Russia, has been sponsored by the Institute of Demography and Social Research of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, with a grant from the Fulbright Foundation.

    3. Quotation is from Oleh Wolowyna, letter to the author, 29 April 2017.

    4. Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Oleh Wolowyna, Pavlo Shevchuk and Alla Kovbasiuk, ‘Demography of a Man-Made Human Catastrophe: The Case of Massive Famine in Ukraine, 1932–33’, Canadian Studies in Population 42, nos. 1–2 (2015), 53–80.

    5. Wolowyna et al., ‘Regional Variations of 1932–1934 Famine Losses in Ukraine’, 175–202.

    6. Rudnytskyi et al., ‘Demography of a Man-Made Human Catastrophe’, 65.

    7. Oleh Wolowyna, ‘Monthly Distribution of 1933 Famine Losses in Ukraine and Russia at the Regional Level’, unpublished paper.

    8. HDA SBU 13/--/23 (1933), 237–47, in Bojko and Bednarek, Holodomor, 495–500.

    9. Wolowyna et al., ‘Regional Variations of 1932–1934 Famine Losses in Ukraine’, 187.

   10. Serhii Plokhy, ‘Mapping the Great Famine’, MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 5–7, accessed 2017, http://gis.huri.harvard.edu/images/pdf/MappingGreatUkrainianFamine.pdf.

   11. Wolowyna et al., ‘Regional Variations of 1932–1934 Famine Losses in Ukraine’, 188; Plokhy, ‘Mapping the Great Famine’, 19.

   12. Andrea Graziosi, ‘The Impact of Holodomor Studies on the Understanding of the USSR’, in Andrij Makukh and Frank S. Sysyn, eds., Contextualizing the Holodomor: The Impact of Thirty Years of Ukrainian Famine Studies (Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2015), 52.

   13. Plokhy, ‘Mapping the Great Famine’, 16–19.

   14. TsDAHOU 1/20/6278/20, in Pyrih, ed., Holodomor, 852.

   15. Stanislav V. Kul’chyts’kyi, ‘Comments at UNAS (National Academy of Sciences) Institute of History of Ukraine Seminar’, presented at the Institute of History of Ukraine Seminar, Kyiv, 19 April 2016.

   16. RGASPI 17/163/981/229–38, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, 952–7.

   17. Valerii Vasyl’ev, ‘Osoblyvosti polityky kerivnytstva VKP(b) u sil’s’komu hospodarstvi URSR (Kinets’ 1933–1934 rr.)’, Ukraïns’kyi selianyn: pratsi Naukovo-doslidnoho Instytutu Selianstva 10 (2006), 342–8.

   18. H. Iefimenko and L. Iakubova, ‘Natsional’ni vidnosyny v radians’kii Ukraïni (1923–1938)’, in V. M. Lytvyn et al., eds., ‘Natsional’ne pytannia v Ukraïni XX-pochatku XXI st.: istorychni narysy (Kyiv: Nika-Tsentr, 2012), 209–27.

   19. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, 268–370, cited in Klid and Motyl, The Holodomor Reader, 265–6.

   20. Ibid., 266–8.

   21. Vasyl’ev, ‘Osoblyvosti polityky kerivnytstva VKP(b) u sil’s’komu hospodarstvi URSR’, 342–8.

   22. Ibid., 342–8.

   23. Testimony of Max Harmash, in U.S. Congress and Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Second Interim Report, 44–6.

   24. Testimony of Lidiia A., in ibid., 140–1.

   25. H. Iefimenko, ‘Lykhovisni 30-ti roky na Markivshchyni’, in Stanislav V. Kul’chyts’kyi and O. M. Veselova, eds., Holod-henotsyd 1933 roku v Ukraïni: istoryko-politolohichnyi analiz sotsial’-no-demohrafichnykh ta moral’no-psykholohichnykh naslidkiv: mizhnarodna naukovo-teoretychna konferentsiia, Kyiv, 28 lystopada 1998 r.: materialy: Instytut Istoriï Ukraïny (Natsional’na Akademiia Nauk Ukraïny): Asotsiatsiia doslidnykiv holodomoriv v Ukraïni (Kyiv: Vyd-vo M. P. Kots’, 2000), 348–56.

   26. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, The ‘Secret’ Speech Delivered to the Closed Session of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ed. Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (Nottingham: Spokesman Books for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 1976).

   27. H. Iefimenko, ‘Resettlements and Deportations during
the Post-Holodomor Years (1933–1936): A Raion-by-Raion Breakdown’, trans. Marta Olynyk, unpublished translation by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, 16, citing RGAPSI 11/64/39 (1933). The original can be found at H. Iefimenko, ‘Pereselennia ta deportatsiï v postholodomorni roky (1933–1936): poraionnyi zriz’, Problemy Istoriï Ukraïny: fakty, sudzhennia, poshuky: Mizhvidomchyi zbirnyk naukovykh prats’ 22 (2013), 136–66.

