Page 9 - Mapping the Holodomor Complex

THEME AND BACKGROUND

This study has emerged from my interest in Ukrainian and Russian memory and history, more
specifically from my reflections on historical works on the Holodomor and the current crisis

and conflict in Ukraine, which involves the Russian Federation and the West (North America
and EU) in a geopolitical struggle. This study could be defined as entrenched in the eastern-

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European branch of memory studies, though from a western media perspective.

As I began to develop my thesis I possessed limited knowledge of those topics but the deeper I
immersed myself in them, the more complex and confusing it all became (and of course all the

more intriguing). Upon first learning about the Holodomor back in 2009 through the memoir

Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust by famine survivor Miron Dolot from 1985, it
baffled me that such a cataclysmic event could be so unknown in our part of the world. It scared

me that it was possible to cover up this staggering amount of dead for such a long period of
time. Then on the other hand the faint possibility that this was a mad fairytale invented by an

Ukrainian propaganda machine equally disturbed me. Indeed, the identification of the existence
of a Ukrainian propaganda machine by Solzhenitsyn in the Guardian article was compelling.

Usually when you hear the word “propaganda” you immediately connect it with Nazi Empire

or the Soviet Union/Russia. What exactly makes the Ukrainian version different from the
Russian, one might ask? Why would they need propaganda anyway, aren’t they de-

communizing their nation to tear away from their Soviet and Russified past? These are surely

difficult questions to answer. Solzhenitsyn then lead me further into confusion when I
coincidentally stumbled upon another quotation by him, this time inside the dust jacket of

historian Robert Conquest’s book Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-
Famine from 1986:

4 Professor of History and Europe-Russia relations Alexander Etkind seems to be at the forefront concerning
eastern-European memory studies. The Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society founded and edited
by political scientist Andreas Umland is another valuable source in English for diverse studies on Russia and
Ukraine.

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