Introduction
For independent Ukraine, no event has greater significance in the history of the developing nation-state than the Famine of 1932-33. It brought about a period of intensive suffering on a hitherto unimagined scale.
Yet, although the Famine is becoming part of Ukraine's new national history, its progress to that status has been uneven, littered with public disputes and academic dissension, and with no consensus among historians as to its scale or even its origins. In part, these disputes illustrate the continuing relevance of the Soviet period to life in Ukraine, despite the material and practical steps taken in forging an independent state. As noted in Chapter 1, the Famine has generated an emotional debate in the West, and no consensus has resulted. Ironically, the historians and economic historians who have worked most extensively on this period and published their results are much closer to the former Soviet perspective that emerged from the earlier period of silence on the Famine, namely that it was a result of environmental or climatic conditions rather than part of an official state policy aimed at eliminating Ukrainians as a nation. This chapter explores the genesis of the Famine debate in Ukraine, examining several different aspects and ending with the campaign in independent Ukraine for recognition of the Famine as genocide.In the former Soviet Union, the Famine was a state secret for decades. Stanislav Kul'chyts'kyi has chronicled the background to the crucial decision to end this secrecy.1 In 1966, Kul'chyts'kyi notes, the then Ukrainian party leader Petro Shelest reportedly gave permission orally for the Famine to be mentioned in an article to be published in the newspaper for Ukrainians abroad, News from Ukraine. However, Ukrainian journalists were fearful of taking such a step without explicit written permission from the authorities. Under Gorbachev, a new critique of Stalinism was initiated in the official media that included rehabilitation of the victims of the 1930s Purges, and formerly taboo subjects were increasingly challenged.
On 16 July 1987, an article in the writers' weekly Literaturna Ukraina twice mentioned the existence of the Famine. On 11 October of this same year, Russian historian Viktor Danilov made reference to a famine of 1932-33 that had resulted in “huge losses,” in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya. The following month, demographer Mark Tolts wrote an article in Ogonyok about the banned 1937 census in the USSR, citing losses incurred during the 1933 Famine as the main reason for a reported shortfall of the population.2 These three examples form the prelude to the official revelation about the Famine in Ukraine. It was first revealed publicly by Ukrainian Communist Party leader Volodymyr V. Shcher- bytsky during a speech of December 1987, when he declared that it had been caused by a drought and a poor harvest. The catalyst for such a revelation from a party leader, hardly at the forefront of the Glasnost reforms, was the completion of work of the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine, which was about to release its findings. Shcherbytsky's speech therefore was intended mainly to pre-empt any information that might be forthcoming from Washington. The news that a major famine had indeed occurred followed some four years of intensive publicity work in Western countries, starting with the 50th anniversary of the Famine in 1933. Shcherbytsky's speech had the approval of Gorbachev, and provided Ukraine's historians with a green light to investigate the issue further, albeit with some caution.3
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