Holodomor Issue of The Harriman Review Published with CIUS Cooperation

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies has had a long-standing interest in furthering research on the Holodomor and organizing academic discussion of that great tragedy. In fulfilling this goal, CIUS, together with the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine (University of Toronto) and the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, sponsored a 75^th anniversary conference on the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide in Toronto in November 2007 under the title “The Holodomor of 1932–33.” The conference organizers invited four prominent scholars from Ukraine to discuss the current state of Famine studies in the Homeland.

The papers presented at that event have now appeared in a special “Holodomor” issue of The Harriman Review, published by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York as part of the Famine commemoration by the Ukrainian Program at that university. Review editor Dr. Ronald Meyer invited the senior manuscript editor of the CIUS Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine project, Andrij Makuch, to serve as guest editor for this special issue. Frank Sysyn, head of the CIUS Toronto Office and acting head of Columbia’s Ukrainian Program, wrote the preface to the volume, noting in particular the advance in Holodomor studies since the 50^th anniversary of that event in the early 1980s.

The articles focus on questions of the Famine as a public issue in contemporary Ukraine, recent writing on Holodomor history, and the location of source materials for present and future research about the events of 1932–33.

 In his article “Holodomor: The Politics of Memory and Political Infighting in Contemporary Ukraine,” the renowned journalist and social critic Mykola Riabchuk writes about the cynical and manipulative manner in which the post-Soviet Ukrainian leadership treated the Famine issue. The matter was given a certain amount of attention insofar as it afforded legitimacy on the national question to the country’s new masters, but it was never vigorously pursued before Viktor Yushchenko came to power.

Liudmyla Hrynevych, a senior scholar at the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU), examines “The Present State of Ukrainian Historiography on the Holodomor and Prospects for Its Development.” Her article provides a short overview of how the Famine was dealt with—or not dealt with—in historical writing prior to 1991. She then looks at developments in Holodomor historiography since that time, with a separate treatment of how the matter has played out in ideological popular writings.

The last two articles deal with archival matters. “Holodomor Archives and Sources: The State of the Art” by Hennadii Boriak, formerly Director of the State Committee on Archives of Ukraine and now a department head at the NANU Institute of History who oversees its multi-volume Entsyklopediia ukransko istori project (in both hard copy and electronic forms), looks at the current situation in Ukraine, where considerable effort has been expended to make archival material on the Famine more readily accessible. He also makes some keen observations regarding illustrative materials about collectivisation and the Holodomor, as well as the usefulness of death registers and district (raion) newspapers in studying the Famine. “Archives in Russia on the Famine in Ukraine” by Iryna Matiash, Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Document Studies, looks at holdings in repositories in Russia. She indicates that they contain a great deal of material dealing with the Famine, but the full extent of Russia’s Holodomor-related holdings has never been fully ascertained, let alone researched.

The November 2007 conference included commentaries by a number of prominent Western specialists—Lynne Viola (University of Toronto), Terry Martin (Harvard University), and Dominique Arel (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa). Their remarks do not appear in this volume, but they can be viewed on a Web-cast of the entire conference proceedings, which can be found at the UofT’s Munk Centre site (see http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/Webcasts.aspx).

Copies of this special issue of The Harriman Review (vol. 16, no. 2 [November 2008]) can be obtained for US $10 (S&H included) from The Harriman Institute, 420 West 118^th Street, MC 3345, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA (attn.: Dr. Ron Meyer). Alternately, this publication is readily available online at the Harriman Web-site (see <http://www.harrimaninstitute.org/research/harriman_review.html>).

Andrij Makuch works out of the Toronto Office of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies