aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- RE: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert ScholarandHistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]

[Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson <dsfd@unimelb.edu.au>]

Title: RE: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar andHistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]

In response to Adrian Ivakhiv: I totally agree with your division of the 2 Models or hypotheses. Summary of this whole issue in a nutshell. Thus far, I tend to lean towards Model 2 but am open to change as more research is done. Part of the reason for trying to be more precise about what is being claimed about the Holodomor are my discussions over the years with particularly, but not only, Jewish friends, who have raised this question with me and compared and contrasted it with the Holocaust, thus putting various perspectives on the motives, numbers, sources and definitions. These questions will continue to arise from "outsiders" hence our discussion is not just some petty arguing over a tragedy.

Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Ivakhiv [mailto:aivakhiv@verizon.net]
Sent: Wed 1/30/2008 11:25 PM
To: Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson; Sorokowski, Andrew (ENRD); aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org
Subject: Re: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar andHistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]

RE: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar and HistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]Would it be fair to say the following:

- That there are two main competing models by which historians account for the mass deaths of Ukrainians in the early 1930s:

Model (hypothesis) 1: that the loss of millions of Ukrainians by famine resulting from a policy of enforced collectivization, closing of borders, export of grain, etc (combined with natural circumstances), together with more or less simultaneous acts directed at eliminating nationally-minded urban intelligentsia in Ukraine, constituted an act of genocide against Ukrainians (as defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide);

Model (hypothesis) 2: that the above were separate events motivated by independent policy goals, and thus do not constitute 'genocide' against a people, but rather acts of mass murder directed against distinct sub-groups of the population of the USSR.

- That uncertainty between the two positions results in part from a dearth of evidence of intent (as compared, say, to the clear intent by Nazi authorities of genocide against Jews);

- And that, therefore, more research is needed into Soviet archives to determine the nature of the latter. Until the evidence of intent becomes more conclusive, both hypotheses remain viable.

Adrian Ivakhiv


  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson
  To: Sorokowski, Andrew (ENRD) ; aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org
  Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:01 PM
  Subject: RE: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar andHistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]


  Do we call the Kazakh dead in hte same famine also a genocide? Maybe

  What about the forced and brutal deportation of over a quarter of the population of each of the Baltic states in June 1940? Culturally (and physically) these, too, could qualify. Seems there are too many potential genocides.

  And why not "democide"? Certainly applicable and horrifying enough. W

  e do not really know the Famine intent in the same was as we do know about Nazi racial policies. It certainly seems to the case that the Famine was a result of the Soviet state's reaction to the rural opposition to collectivization (as in Kazakhstan and among the Volga Germans. These, like the Roma in the holocaust, are often overlooked by Ukrainians although certainly the Kazakh death rate is comparable)

  Yes, Ukrainian culture (and Jewish culture and that of many other Soviet ethnicities/religions)was attacked and its prominent figures arrested and killed but that is not the same event as the Famine. There is confusion here. Is the Famine the genocide? Or ALL persecution of Ukrainians genocide? Part of the same genocide? This is not a clear situation.

  D.


  -----Original Message-----
  From: aaus-list-bounces@ukrainianstudies.org on behalf of Sorokowski, Andrew (ENRD)
  Sent: Wed 1/30/2008 8:49 AM
  To: aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org
  Subject: FW: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar and HistorianJoins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]


  > I do not think killing Russian intelligentsia (as intelligentsia) is
  logically (or politically) inconsistent with killing Ukr intelligentsia
  as Ukrainians.
  > Genocide of Ukrainians could have included both killing of
  intelligentsia and starvation of peasants, couldn't it?

