Sullivant, Robert S. Soviet Politics and the Ukraine: 1917-1957. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1962. viii +438. Notes, Bibliography, Index, Note on Transliteration, Map. LCCN: 62-10455.

Chapters bearing upon the Famine and related issues include:

I. “The Bolshevik Approach to Nationalism and the Ukraine” (7-19)

III. “Federalism and Ukrainian Cultural Nationalism, 1921-1927” (65-148)

IV. “Centralization and the Demand for Uniformity, 1927-1934” (149-208)

This book is a history of the political changes that took place in Ukraine and the Soviet Union, including the various assertions of Party resolve that took place. The Party attack on Skrypnyk regarding his 1927 address to the USSR Central Committee is extensively quoted (200-201). The development of Soviet insistence upon individual conformity in all areas of a person’s life (6), “development of controlling and coordinating republic policies in the face of opposition (6).

Timofeev, Lev. Soviet Peasants (or: The Peasants’ Art of Starving).

Armando Pitassio and Victor Zaslavsky, ed. Translated by Jean Alexander and Alexander Zaslavsky. New York: Telos Press, 1985. x + 156pp. ISBN: 0-914386-12-3.

Personal perspective from later years of the process of collectivization, and of

collective farms in general.

Totten, Samuel, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charney, ed. Genocide in the Twentieth

Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Introduction by Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons. The Garland Reference Library of Social Science, Vol. 772. London: Garland Publishing, Inc.,1995. xiii + 570. Index. This book covers genocidal acts in “Genocide of the Hereros,” the Genocides of the Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, the Disabled, Indonesian East Timor, Burundi, Cambodia, as well as the chapter relevant to the present purpose. The essays all respond to the same issues and questions as pertinent to their particular field of study. ISBN: 0815303092.

Chapters:

“Soviet Man-made Famine in Ukraine,” by James E. Mace (97-112)

Includes references. Suppression of “bourgeois nationalism,” and part of Stalin’s “Revolution from Above,” (97 and 100). Text of Stalin and Molotov’s 14 December 1932 decree (106-107). Psychological aspects—particularly of governmental denial of famine

“Soviet Deportation of Whole Nations: A Genocidal Process”

“Physical and Cultural Genocide of Various Indigenous Peoples,” by Robert K. Hitchcock and Tara M. Twedt.

The Afterword by Israel W. Charmy, “Which Genocide Matters More? Learning to Care About Humanity,” addresses the important moral question:

At the height of the famine, Stalin adopted the slogan, ‘Life has become better; life has become more fun,’ and even the starving had to repeat it, ‘at the risk of punishment for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda if one dared to contradict this obvious lie (109).

Description of the hunger-death (107-108)

“Dangers of pseudo-scientific totalitarian ideologies,” and the concentration of power—even to change the meanings of words and concepts thereby denying reality” (110)

For those who profess humane values, the willingness to countenance the death of millions for their goals ceases to hae anything in common with political progress: it is simply mass murder on an unspeakable scale (110).

Includes four eyewitness accounts (113-137) from The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, the United States Commission on the Ukrainian Famine Report to Congress (1984), an article from Soviet Ukrainian Affairs (Autumn 1988), and Bez Krovna viina, by Oleksander Mischenko.

Each genocide discussed includes eyewitness accounts, thereby combining the general history and analysis of the events with accounts of the ways in which these tragedies affected real human beings caught up in each situation. It brings the distanced observer from the emotionally-safe distance of statistitical or theoretical analysis into the heart of the living reality.

Practical advice regarding how to conduct interviews of famine victims.

The question of a “Dearth of Oral Testimony” often given as “proof” that the genocidal actions/circumstances did not occur, is discussed in four pages of the Introduction (xxviii-xxxi).

Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to

Harvard. Toronto: Progress Publishers, 1987. x +167. Black-and-white photographic illustrations, Appendix, Notes, Bibliography. ISBN: 0919396518; National Library of Canada: 870953591; LCCN: 88-141703

Tottle opines in his Introduction:

The famine-genocide campaign finds its most ardent promoters among Ukrainian Nationalists. (The term Ukrainian Nationalist is used here and throughout the book to denote the right-wing and fascist minority in the Ukrainian community, among whose goals is an ‘independent’ Ukraine on an anti-socialist basis (2). [Parenthetical phrase is Tottle’s].

Trimpolis, Peter. My Rocky Road to Life. Edited and Translated by Lilly Burky and Yuri

Yevdokimov. Steinback, Manitoba: Published by the Author, 2000, 2^nd edition, March 2002. xii + 284. Black-and-white Photographs, ISBN: 1-55099-104-3.