   28. Ibid., 3–4.

   29. Daria Mattingly, ‘Oral History Project of the School Students of Tororyshche’, 2007, from the private collection of Daria Mattingly.

   30. TsDAHOU, 1/20/6375/63–4.

   31. Iefimenko, ‘Lykhovisni 30-ti roky na Markivshchyni’, 348–56.

   32. Ibid.

   33. Iefimenko, ‘Resettlements and Deportations during the Post-Holodomor Years’, 28–9.

   34. Andrea Graziosi, ‘ “Lettres de Kharkov”: La famine en Ukraine et dans le Caucase du Nord (à travers les rapports des diplomates italiens, 1932–1934)’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 30, no. 1 (1989), 70.

   35. Testimony of Iakiv Petrovych Pasichnyk, in Borysenko, A Candle in Remembrance, 254.

   36. RGASPI 81/3/131 (1933), 43–62, in Marochko and Movchan, Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni, 256.

   37. Bohdan Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine (Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1987), 146.

   38. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1970), 108.

   39. Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine, 148. Of the famine-era leaders only Petrovskyi survived, deprived of his property and his privileges, in Moscow exile.

   40. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 108.

   41. This is the conclusion of Daria Mattingly’s unpublished PhD thesis.

   42. Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine, 174–5.

   43. The entire Sholokhov-Stalin correspondence can be found in Iu.G. Murin, ed., Pisatel’ i vozhd’: perepiska M.A. Sholokhova s I.V. Stalinym 1931–1951 gody: sbornik dokumentov iz lichnogo arkhiva I.V. Stalina (Moscow: Raritet, 1997).

   44. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, 210–12.

  14. THE COVER-UP

    1. Petro Drobylko, ‘The Cursed Thirties’, in Pidhainy, ed., The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, vol. 1, 278.

    2. PA IIP pri TsK Kompartii Ukrainy 1/101/1243 (1933), 159–63, 172, in R. Ia. Pyrih, ed., Holod 1932–1933 rokiv na Ukraïni: ochyma istorykiv, movoiu dokumentiv (Kyiv: Politvydav Ukraïny, 1990), 441–4; not to be confused with Holodomor 1932–1933 by the same author.

    3. APRF 3/40/87/52–64, cited in Kondrashin et al., eds., Golod v SSSR, vol. 2, 695–701.

    4. Testimony of Mariia Bondarenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 90.

    5. Testimony of Serhii Fedotovych Kucheriavyi, in Veselova and Nikiliev, Pam’iat’ narodu, vol. 1, 720.

    6. Testimony of Vasyl’ Patsiuk Babanka, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 104.

    7. Testimony of Iryna Pavlivna N., in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 1, 98.

    8. Testimony of A. Butkovska, in U.S. Congress and Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Second Interim Report, 25.

    9. Testimony of Oleksa Voropai, in Veselova and Nikiliev, Pam’iat’ narodu, vol. 1, 266.

   10. TsDAHOU 1/20/6277 (1933), 105–11, in Pyrih, ed., Holodomor, 724–5.

   11. Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Odes’koï Oblasti P-2009/1/4 (1933), 91–2, with thanks to Hennadii Boriak.

   12. DAKhO, 3683/2/2 (1933), 52, online at Holodomor 1932–1933 rr. Kharkivs’ka oblast’, accessed 2017, http://www.golodomor.kharkov.ua/docsmod.php?docpage=1&doc=772.

   13. Anne Applebaum, ‘Interview with Professor Hennadii Boriak, Deputy Director, Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’, 25 February 2017.

   14. Testimony of Dmytro Koval’chuk, in Veselova and Nikiliev, Pam’iat’ narodu, vol. 1, 590; testimony of Volodymyr Tkachenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, 33-i Holod, 532.

   15. Testimony of Stepan Podolian, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 110–11.

   16. U.S. Congress and Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Report to Congress, 46.

   17. Applebaum, ‘Interview with Andrea Graziosi’, February 2014.

   18. HDA SBU, Odessa --/66/5 (1932), 2,579–2,579v, in Bojko and Bednarek, Holodomor, 227.

   19. Catherine Merridale, ‘The 1937 Census and the Limits of Stalinist Rule’, The Historical Journal 39, no. 1 (1 March 1996), 226.

   20. Ibid., 230.

   21. Ibid., 235–40.

   22. A. G. Volkov, ‘Perepis’ naseleniia SSSR 1937 goda: Istoriia i materialy/Ekspress-informatsiia’, Istoriia Statistiki 3–5, no. chast’ II (1990), 16–18.

   23. I. Sautin, ‘The National Census – a Duty of the Whole People’, trans. ‘Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, an Online Archive of Primary Sources’, Bol’shevik 23–24 (23 December 1938), http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1939-2/the-lost-census/the-lost-census-texts/duty-of-the-whole-people.

