Page 2 - Bitter Icons

Memory, Icons and the Bitter Harvest

Introduction

Choice of Topic
In this paper, I have chosen to write about cultural and collective memory, media and film. I

think it’s interesting to look at how the fictional film can have a certain impact on the memory

of historical events. The topic of my paper will thus be the famine in Ukraine during the years
1932 to 1933, which is often referred to as the Holodomor. The object of analysis will be the

Canadian film Bitter Harvest, released this year of 2017, which uses the historical background

of the Holodomor to play out a fictional story. The film is basically a love story and at the same
time about the struggle for freedom for the Ukrainian people. When I started to think about the

topic of this paper I asked myself: What is the intention of the movie makers in making the film
Bitter Harvest? I asked this because it is the first time this event of the Holodomor has been

portrayed or used in a major fictional film with a decent budget and some good actors.

Background

I will now provide some background information of the Holodomor and some core arguments
from debates surrounding the Holodomor that is important for this study.

The Holodomor as a National Issue and the Genocide Question

The Holodomor, which means something like “death by starvation” is an often-used term of the
famine which occurred in the Ukraine in the years 1932–1933 where allegedly millions of peo-

ple starved to death (as you probably noticed, “Holodomor” sounds similar to the “Holocaust”).

Today the actual numbers of deaths vary from 3 million to 5 million depending on different
works on the subject (Naimark 2015). The core issue in debates surrounding the Holodomor is

whether it could be recognized as a genocidal act by Stalin against Ukraine as a nation. It was

and continues to be a very important issue for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia’s hegem-
ony.

It was after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine during the years 2004–2005 and with the acts of

then President Viktor Yushchenko that really highlighted the Holodomor as a national issue

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