  >
  > ----- Original Message -----
  > From: aaus-list-bounces@ukrainianstudies.org
  <aaus-list-bounces@ukrainianstudies.org>
  > To: aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org <aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org>
  > Sent: Mon Jan 28 13:28:52 2008
  > Subject: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar and Historian
  Joins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team]
  >
  > forwarded with permission,
  >
  > MP
  > pyz@brama.com
  >
  >
  > ---------------------------- Original Message
  ----------------------------
  > Subject: RE: [aaus-list] Re: [announce] Expert Scholar and Historian
  > Joins"HOLODOMOR" Documentary Feature Film Team
  > From:    "Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson" <dsfd@unimelb.edu.au>
  > Date:    Sun, January 27, 2008 11:26 pm
  > To:      "Roman Serbyn" <serbyn.roman@videotron.ca>
  > Cc:      pyziur@brama.com
  >
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  --
  >
  >
  > Dear all,
  >
  > I am not an academic with Holod expertise but as a critical reader
  (and
  > someone who works at the same University as Assoc Prof Stephen
  Wheatcroft
  > who is well known for his controversial Holod demographics)I feel
  somewhat
  > uncomfortable when people fall over themselves to insist the Holod was
  > Genocide and if it doesn't quite fit, then the whole of the Terror
  period
  > is deemed part of this genocide.
  >
  > Roman Serbyn raises some interesting considerations: that ethnic
  > Ukrainians who were not in the Ukrainian SSR in 1933 were not counted
  as
  > famine victims. There are some serious questions here. First, perhaps
  in
  > conditions of Terror (especially by 1937 when the famous census was
  > taken)Ukrainians living in the Russian SFSR preferred to register as
  > Russians out of fear? Second, if they were living outside the borders
  of
  > Ukraine maybe they actually survived the famine?
  >
  > Further to that census, we must recall that the demographic loss
  figures
  > in Ukraine reflected a loss in PROJECTED figures based on the
  birth-death
  > rates at the time of the previous census of 1928 . Therefore they do
  not
  > reflect loss of Ukrainians who were alive in 1928; they show that the
  > "expected number of Ukrainians by 1937" as extrapolated from the 1928
  > census was not reached. Of course, some of these figures were never
  > reached because there was a massive death rate from famine (as well as
  > mass deportations; executions and re-location as people sought to
  escape
  > the worsening conditions in Ukraine while it was still possible to get
  > out) but they are not all famine deaths. They also include the
  children
  > which were not born because their potential parents died. This is not
  the
  > same as counting the actual dead and it must be made clear to
  ourselves
  > and to non-Ukrainians otherwise we will seem foolish and highly
  > discredited in the extreme.
  >
  > Me also must not throw in the non-famine victims (e.g. the executed
  > intelligenstia) "for good measure" in the Genocide "campaign". It
  would
  > help to expand our horizons to know that ALL the intelligentsia in the
  > USSR: Russians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Jews and later the Baltic peoples
  we
  > ALL persecuted and murdered in vast numbers. Either we are talking
  about
  > the Holodomor itself (a discrete event like the Holocaust) or we are
  > talking about all persecution of Ukrainians under Stalin. A very
  different
  > question though related. Stalin killed intelligentsias wherever he
  found
  > them (first of all among the old Bolsheviks) because he perceived them
  as
  > a threat. This is not the same as setting out to perpetrate genocide
  among
  > all the various Soviet peoples or some specific ones as Hitler did
  > regarding the Jews and the Roma. The garment should not be stretched
  to
  > fit.
  >
  > My point is that the Famine deserves an enormous amount of additional
  > study - especially now with so many archives accessible. But any
  figures
  > or interpretations or terminological positions at this point are
  still,
  > actually hasty. The Holodomor should be studied in its own terms not
  with
  > preconceptions and it should be studied with the general history of
