Notes on Transliteration and Administrative Divisions

To ensure precision and readability, the author followed the standard Library of Congress system in the text and documents for transliterating Ukrainian names and terms into English. Additionally, the author used Ukrainian abbreviations for republic’s branches of government, but transliterated the names of Communist Party and security police (e.g., Politburo, OGPU) from Russian because these variants are more familiar to English-language readers. Names of ethnic Russians and non-Ukrainian party leaders have been rendered in their transliteration from Russian. Last names are rendered with -yi (Ukrainian) and -ii (Russian). The names of cities and administrative divisions in the Ukrainian SSR reflect their Ukrainian pronunciation (e.g., Kyïv, Odesa, Kharkiv), but Russian pronunciation has been preserved in quotes from original documents (e.g., Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov). The spelling of Ukrainian letter ї has been used following the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute publication guidelines. Ligatures are omitted, but the soft sign (ь) is rendered with a prime (′) to reflect the Cyrillic original. The Russian hard sign (ъ) is rendered with two primes (′′). English translations of quoted materials are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

The Ukrainian SSR went through three administrative changes during the 1930s. Initially, Soviet authorities preserved the tsarist-era gubernii (gubernia), known by their Russian spelling, transliterated from Ukrainian as hubernii. From 1923 to 1925, they were replaced with smaller okruhy (regions) and raiony (districts) through the merger and repartition of tsarist-era volosti (counties). There were fifty-three okruhy in Soviet Ukraine, but this number decreased to forty-one through division and the transfer of territory to the Russian SFSR. The term krai (territory), introduced in 1924, designated the North Caucasus, one of the six regions of the Russian SFSR inhabited by Ukrainian ethnic minority. Within the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet officials created the Moldovan Autonomous SSR and districts for ethnic minorities, including Russian, German, Polish, Jewish, and others. Beginning in 1930, the okruhy were abolished. By 1932, they had been replaced by seven large oblasti (regions), further subdivided into raiony (districts). In 1933, there were 392 administrative districts in Soviet Ukraine. Districts could be rural or urban, roughly equivalent to counties or boroughs. Cities had separate administrations that fell between district and region levels. Within the republic, regions and districts each had party committees, party control commissions, and state bodies. In 1934, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was transferred from Kharkiv to Kyïv. The number of regions increased through the 1930s to a total of fifteen, including the Moldovan ASSR, by the early 1940s. Throughout this period, the territory and names of districts shifted. Names of cities also changed after the creation of a new Ukrainian orthography in 1928 and its formal adoption by the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1929. To complicate matters further, the orthography was reformed in 1933 because of its alleged embrace of “nationalist deviation.” After the adoption of the Soviet constitution of 1936, the official name of the republic also changed: Socialist Ukraine became Soviet Ukraine.

Introduction: Soviet Genocide against Ukrainians

Radomysl′, the town of “happy thought,” 1934. Pictured on the cover photo are the teachers and student leaders of School No. 1 named after Taras Shevchenko.¹ The Ukrainian literary specialist George Grabowicz called him “Bard and Prophet, the inspired voice of the people, and the spiritual father of the reborn nation.”² In his “Testament” (Zapovit, 1845), Shevchenko foretold that through struggle his people would break the chains of slavery and tyranny to attain freedom and independence: “Bury me thus I pray, and rise! From chains set yourselves free! And with your foes’ unholy blood, baptize your liberty!”³ Between 1932 and 1933, the Radomysl′ district lost 21,705 out of 67,000, or one-third, of its population.⁴ In 1913, when my maternal grandfather was just seventeen years old, a bustling industrial district center had a population of 15,165.⁵ It had nineteen factories, a water tower, and electric street lights. World War I, the national liberation struggle of 1917–1921, the famine of 1921–1923, and the Great Famine of 1932–1933, the apogee of the Holodomor, devastated the town. Out of six schools established by 1927, only two were still functioning in 1934.⁶ Even today, the town’s population has not recovered (14,109 as of 2020).⁷ In one generation, the survivors lost their national culture, language, and history.