   24. Interview with Oleh Wolowyna, April 2016.

   25. Volkov, ‘Perepis’ naseleniia SSSR 1937 goda’, 16–18.

   26. ‘Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, an Online Archive of Primary Sources’, trans., ‘The All-Union Census – a Most Important Government Task’, Pravda (lead article), 29 November 1938, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1939-2/the-lost-census/the-lost-census-texts/duty-of-the-whole-people.

   27. Mark Tolts, ‘The Soviet Censuses of 1937 and 1939: Some Problems of Data Evaluation’, presented at the International Conference on Soviet Population in the 1920s and 1930s, Toronto, 1995, 4.

   28. Ibid., 9–10.

   29. Stepan Baran, ‘Z nashoï trahediï za Zbruchem’, Dilo (Lviv) 21, May 1933.

   30. Leonard Leshuk, Days of Famine, Nights of Terror: First-Hand Accounts of Soviet Collectivization 1928–1934 (Washington, D.C.: Europa University Press, 2000), 121.

   31. Robert Kuśnierz, Ukraina w Latach Kolektywizacji i Wielkiego Głodu (1929–1933) (Torún: Grado, 2006), 214–17.

   32. Testimony of Myroslav Prokop, in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 5, 107–10; Kuśnierz, Ukraina w Latach Kolektywizacji, 215.

   33. Kuśnierz, Ukraina w Latach Kolektywizacji, 220.

   34. S. Sipko, ‘The Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg Tribune: A Report for the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium’, December 2013, excerpted from the archives of the copyright holder, the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, 5.

   35. ‘Policy of Soviet Regime Scored by Ukrainians Here – Responsible for Millions of Deaths from Starvation, It Is Claimed’, Winnipeg Free Press (8 September 1933), 5.

   36. Kuśnierz, Ukraina w Latach Kolektywizacji, 221–7.

   37. DATO 231/1/2067 (1933), 38-41, in Bojko and Bednarek, Holodomor, 504–5.

   38. McVay and Luciuk, The Holy See and the Holodomor, ix, 5.

   39. ‘Cardinal Asks Aid in Russian Famine’, The New York Times (20 August 1933).

   40. ‘Ukrains’kyi Holodomor ochyma avstriitsia’, Radio Svoboda. Last modified 28 April 2017, accessed 2017. http://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/holodomor-ukraine-1933/25177046.html. Some of the photographs were published in Dr Ewald Ammende, Muss Russland hungern? Menschen- und Völkerschicksale in der Sowjetunion (Vienna: Braumüller, 1935). Wienerberger himself published a memoir: Hart auf Hart [Hard Times] 15 Jahre Ingenieur in Sowjetrußland. Ein Tatsachenbericht (Salzburg: Pustet, 1939).

   41. McVay and Luciuk, The Holy See and the Holodomor, viii–xiv.

   42. Graziosi, ‘ “Lettres de Kharkov” ’, 57–61.

   43. HDA SBU 13/1611 (1933), 41–4, in Bojko a
nd Bednarek, Holodomor, 507.

   44. Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 256.

   45. Graziosi, ‘ “Lettres de Kharkov” ’, 7.

   46. Bruski, ‘In Search of New Sources’, 222–4.

   47. Carynnyk et al., eds., The Foreign Office and the Famine, 105.

   48. Ibid., 135.

   49. Ibid., 329, 397.

   50. Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb, Is Soviet Communism a New Civilisation? (London: The Left Review, 1936), 29.

   51. Stanley Weintraub, ‘GBS and the Despots’, The Times Literary Supplement Online (22 August 2011). http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/gbs-and-the-despots.

   52. Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 430.

   53. Andrei Platonovich Platonov, Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays, trans. Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin and Susan Larsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 92.

   54. Etienne Thevenin, ‘France, Germany and Austria Facing the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine’, presented at the James Mace Memorial Panel, IAUS Congress, Donetsk, Ukraine (6 June 2005). http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/ukraine2005/Etienne%20Thevein%20%20English%20translation.pdf.

   55. TsDAHOU 1/20/6204 (1933), in Marochko and Movchan, Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni, 257.

   56. Quoted in Thevenin, ‘France, Germany and Austria’, 8.

   57. Alva Christiansen, ‘American Girls Seized, Expelled from Turkestan’, Chicago Daily Tribune (23 January 1933).

   58. Rhea Clyman, ‘Writer Driven From Russia’, Toronto Evening Telegram (20 September 1932).

   59. Rhea Clyman, ‘Children Lived on Grass’, Toronto Evening Telegram (16 May 1933).

   60. Lyons, Asignment in Utopia, 573–5.

   61. William Henry Chamberlin, ‘Soviet Taboos’, Foreign Affairs 13, no. 3 (1935), 431.

   62. Walter Duranty, I Write as I Please (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 304.

   63. Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (London: Pimlico, 2009), 47–84, 133.