Kot-Samp, Lesia. The Artificial Famine, 1932-1982. Translation of Shtuchnyi holod.
Carnegie, Pennsylvania: Ukrainian Affairs Committee, Ukrainian Orthodox League of the United States of America. English and Ukrainian, 9pp. Bibliography, and Notes.
Historical background leads to point that the reasons for the Famine were extermination of the Ukrainian nation, and economic benefit to the USSR.
“That summer [1932], the authorities set up watchtowers to keep an eye on t
the fields, protecting crops from peasants searching for food” (2). Torgsin stores took payment in “gold, silver, foreign currency, and the victim had to leave his name and address. Thus, the government received the precious metals for its funds, plus the NKVD (secret police) raided those identified and confiscated any remaining valuables” (3). Census figures (3).
“St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in South Boundbrook, New Jersey, stands as a reminder of the millions who perished” (4).
Lawrynenko, Jurij. Ukrainian Communism and
Soviet Russian Policy toward the Ukraine:
An Annotated Bibliography, 1917-1953. New York: Research Program on the USSR (East European Fund, Inc.), 1953. Studies on the U. S. S. R., edited by David I. Goldstein, vol. 4. Foreword by John S. Reshetar, Jr. xxviii + 454 pp. Transliterated Russian and Ukrainian, and English. Annotations in English. Includes five typewritten pages of Addenda and Corrigenda, General Abbreviations, Abbreviations of Dailies and Periodicals, Abbreviations of Libraries, Pseudonyms, Transliteration Tables, Indexes of Names, Places, Parties, Congresses and Conferences, List of Selected Reviews of Bibliography. LCCN: 54-309.
The Introduction states that Mr. Lawryenko was arrested in 1933, and spent eight years as a repressed citizen. During the German Occupation of Ukraine, he was an Ost-arbieter, and he later immigrated to the United States in 1950. His work traces Ukrainian Communism as a separate entity from that of Soviet/Russian, and its effects on the Ukrainian population, its sense of national identity, and its responses to Russian Communism. Chapters include: “General Non-Soviet Sources,” historical background before and after the October Revolution, and, germane to our topic, “Communist Party (b) of Ukraine 1921-1932; 1933-1938.” There are multiple references to de-Ukrainianization policies, speeches, the Purges, Postyshev’s severity.
Items in each chapter are numbered beginning with Item Number 1.
Item158: “Collective Farm Laws, Kharkhov 1925” (167)
Item182: “Regarding Trial of Party and Soviet Leaders Accused of Terrorizing the Population of Drabove District July 2, 1932” (172)
Item 247: “Peasant Uprising in 1930” (181-182)
Item 287: “Reference to Sixtieth Anniversary of Skrypnyk January 26, 1932” (188)
Item 336: “Skrypnyk and Chubar show alarm over the beginning famine” (196-197)
Item 374: Regarding the attempt to say state feeding programs ‘well-organized’ in 1933 (204)
Item 193 “Food and Grain Policy 1932-33” (336)
Item 211: “Fixed quota grain requisistion” (339)
Each chapter is concluded with historical analysis of material presented. Chapters include:
“The Polish Perspective” (29-115)
The report of Military Attache, Major G.S. Emer Yeager Report No. 1345 May 16, 1931 introduces autobiographical account of Vladimir Pachamowicz. This report is archived at the United States National Archives, War Department General and Special Staff Records, Record Group 165, Military Intelligence Division, 2070-2292 (citation information, page 239). Regarding medical care to deported kulaks, Pachamowicz quotes a doctor, “We are severely prohibited to give the deported people those medicines which are best for the sickness of which they suffer, and we are ordered to prescribe the medicines which will do them harm” (51).
Pachamowicz’s account (29-99) describes deportations, death rates including children, conditions. Significantly, he notes that peasants who were needed for farm work were deported to work in the timber industry. Any who refused were given “four months forced labor. In the Bolshevik language, it was called ‘mobilization to the industrial front” (88).
“The German Perspective” (117-228)
Includes the Introduction from Kurt Ihlenfeld’s book, The Hunger Sermon (118-119).
Primary source famine letters dated January-June 1933 (120-217)
For example, Letter # 10 dated 9 March 1933:
We wanted so much to glean also in the summer—there wasn’t anything besides a little barley; the harvest here was very bad—but it was strictly forbidden; whoever gleaned was sentenced to death; there have already been many arrested and also shot. . . . We must deliver up all that we have earned and received for work; everything must be given back again, so nothing is left over for us and thus we must starve. . . I had to give the child up in the Crimea now already eight months and I as a mother must suffer so, to go without the child. Such a small innocent child can easily forget its mother and father; I am now in tears because it hurts so much that I had to leave him and miss him so much—it’s too hard for me. I would dearly like to take our only child, our darling, back to us but whence shall we buy bread? (133).
“The Camera’s Perspective” (229-238)
Famine photographs, and historical analysis thereof. Includes photo of the Berlin exhibit of the famine leters “located in the U.S. National Archives, Still Pictures Division, 306-NT-178553, photo from the New York Times. Leshuk points out that the original photograph might be archived there also, but since the archives are “subjectively arranged and not indexed according to the original numbers on the negatives,” he was unable to locate the original print (240).
Lewin, Moshe. The Making of the Soviet
System: Essays in the Social History of Inter-war
Russia. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. xii + 355 pp. Notes and Index. ISBN:
0-394-54302-5.
“Social Crisis and Political Structures in the USSR” (3-45)
Part 1: “The Rural Ways: Mores and Magic”
Part 2: Collectivization—Or Something Else?”
Includes” “The Immediate Background of Soviet Collectivization, 1926-1929” (91-120)
“Who Was the Soviet Kulak?”(121-141)
The term altered as suited the political climate.
Narkomfin was probably the first to exert official authority, and it was this body which instituted the commission convened by Sovnarkom, the Council of People’s Commissars in May 1927 to consider the incidence of taxes on the population (126).
March 1929 legislation, “Indices of Kulak Farms in which the Labor Code is to be Applied” (127)
Lits 11 defining factors.
Chart:
Number of days of paid work (133)
“Taking Grain: Soviet Policies of Agricultural Procurement Before the War (142-177)
“Zagotovki and Famine, 1931-33” (151-156)
Tables (166-168):
“Grain Crops and Grain Procurements, 1928-1940”
Significantly, this chart includes the Famine Years
“Grain Production and Procurements in Tsarist Russia and During the Five-Year Plans in the USSR, 1909-1940”
“Index of Animal Produce, 1928-1940”
“The Kolkhoz and the Russian Muzhik” (178-188)
Part 3:
“Different Leninisms and Social Change” (189-314)
Tables:
“Growth
of the Working Class, 1928-1940” (225)
“Industrial Personnel, 1928-1940”” (245)
“Kolkhozy: The Peasants on Ration Cards” (270-272)
Clause 58-A of the Criminal Code (279-286)
Liber, George O. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the
Ukrainian SSR, 1923-1934. Soviet and East European Studies, Number 84. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ix + 289. Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Index, List of Tables, Abbreviations, Transliteration Note. ISBN: 0521-41391-5.
Taking up his subject from the year 1861, Liber addresses Ukrainian assertions of a different origin from the “Great Russians.” He traces the development of preferential treatment in favor of those of Russian language/ethnicity in contradiction to Ukrainianization and sense of Ukraine as a separate nation.
Party membership changes 1916-1930 (89-96)
“Scorching the Harvest, 1930-1934” (160-174)
Includes extensive ethnic/profession/language charts, dated 1897-1934 (187-206)