  the
  > whole Soviet Union.
  >
  > Daria Fedewytsch-Dickson
  > -----Original Message-----
  >
  >>
  >> In my experience, it's not good politics to cite bad numbers.
  >> The main consequence of the ten million figure is disbelief.
  >> People who know little about Ukrainian history, which
  >> as we all know is pretty much everyone, are
  >> astonished to learn of the famine; and so they ask people who
  >> might know (this has happened to me dozens of times)
  >> whether the figure of ten million is correct.  When they hear
  >> that it most likely is not, and that the range of credible
  >> estimates of unnatural deaths within Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933
  >> is more like 2.6-5.5 million, they come away from the experience with
  >> the sense that they have been misled, or worse.
  >> Since their first contact with the famine involves something
  >> false, they then may often wonder if the famine itself is
  >> to be questioned.  It would be good politics, and surely
  >> good professional ethics, to tell the story of the famine as
  >> accurately as we can -- as scholars, journalists, film-makers, etc.
  >> The harshness and cynicism of collectivization in 1930 and 1931, the
  >> grim progress of special measures of repression in the Soviet
  republic
  >> of Ukraine in 1931 and 1932, and the horrors of death by
  >> starvation in 1932 and 1933 deserve scholarly, credible, and
  accessible
  >> accounts.  Even if the lowest figures are accurate, we still
  >> have before us a political atrocity on a scale that was,
  >> until then, unknown. For a sample of recent discussions of the famine
  >> that include estimates of total deaths, see: Jacques Vallin, et al.,
  >> ?A new estimate of Ukrainian population losses during the crises of
  >> the 1930s and 1940s,? Population Studies, 56 (2002), 249-264; Robert
  >> Kusnierz, Ukraina w latach kolektywizacji i Wielkiego G?odu,
  >> (Toru? 2005), the 12/2004 issue of Osteuropa, and of course
  >> the works of Stanislav Kulchyts'kyi.
  >>
  >> Best wishes,
  >>
  >> Timothy Snyder
  >>
  >> Professor of History
  >> Yale University
  >>
  >> Quoting Max Pyziur <pyz@brama.com>:
  >>
  >>>> The number of ten million Holodomor victims rests on sound
  historical and
  >>>
  >>> If it is sound and historical, then there certainly must be a
  definitive
  >>> study. Care to cite it?
  >>>
  >>>> political judgment, and Mr. Pyziur is wrong in questioning it. Only
  the
  >>>
  >>> "Political"? No question that it serves someone's political needs.
  >>>
  >>>> Good Lord knows the exact number of victims, and He has not helped
  the
  >>>> Ukrainians by calling to His throne Jack Palance, who would have
  been the
  >>>> ideal narrator for the projected documentary "HOLODOMOR: Ukraine's
  >>>> Genocide of 1932-33." A knowledgeable human source would have been
  TIME's
  >>>> "Person of the Year for 2007," but he is not talking, for obvious
  reasons
  >>>> (once a Stalinist, always a Stalinist!). The recent brilliant work
  by
  >>>> Roman Serbyn has proved that Stalin did indeed commit genocide
  against
  > the
  >>>> Ukrainian people as such, and Taras Hunczak has a long record of
  >>>> presenting controversial subjects both cogently and persuasively.
  >>>>
  >>>> Some political judgment is also involved.  A canonical figure
  simply had
  >>>> to be established; and Yushchenko's ten million is a reasonable one
  > (as is
  >>>
  >>> This is intellectually lazy. At worst, dishonest.
  >>>
  >>> Max Pyziur
  >>> pyz@brama.com
  >>>
  >>>> the figure of six million for the Shoah-Holocaust and 1.5 million
  for the
  >>>> Armenian genocide). Kravchuk's figure of five million was much too
  low;
  >>>> and Kuchma's span from seven to ten million was a disaster for
  public
  >>>> documentation and presentation.
  >>>>
  >>>> To end on a personal note, as does Mr. Pyziur: CONTINUED
  >>>> _______________________________________________
  >>>> aaus-list mailing list
  >>>> aaus-list@ukrainianstudies.org
  >>>> http://www.brama.com/mailman/listinfo/aaus-list
  >>>>
  >>>
  >>> _______________________________________________
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  >>>
  >>
  >>
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