This study is the first of its kind examining existential threats and ideological choices Ukrainian intelligentsia faced as the first group targeted during the genocide known as the Holodomor. To legal scholars, the genocide is an extreme form of collective violence and a crime against humanity. To criminologists, it is a state, organizational, and political crime.⁸ To sociologists, it represents violent social or armed conflict between state authorities and civilian groups resisting annihilation.⁹ When historians engage in analysis of archival sources, oral histories, and memoirs to reflect on causes and consequences of past genocides, familiar categories of victims and perpetrators are inadequate to account for injustices.¹⁰ Instead, scholars argue the ethics of remembrance requires a shift in our analytical lens from a dichotomy of guilt versus innocence to that of accepting responsibility and accountability. Paraphrasing Michael Rothberg, teachers, doctors, and lawyers were “implicated subjects.”¹¹ Scholars argue that despite being forced to carry out Bolshevik policies,¹² professional elites were able to make individual choices.¹³

Freedom of choice is the cornerstone of philosophy known as Existentialism, which is antithetical to Marxism.¹⁴ Existentialists believe individuals are free and must take personal responsibility for their actions and decision-making. They further contend that individuals must arrive at their own truth and decide which situations are moral. Existentialists, whether religious or atheist, were criticized by Marxists, who called their philosophy “bourgeois” because only bourgeoisie ostensibly have the “luxury” to make individual choices by engaging in contemplation. Marxists believed in economic determinism and action as opposed to contemplation. What choices, if any, could teachers and other members of Ukrainian intelligentsia make in the circumstances of immense coercion, forced deportations, summary incarcerations, and extrajudicial executions?

The core argument of this book is based on a broad definition of the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians as a national group in Ukraine and ethnically Ukrainian areas within the borders of the Soviet Union during the 1920s–1930s. The etymology of the term points to one of the tools used to perpetrate genocide. The word holodomor is derived from holod (hunger) and mor (Latin root mort-death), meaning “death caused by hunger.” The Ukrainian word holodomor, spelled with small-h, has been in use to refer to mass deaths as in a plague since 1898, when it appeared in an article describing destitute population suffering from starvation.¹⁵ On August 17, 1933, newspaper Večerník P. L. in Prague used it in a headline, “Hladomor v SSSR.”¹⁶ Press reports worldwide used neutral linguistic terms “hunger,” “famine,” and “głod” to depict extreme deficit of food in certain regions of the Soviet Union. German diplomats used such terms as Hungerkatastrophe (hunger catastrophe), Hungersterbens (death from hunger), and Planierung der Hungersnot (planned hunger) in dispatches during 1932–1933.¹⁷ Some of these terms were borrowed by Ukrainian émigré organizations in Europe and North America in the 1930s and used by journalists and publicists in the 1940s through the 1950s. As early as 1933, Ukrainian émigré organizations appealed to the League of Nations and demanded recognition of the famine in Soviet Ukraine, but they secured only six votes.¹⁸ The Soviet Union was not a member of the League at that time. The General Secretariat dismissed the matter considering it an internal affair because Soviet authorities did not admit there was famine in the Ukrainian SSR. In 1949, Ukrainian publicist and civic leader Michael Mischenko introduced the concept of “hunger as a method of terror and rule in the Soviet Union.”¹⁹ On May 31, 1953, the newspaper Ukraïns′ki visti published an appeal stating, “Let’s remind the free world about Moscow’s genocide.”²⁰ Appeals from émigré Ukrainian organizations were drowned by disinformation campaigns unleashed from the Kremlin at the onset of the Cold War.

In 1953, Raphael Lemkin defined Soviet policy against the Ukrainian nation as genocide. Lemkin used the specific term “Soviet genocide,” based on criteria listed in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9, 1948. In his speech on September 20, 1953,²¹ addressed to the Ukrainian community in New York on the twentieth anniversary of the 1933 famine, Lemkin went beyond the extermination of people by hunger to what he called the “classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification.” In his typewritten notes, Lemkin characterized Kremlin’s policy toward Ukraine in the first half of the twentieth century as “not simply a case of mass murder, [but as] a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.”²² Further, Lemkin defined Stalin’s policy in “the Ukraine,” as he referred to the Soviet republic at that time, as a four-pronged attack. The first blow was aimed against Ukrainian intelligentsia (the “brain” of the nation), the second against clergy (the “soul” of the nation), and the third at farmers (the “repository of the tradition, folklore and music, the national language and literature,” in short, the “national spirit”). The aim of the fourth prong of attack was to change the demographic composition of the population in Ukraine by resettling Red Army veterans and Russian loyalists together with their families into areas depopulated by the genocidal famine.²³ A linguist and lawyer by training, Lemkin proposed an innovative interpretation beyond the etymology of the term “death caused by hunger,” combining the intent and fact of physical eradication of Ukrainians as a nation via Russification, political repressions, deportations, and executions.