Primary source memoir covering the author’s experiences during the years from the time of his family’s dekulakization exile through his emigration to Canada post-World War II.

Writing of Stalin, Trimpolis declares:

Damn you on behalf of all the Ukrainian people who are dispersed around the world. The entire honest free world damns you. . . In June 1930, comrade Kalinin signed a decree that the children of ‘kurkuki’ under 14 years of age were not guilty and they could return home. And how many of them are alive today? Not many. . . . They walked about together supporting each other looking everywhere for a piece of beard. And where could they find it? From relatives who themselves had nothing to eat? . . . People were swelling from hunger and they were dying. . . Everything that they had survived remained permanently embedded in their hearts forever. They remembered those who had expelled them from their warm corner and who had left them without a piece of bread, torn by force from their mother’s care. . . . Oh no, hangman, you miscalculated! Everyone remembers those who took their children away, who forced them to the orphanages, and who took the bread away from them (26-27).

Ukrainian Catholic Priests in Rome. First Victims of Communism: White Book on the

Religious Persecution in Ukraine. Translated from the Italian. Preface by J. Buchko, Titular Bishop of Cadi. Rome: Alalecta, 1953. ii + 115. Black-and-white photographic Illustrations including portraits of key church figures, Map. LCCN: 54-17451.

Historical introduction depicts the years 988-1917 (5-10)

Pertinent chapters include:

“Destruction of Organized Ukrainian Society”

“Destruction of the Predominant Class in Ukraine”

Section on Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s role in the Church includes the black-and-white image, “Deported to Siberia” (103). The Metropolitan’s funeral is described. His death signaled even greater socio-religious repression in Ukraine.

Veryha, Wasyl. Famine as a Weapon: A Case Study of Ethnic Genocide. Toronto: 1999.

xvi + 242 pp. Tables, Documents.

This book describes the earlier Famine of the 1920’s, and is included for the valuable information it contains that allows comparison of the various aspects of the two Famines. It discusses War Communism, the situation in Ukraine, Crimea, and the Volga region. The All-Russian Relief Committee, the American Relief Association, and Soviet Government counter-measures to the Famine, as well as that of the Nansen Mission form part of its contents. It points out flaws and shortcomings inherent and present in the Soviet political and agricultural systems not remedied before the 1930’s Famine. Charts of the 1916, and 1921 Crop Shortages, and the Need for Agricultural Tools 1911-1913, and 1922, point out these facts.

Relevant Chapters include: “Medical Assistance,” “Famine and Ukrainians Abroad,” “The Human Losses of the Famine, ” and, “What Does Soviet History Say?”

Regarding the success of international relief, and noting the fiscal aspects thereof, the following charts are particularly useful:

A.R.A. Relief Rendered, Expenses/Patient in Kopeks 1913, 1922,

1923

Relief Organization, Children and Adults Receiving Food from

International Committee of the Russian Relief Funds August 15, 1922

Chart of Nationalities and Races in Population of Ukraine, 1922

Viola, Lynne. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet

Collectivization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. vii + 285. Tables, Notes, Glossary, Sources Note, Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-19-504134-8.

Includes a section of “March of the Twenty-Five Thousand,” by Vladimir Maiakovskii.

Tables include:

“Control Plans for the Regional Distribution of the 25,000’ers” (40)

“Composition of the 25,000’ers” (45)

“Recruitment and Selection of 25,000’ers per Region According to Control Figures… dated not earlier than July 1930” (no end date) (82-83)

“Percentages of Collectivized Households in the RSFSF” (June 1929-March 1930) (93)

“Percentage of Collective Farms with 25,000’ers” (1931) (118)

“Distribution of 25,000’ers According to Farm Types” (Spring 1930) (119)

“Percentages of Collectivized Households in the RSFSR” (March-October 1930) (124)

Examines the attitude of the 25,000’ers; the political climate in which they acted; the oft-inept officials; the reluctance to submit.

Citing that they were sometimes semi-literate themselves, these workers were

burdened with official regulations, farm circulars, and:

each paper they sent us contained threats and reprimands…they met us right-off before we even stepped in the door with the cry, ‘We will put you on trial. We will condemn you’ (176).

Viola, Lynne. The Role of the OGPU in the Dekulakization, Mass Deportations, and Special

Resettlements in 1930. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 1406. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies, January 2000. 50 pp. Bibliographical Notes (38-50). ISSN: 0889-275X, LCCN: 00-423449.

