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The Holodomor, the Paper Trail, and the Maps

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The Holodomor, the Paper Trail, and the Maps CHERYL A. MADDEN (Warwick, RI, USA) I ONCE THE GRASS IS CUT, THE SNAKES SHOW THEMSELVES: THE HOLODOMOR, THE PAPER TRAIL, AND THE MAPS At a Holodomor Commemorative Event held in Montreal, Quebec, in No- vember 2007, I was the keynote speaker. Following my presentation, I was interviewed for broadcast by Radio Canada International by the journalist- producer, Mr. Platon Boyko, with most of the questions posed by Reverend Doctor Ihor Kutash.1 Mr. Boyko asked what I would say to the Russians and others, who claim that the Holodomor was not genocide against Ukrainians, because other groups alse perished. My response based on sources examined for my ongoing bibliographic work for the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America, Inc.2 was that when one extends the search for an answer to this question beyond the realm of pure history, and includes areas of study, such as demography and migration studies, the genocidal nature of the Holodomor becomes clear.3 Many forms of primary and secondary source documentation by scholars, statisticians, historians, journalists, explorers,4 geographers, per- petrators, eye witnesses, Soviet diplomats, religious figures, foreign Commu- nists working for the CPSU in Ukraine at the time of the Holodomor describe the severe demographic losses suffered by Ukrainian populations in their tra- ditional homeland, and in areas of Ukrainian settlement in significant per- centages of the populations in the Kuban' and Volga River regions. I. Cheryl A. Madden interviewed on the topic of the Holodomor by Platon Boyko, and Rev- erend Doctor Ihor Kutash, in Montreal, Quebec, for broadcast by Radio Canada International (November 10, 2007). 2. Cheryl A. Madden, The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933, and Aspects of Sta- linism: An Annotated Bibliography-in-Progress in the English Language, Part One: Books (New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 2003), viewable online at: www.shevchenko.org/famine. 3. Boyko interview. 4. See the description of "collectivized famine," and "collectivized weeds" mapped and de- scribed in detail by eye-witness to the Holodomor, Craveth Wells in his illustrated book, Kapoot [sic]: The Narrative of a Journey from Leningrad to Mount Ararat in Search of Noah's Ark (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1933). This book features photographic evidence of the children at the railway station whose ragged clothing sharply contrasts with that of the well-fed Soviet offi- cials, p. 145. 5. Paul Robert Magocsi, and Geoffrey J. Matthews, cartographer. Ethnolinguistic setting of the Ukrainian lands [map]. Scale 1: 6300000. In Paul Robert Magocsi and Geoffrey J. Matthews, Ukraine: A Historical Atlas. Ukrainian Studies Series, 1 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, Various atlases and other documentary sources show the range of Ukrain- ian ethnicity through the ages and as it exists worldwide today. For the pur- pose of this study, we shall concentrate on the territory of Ukraine, its neighboring regions, and areas of exile in the Soviet Union to which Ukraini- ans were deported, exiled within the Soviet Union, or imprisoned as a result of forced collectivization, dekulakization, Ukrainian nationalism or faith, and so on. The timeline across which Ukrainian migration patterns will be dis- cussed in order to give an assessment of the range of Ukrainian ethnicity be- fore-during-after-the-Holodomor are: a.) the medieval period of Kyiv and the eastward migrations for trade along the Silk Road; b.) during the time of the domination of Imperial Russia; c.) the World War I and Russian Revolution era; d.) forced collectivization and deportation, exile, or imprisonment in the Gulag system of forced labor camps, where deportees and their infants and small children suffered an often-slower death from brutality, exposure, over- work, despair, cold, and hunger, or execution6; e.) the World War II era; f.) the post-war Ukrainian S.S.R. and relevant areas of the U.S.S.R.; g.) the pre- sent day. 1985), map 2. Copyright © 1985 by the University of Toronto Press. Reprinted with the kind permission of University of Toronto Press. Any further reproduction of this map is forbidden without written consent of University of Toronto Press. 6. Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Holocaust by hunger: The truth behind Stalin's Great Famine," Mail on Sunday (July 26, 2008) http:!Iwww.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article- 1038774-Holocaust-hunger-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html (July 2008). .
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