Until the late 1980s, the term “genocide” in reference to the Holodomor was rarely used; more often historians referred to it as the Great Famine. Emphatic, yet misleading, terms were used by Wasyl Hryshko, who described it as the “Ukrainian holocaust”²⁴ in 1978, and by Robert Conquest, who called it “terror-famine” in the subtitle of his book in 1986. Already in 1965, Vasyl′ Pliushch defined the repressions of the 1920s and 1930s as moral and physical genocide. However, Pliushch used the term genocide for the first time a decade later in the English translation of his book Genocide of the Ukrainian People, published in 1973.²⁵

Precedent for legal recognition of the Holodomor as genocide was established by the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine, when it published its report in 1990.²⁶ While the Soviet Union was still in denial, a commission established by the U.S. Congress published its report in April 1988 and, in 1990, published three volumes of oral history interviews with over 200 witnesses.²⁷ Findings were unequivocal: “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932–1933.”²⁸ Soon periodicals began to use the term “famine-genocide.”

Raphael Lemkin, who conceptualized genocide in 1942, saw it enshrined in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.²⁹ Article I of the Convention addresses responsibility, confirming that signatories will undertake to prevent and punish genocide, whether committed in time of peace or war. Article II of the Convention specifically defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. (a) Killing members of the group;

2. (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”³⁰

It is worth noting that according to Lemkin, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, rather, a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at destroying essential foundations of life in national groups.

It took more than half a century for a historiographic shift to occur in 2006, when the Parliament of Ukraine recognized the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian national group in accordance with articles of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.³¹ The Genocide Convention “lacked the teeth to condemn the true and only perpetrator of genocide, Russia.”³² It failed to prevent genocides from occurring throughout the twentieth century.

Thus, after the Rwandan genocide, Gregory H. Stanton, professor of Genocide Studies and Prevention at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, briefed U.S. Department of State officials in 1996 about measures on how to prevent genocidal violence from occurring. Stanton emphasized that prevention has to start early to deescalate cycles of violence that proceed in stages:

1. classification,

2. symbolization,

3. discrimination,

4. dehumanization,

5. organization,

6. polarization,

7. preparation,

8. persecution,

9. extermination, and

10. denial.³³

Stanton’s model has allowed historians to broaden the theoretical base for studying the Holodomor as a multistage process.³⁴

After half a century of Soviet disinformation, which succeeded in deleting the Holodomor from history textbooks and academic discussions, scholars in the West and in Ukraine find it challenging to apply the broad definition proposed by Lemkin to study this case of genocide. Roman Serbyn, professor emeritus of Russian and East European history at the University of Quebec at Montreal, has underscored that Lemkin’s analysis offered a novel interpretation beyond a famine or the famine.³⁵ Legal scholars and some historians in Ukraine and in the Ukrainian diaspora have embraced it.³⁶ However, narrow interpretation of the Holodomor as the famine of 1932–1933 has dominated the discourse for so long that some Ukrainian and Western scholars argue broadening the chronological scope dilutes the definition.³⁷

Many Russian and pro-Russian or Soviet specialists deny Stalin used the famine of 1932–1933 deliberately to starve Ukrainians and view it as an “all-Union” famine, a tragedy of Soviet countryside.³⁸ The latter focused on Soviet agricultural policy, thus obscuring the role of Soviet nationality policy. Soviet historian Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi has recently reinterpreted it as a famine within the famine, which must be analyzed at the intersection of the Kremlin’s economic and nationality policies.³⁹ Yet, focus on economic causes of the famine, continuously promoted as part of disinformation warfare, diverts attention from the targeted group in this instance of genocide.

