The Ukrainian Diaspora: The Example of the Famine-Genocide
This focus on the “Diaspora”—and it is a point also raised by Bon- darenko—was pertinent, and gives rise to the question of the impact of those of Ukrainian ancestry living outside Ukraine, particularly the generation that left the native land during or shortly after the Second World War.
Included in the rather sweeping term Diaspora are also people who were born in DP camps in Central Europe but subsequently moved to North America, Australia, or Western Europe. By and large the productivity of scholars from this community has been considerable and in many ways it has come to dominate popular writing on Ukraine even while the various groups, such as OUN, brought many of their political squabbles to the West with them. One objective of such writing was to offer a perspective on Ukraine that differed from that propagated by the authorities, i.e., of Ukraine as a “little brother” of Great Russia, but bound to Russia in eternal friendship. Often, such writings could be categorized as overtly anti-Soviet, such as the ABN Correspondence, which allegedly monitored four serious revolts in Ukraine against Soviet collectivization between August 1930 and 1931, precisely in the areas in which famine later occurred, i.e., Kherson, Poltava, Dnipropetrovs'k, and Kharkiv regions.19 A later example of a “Diaspora perspective” might be that provided by a Ukrainian from Australia, Mykhailo Horan, writing in the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina early in 2004. Horan writes that even though Ukraine has been “free” for more than twelve years, one cannot feel free. The culture of fear had developed over generations, destroying initiatives, free thought, and national pride, and turning people into meek, submissive, and complacent individuals. In order to ascertain the reasons behind such a phenomenon, he notes, it is necessary to know the history of Ukraine to answer the question why Moscow exploited Ukraine for centuries and now seems unwilling to do without her.20Continuing in the same vein, Horan writes that the Russian Empire used Ukrainian labor to undertake various projects, from the building of Petrograd [sic!] to the development of the Siberian taiga, and many died as a result.
With the creation of the Bolshevik regime, the “genocide” of Ukrainians entered a new phase. The artificial famine resulted in 8 million victims. In 1947, the authorities would not permit Ukrainians from the famine-infected eastern regions to migrate to the western areas because at that time Soviet forces were fighting Ukrainian insurgents. The terrorized and oppressed Ukrainian people were transformed into “homo sovieticus,” a new form of spiritual slavery. In order to ensure that Ukrainians did not recognize their miserable lot, the authorities resorted to scaremongering tactics to keep them divided, using phrases such as “Westerners” and “Easterners” to ensure that they never joined forces against foreign occupants. Communist propaganda meanwhile disseminated the lie that OUN leader Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis when in fact the Germans had issued a secret instruction to arrest Bandera on trumped-up criminal charges. Horan comments that the Ukrainian Diaspora is baffled by the apparent inability of Ukraine's officials to govern the country properly but appears oblivious to the fact that Ukraine is ruled, to a large extent, by people hostile to the Ukrainian state.21The excerpt is instructive because it encapsulates what might be termed a more partisan Diaspora view of the recent past: that of the Ukrainian being duped, exploited, and oppressed by the regime based in Moscow. It also implies that if a regime does not adopt the perspective of what Horan perceives to be the Diaspora viewpoint, then it is not representing the interests of the Ukrainian people. A similar perspective can be found in the writings of American analyst Myron B. Kuropas in the New Jersey newspaper, The Ukrainian Weekly. Kuropas, writing in June 2005, bemoans the way Ukrainian history is taught in many US universities, noting that the Ukrainian Holodomor is not considered genocide and the OUN is seen as something initiated by the Nazis. He then goes on to write:
What does the world really know about the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), that glorious group of dedicated freedom fighters who emerged during World War II to fight both the Nazis and the Soviets? Why is it that we rarely hear of their exploits outside our own community?...