Tables:

“Numbers of Category One and Category Two Kulaks 30 January 1930” (10)

OGPU Directives:

“Transport Schedule,” (20)

“Revised Transport Schedule, 4-7 February 1930” (22)

“Escapes up to October 1930” (31)

“Escapes 1932-1935” (31)

Also notes Ethnicity

Vossler, Ronald J., ed., and trans. We’ll Meet Again in Heaven: Germans in the Soviet Union

Write Their American Relatives, 1925-1937. Illustrated by Joshua Vossler. Fargo, North Dakoka: The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection; North Dakota State University Libraries, 2000, revised edition, 2001. v + 268pp. Introduction and Historical Overview, Illustrations, Notes, Note s on text, letters, and translation. Map, Index of Family Names, Chart of Weights, Measures, and Money, Sources and Endnotes, ISBN: 1-891193-23-6 (softcover).

Translated into English, these primary source letters describe the escalation of terror experienced by those trapped in famine-stricken areas of the Soviet Union. The letters were sent to families and friends outside of the Soviet Union both in Germany and the United States. These letters are archived at the Library of North Dakota State University (Fargo). Many famine letters were published in German-language newspapers in the United States as they were received in the 1930’s, as families tried to alert others of the conditions their relatives faced in the Soviet Union. It is important to understand that the names of the senders and recipients of these famine letters often were changed, abbreviated, or not printed in the press coverage in order to protect those persons from Soviet reprisals.

Chapters include:

“Things Are Not As They Once Were (1925-1927) (1-68)

“Hold Your Tongues (1928-1931) (69-142)

“Crucifixion by Hunger (1932-1933) (144-214)

“I Dream of You So Often (1934-1935) (216-246)

“All the Signs of the End Are Here (248-250)

Several letters express the victim’s bewilderment, as they wondered why the world has not responded in any humanitarian way to the horrific conditions under which the people were dying in such numbers. “If the entire civilized world remains completely silent, without a word from the believers, gazing onto this misery with hands in their laps, then it is ripe for a downfall” (Letter from “Your Father,” to his daughter in America, published in the Dakota Rundschau, and dated 28 November 1930, quoted in Vossler, 112-113).

Woropay, Olexa. The Ninth Circle: In Commemoration of the Victims of the Famine

of 1933. Translation of V dev'iatim kruzi. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1983. xxi + 43. Edited with Introduction by James E. Mace. Index of Ukrainian place names. Black-and-white photographic illustrations from The Chicago American: February, and March 1935. Mentions the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, which includes hundreds of accounts verifying the horrors of the Famine, and its deliberate nature. ISBN: 0960982205 (pbk.). LCCN: 82-50917.

Chapters include:

“What I Saw With My Own Eyes”

“What I Have Heard From Eye-witnesses”

“The Bosses Are Satisfied”

Shevchenko’s Native Village, 1933, is described. “Committees of Non-Rich Peasants (Komnezams KNS), which had earlier seized crops and held absolute power in the villages, were retained” (xiii).

Author’s Introduction describes the “ten-thousanders” sent from Moscow and Leningrad to enforce collectivization and grain confiscations. A woman asked, “‘what shall I feed my children with?’

‘…let them croak with you!’ replied the Deputy Chief of the ‘Politotdel’ (political department) of the Uladiv M.T.S” (xx-xxi).

Deputy of the Komsomol wanted to use barium chloride [an insecticide used to kill caterpillar infestations in crops] against the peasants (3-4).

Nutrition centers described (5-6).

Lines for bread in Kyiv (12-13)

City doctors forbidden to render medical care to peasantry (14).

Displaced Persons memoirs collected at the Displaced Persons Transit Camp

at Muenster, Germany, in 1948.

“Where shall I go with my children for the winter?’

‘Go, and drown them,’” Communist Party Member, F. Skyba (18).

Children ordered to dig graves.

“In this way, I carried my own sister to the grave and covered her with earth. Now, in exile, I wait for the moment when it will be possible for me to carry to the cemetery those who gave me such a happy childhood” (20).

A boy, who was still alive, was buried with the corpses in a mass grave. He lived for five more days (20).

Number of dead in various villages.

“According to a directive from the district, it was forbidden to reveal that people had died from starvation.” Doctors preparing death certificates were told to write, “Died from infectious disease” (26).

Definition of “kurkul” (30).

Peasants tortured in smoke-filled room to force confession of location of hidden grain (32).

Peasant revolts (33-34).

Russian settlers drove away starving children (36).

Party leaders, and purges of 1937 (37-38).