LARISSA M. L. ZALESKA ONYSHKEVYCH (New York, USA)

THE HOLODOMOR OF 1932-1933 AS PRESENTED IN DRAMA AND THE ISSUE OF BLAME

Drama often deals with issues deeply felt in the soul of an individual or a group. Some of the artistic expressions of this genre can achieve universal symbolism and significance. Nevertheless, the dramatic form is also usually the very last genre to which writers turn or which they dare to tackle in order to develop certain vital issues. , While the Ukrainian genocide-famine of 1932-1933, or Holodomor, has received some representation in Ukrainian literature, especially in poetry and prose, it is least represented in drama. However, Ukrainian drama, more than the other genres, also had to face certain specific historical factors, which lim- ited its expression. First, from 1932 until 1991 (with a two-year interlude of the Nazi occupation), the part of Ukraine that was subjugated to that genocide was still under Soviet rule; therefore, no explicit references to the famine could be published or staged. The leading contemporary Ukrainian literary scholar, Ivan Dziuba, recently recounted that the very word holod (meaning hunger or famine) was forbidden during that period.� Second, the period also included the horrors of World War II, which, as the more immediate trauma of the whole nation, pushed the 1933 event deeper into memory. Third, play- wrights have to have some glimmer of hope that their plays might be staged; writers in Ukraine could not expect this to happen, neither under the Soviets, nor in the widely dispersed Ukrainian diaspora in the West. Yet, here and there, direct references to holodomor did manage to appear in Ukrainian plays; besides, one writer in the Ukrainian SSR and two emigre playwrights dealt with the topic specifically.

Yuriy Yanovskyi's PotomkylDescendants Yuriy Yanovskyi (1902-1954) was a leading Ukrainian writer of his time. Known primarily for novels and film scenarios, he is also the author of one of the first direct references to the genocide-famine in Ukrainian drama - Po-

1. Ivan Dziuba, "Literatura sotsialistychnoho absurdu," Suchasnist', 1 (2003): 104. tomky (Descendants, 1938),2 Obviously, Ukrainian writers in the USSR were in a most awkward situation: on the one hand, they could not emotionally ig- nore the horrors of 1933, but neither could they write about it directly.3 A possible compromise for some was to deal with it in terms of Socialist Realist tenets. Thus, if there are any references to people swelling from hunger and then dying, they would be only about the kurkuls (kulaks, or rich farmers).44 As such, these once well-to-do farmers were shown as the only ones to suffer from the famine, since they supposedly hid the grain and did not want to join the collective farms. Yanovsky describes one of them, "pukhnuv, ta od holodu i zdokh " (he swelled up from hunger and died like an animal, 143). While members of the collective farms are shown fed, happy, and prospering - the kurkuls were starved to death, killed, or exiled to Siberia. In The De- scendants, a once-rich farmer returns after a seven-year sentence. He is de- scribed as quite obnoxious, selfish, and arrogant (he even beats his pregnant former fiancee). As a result, his family cannot stand him, and even his own mother disowns him. The kurkul behaves in a dehumanized manner (appar- ently because of his former economic status); however, one should note that his mother acts in a rather unnatural manner, robot-like, but representing a new Soviet collective farm person. " Overall, the work is a very black-and-white agitplay praising Soviet life and collectivization. What is rather intriguing here, is the dating of the events in the play and the play itself (which was published first in 1939). On the very first page, the mother of the exile exclaims, "Five years have passed, you see. Sorry, no, I lie! It was seven!" (139). Following this exchange, there are eleven more references to the seven-year time span. Why this unnecessary stress on the seven years? If the author had written the play in 1938, as marked, then the first reference to "five years" would place it in 1933. Were the twelve references to "seven years" there from the beginning or were they inserted later to camouflage the year? Or, was the play actually written in 1939 (the year it was first published) and thus the "seven-year" reference was to 193�, wfyen the famine had begun in the fall? Many of Yanovskyi's ar- chives are preserved in several holdings in Ukraine; they might shed some light on the issue of the dating of the events in the above play.

2. It was first published in 1939 in a periodical and then in a collection of the author's works: Yuriy Yanovsky, Tvory. vol. lII: P'yesy (Kyiv: V-vo Khudozhnioyi literatury, 1959), pp. 135-85. 3. Yuriy Yanovsky also wrote two film scenarios briefly touching upon the famine: "Sertsia dvokh" (The Hearts of Two, 1933) and "Prystrast"' (Desire, 1934). This fact was also mentioned by Ivan Dziuba. - 4. Kurkul '- the word is of Turkic origin, meaning a foreign settler, or one who inspires fear.