The UPA story is one of unequaled heroism. These were men and women who were willing to put their lives and sacred honor on the line against brutal and merciless enemies.Kuropas maintains that scholars have declined to examine available primary sources, such as the Litopys UPA collection, edited by Canadian political scientist Peter J. Potichnyj.22 In fairness, what Kuropas is asking is that scholars should write a history of the UPA that corresponds to his particular viewpoint, which is not really writing history per se, but rather a polemic. Nevertheless, his article is instructive in offering a clearly delineated perspective of the UPA as heroes, one that eventually began to penetrate writing in Ukraine.
The impact of the Diaspora on changing interpretations of modern Ukrainian history can also be illustrated by a campaign, held during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Famine-Holodomor, to demand that The New York Times should strip its former Moscow correspondent, Walter Du- ranty, of his Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the USSR. The campaign was coordinated by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), which declared that the year-long protest was part of a wide-ranging effort to counter “Holodomor deniers.” Hundreds of letters were solicited from the community, as well as from residents of Ukraine. The UCCA initiative evidently coincided with and worked alongside a similar campaign by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which started a worldwide postcard campaign in April 2003 to the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, Sig Gissler. Its claim was that Duranty had deliberately lied about the real situation in Ukraine by denying the existence of the famine, while at the same time collaborating closely with the Soviet authorities, even going so far as to venerate Stalin.23 The late James E. Mace claimed that the campaign actually originated in Canada, when Lubomyr Luciuk, a geography professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, conceived the idea and secured backing from various Ukrainian organizations in Canada and the United States, which then deluged the Pulitzer Committee with postcards.24 Evidently on Mace's initiative, the Ukrainian newspaper Den' (The Day) also sent a letter to The New York Times, which stated:
We highly appreciate the New York Times' glorious history and its unique role in the history of the American press.
However, here in Ukraine, a newly independent state in the process of developing its own independent journalism, we believe that you should consider voluntarily giving up the Pulitzer Prize received by your correspondent Walter Duranty in 1932. His denying the 1932-1933 Holodomor Manmade Famine in Ukraine and acting as Stalin's apologist during the period for which he received this prize are evidence that, of the numerous prizes won by NYT journalists, this one only clouds the reputation of those honestly earning their award for the ideals championed by Joseph Pulitzer.25This letter is somewhat unusual in that an American correspondent is writing on behalf of a Ukrainian newspaper, but it is illustrative of the way a demand for redress in North American could be transferred to Ukraine and then back again. That the Times limited itself to rebuking Duranty's stance without revoking the prize ultimately meant very little because the awareness of the issues generated by the postcards and the publicity around them alerted thousands to the controversy. The Diaspora campaign for the Famine to be recognized as genocide is likewise an illustration of rewriting history by publicity and pressure—the justice of the case notwithstanding.
Mace pointed out that the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine, which he headed for four years prior to moving permanently to Ukraine, had collected eyewitness accounts, and that to these had now been added thousands more from Ukraine. Their collective accounts, he noted, “cannot fail to move even the most scientific of historians.”26 Evidently though, it did. An editorial in The Ukrainian Weekly a year earlier had commented that it “may seem incredible” but “denial of the Great Famine continues to exist.” The phrase signified not the occurrence of famine per se, but the denial of what this newspaper saw as its certain cause: the intention of the Soviet leadership to eliminate Ukrainians. It cited a discussion on the H-Russia Internet list in which two American scholars, Mark B.
Tauger and Grover Furr, disputed the view that the Famine of 1932-33 was an act of genocide perpetrated against Ukrainians by the Stalin regime. Tauger had offered the perspective that the Famine developed out of a grain shortage that encompassed the Soviet Union in these years. The editorial demanded that the Famine deniers should “cease their repulsive activity” in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the event constituted one of the “most grisly episodes of genocide” ever known to the world.27 Again, the emotional outpouring is understandable, but the continuing debate at the same time suggested that the evidence presented to that point had not convinced everyone, particularly the two scholars in question. Taras Kuzio, a prominent political scientist on contemporary Ukraine, pointed out that Tauger maintained that oral testimonies were unreliable. More controversially, Kuzio added that after the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine closed, Mace had been unable to obtain academic employment because “his cards had been marked” as a “biased Ukrainian nationalist emigre.” Bohdan Krawchenko, a Canadian political scientist who moved to Ukraine after 1991, is cited in Kuzio’s article as remarking that the entire discussion about the origins of the Famine was “absurd and fundamentally immoral” and a “total abrogation of the responsibilities of intellectuals.”28 Krawchenko did not elaborate on these comments, but presumably they can be taken to mean that it is no longer feasible to question how and why the Famine took place. Such discussions have also been featured frequently at academic gatherings in North America, such as panels at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, in which Tauger, the late James Mace, and Robert Conquest offered their perspectives.The Diaspora’s contribution to the study of the Famine developed further during the 70th anniversary year. Though the debate on the Famine’s origins continued, the community in North America launched several initiatives that had an impact on perspectives in Ukraine regarding the centrality and significance of this tragedy in national history.
One was for the creation of a memorial complex that included an educational and research center in Kyiv to be established on the 75th anniversary (2008), an idea of an American public relations professional living in Kyiv, Morgan Williams.29 On 19 June 2003, the Canadian Senate adopted unanimously a motion from Senator Raynell Andreychuk calling for the Canadian government to recognize the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-33. The motion called for the condemnation of any effort to deny or distort “this historical truth” as being anything less than genocide, and requested that historians, educators, and members of parliament should include the “true facts” in Canadian records and in educational material.30 Four months later, the US House of Representatives followed suit, stating in Clause 2 of the resolution that “this man-made famine was designed and implemented by the Soviet regime as a deliberate act of terror and mass murder against the Ukrainian people.” Clause 4 declared thatthe official recognition of the famine [as an act of genocide] by the Government of Ukraine and the Verkhovna Rada represents a significant step in the reestablishment of Ukraine's national identity, the elimination of the legacy of the Soviet dictatorship, and the advancement of efforts to establish a democratic and free Ukraine that is fully integrated into the Western Community of nations.31
The wording is significant in that it demonstrated the sentiments of many in the Ukrainian community that the Famine was clearly linked to the formation of national identity in Ukraine. Moreover, in Canada and the United States, the Ukrainian community successfully took the debate out of the hands of historians and declared that no further discussion should take place. But can debate be ended on historical questions in this way? And, if so, who is to make such a decision, the community at large or professional historians? And do such decisions render historical research in recently opened archives in Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere meaningless?
However, the response from Ukraine and other countries was initially quite limited. In November 2003, Ukraine and 26 other nations signed a joint declaration of the United Nations “in connection with the 70th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932-33.” The opening statements at once broadened the impact of the Famine and suggested that it was a tragedy that went beyond the borders of Ukraine: “In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women, and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime.” Having noted that the Famine was a “national tragedy” for the Ukrainian people, the declaration continued as follows:
Honoring the 70th anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs, and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga river region, North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivization, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.32
For some in the North American community, such comments were simply unacceptable in that the UN resolution declined to focus exclusively on Ukraine, probably in order to acquire the signatures of other nations such as Russia and Kazakhstan. On the other hand, within Ukraine, as is illustrated by examples in Chapter 2, there were a number of ethnic minority communities that were directly affected by the Famine and who suffered losses on a similar scale to those of the Ukrainians, most notably the Jewish community, the Mennonites, the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Germans (the latter did receive some aid directly from Germany, a rare instance of Stalin's regime permitting aid from abroad). The question that arises therefore is whether these groups were incidental to the ostensible purpose of the government to strike at Ukrainians, or whether they were also included as part of a genocidal campaign. On the whole, however, the awareness of the international community about the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine was heightened as a result of campaigns initiated by Ukrainian communities in North America, Australia, and elsewhere. Moreover, these campaigns intensified debates within Ukraine itself, as did contacts between Westerners and Ukrainians that had opened up since the late 1980s as a result of exchanges, travel, and a large coterie of prominent community members from the West who took up residence, either for the short or long term, in Ukraine.