The case of Ukraine follows a pattern of genocidal violence in early twentieth-century Europe against nations having no states or being on the periphery of empires. Several scholars have examined this case through the imperialist or colonialist paradigm.⁴⁰ The first Ukrainian scholar who used the term “colonialism” to define the relationship between Russia and its Ukrainian provinces was Mykola Stasiuk in 1911. His contemporary Max Weber compared non-Russian colonies in the Russian Empire to the British colonies of Ireland and India.⁴¹ Unlike Britain’s overseas colonies, Russia’s colonies were contiguous. Contemporary scholars argue that experiences of Ukrainians as colonial subjects paralleled the experiences of Armenians during World War I and of Jews during World War II. In the latter two cases, wars legitimized violence against civilian populations singled out as scapegoats of imperial rulers, Ottomans, and the Third Reich. What makes the Ukrainian case unique is that violence was perpetrated during peacetime between two world wars, both of which were fought on Ukrainian blood-soaked lands.⁴²

After dissolution of the Soviet Union and opening of archives in Ukraine, historians began to study political repressions against intelligentsia, one of the first groups targeted during the genocide.⁴³ Two schools of thought, totalitarian and revisionist, continue to dominate the discussion. Sheila Fitzpatrick and J. Arch Getty rejected Robert Conquest’s “totalitarian” portrayal of the structure and operations of the Soviet government. Two revisionist historians, R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, argued that the famine of 1932–1933 was not intentional, but a result of mismanaged policies and natural disasters, and that negligence and environmental circumstances were the causes of the famine rather than Stalin himself.⁴⁴ Anne Applebaum resurrected the “totalitarian” model by contending that Stalin personally planned and executed the famine.⁴⁵ Political scientists Carl J. Friedrich of Harvard University and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski of Columbia University analyzed the essence of Stalinism through the prism of totalitarianism.⁴⁶ The four basic features or traits that distinguish totalitarian dictatorships from constitutional systems are as follows:

1. an ideology, to which everyone living in that society is supposed to adhere;

2. a single mass party typically led by one man, the “dictator”;

3. a system or terror, both physical and psychic, effected through party and secret-police control; and

4. a mass communications monopoly in the hands of the party.⁴⁷

Significantly, the Soviet system continued to maintain itself after Stalin’s death. It was institutionalized through an elaborate bureaucratic network. Political lieutenants of the dictator wielded the levers of control that held the system together because they derived considerable benefits for themselves.

Historiography of political terror has initially centered on Stalin’s personality cult along with political and security apparatchiks who sustained their boss in power.⁴⁸ Institutional analysis further exposed the nature and functioning of organs of repression, focusing on the organization and carrying out of special operations, yet leaving out ideological aspects of Soviet repressive policies.⁴⁹ Scholars have documented deportations of Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1920s⁵⁰ soon after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged as a unitary state and continued repressions and eventual extermination of nationally conscious intelligentsia, including teachers, in the 1930s.⁵¹ While documenting victims’ experiences, these authors overlooked the role that conformists played in carrying out Soviet propaganda, collectivization, and grain-requisition campaigns, including silencing the truth about the famine.

Important archival sources that have shed light on the role of the Soviet security police in persecutions of Ukrainian intelligentsia appeared in a series of articles published in a periodical Z arkhiviv VUChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB in the 1990s.⁵² The use of the Russian abbreviation GPU rather than the Ukrainian translation DPU has been proposed by Iurii Shapoval, who has published a considerable body of works on the history of the Soviet state security services, as is evident from the title of the documentary collection, Rozsekrechena pam’iat′: Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni v dokumentakh GPU-NKVD.⁵³ This highlights the fact that the Ukrainian branch was an affiliate subordinated to the OGPU of the USSR in Moscow and followed Soviet leadership directives to implement “special operations” that led to mass deaths of Ukrainians.

Scholars have compiled hitherto unpublished documents related to surveillance of “old” (prerevolution) Ukrainian intelligentsia in preparation for a case fabricated by the GPU against the “counterrevolutionary” and “anti-Soviet” organization, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (known by its Ukrainian acronym SVU or Spilka vyzvolennia Ukraїny).⁵⁴ They have yet to foreground the prominent role of the SVU trial in deliberate destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia.⁵⁵ In 1929, when thousands of rebellions in Ukrainian villages threatened to topple the Soviet government, a scapegoat had to be found to crush the opposition to the communist⁵⁶ regime. Arrests started in May 1929 and, following the staged SVU public hearings in early 1930, repressions touched all educational institutions in Soviet Ukraine. Scholars have studied the trial proceedings and fate of individual defendants extensively in the 1990s and early 2000s.⁵⁷ Several eyewitness accounts have been published.⁵⁸ Authors of these publications challenged the official version that the SVU was a “plot” and argued against it being a real organization.⁵⁹ Scholars have treated the trial as a “prelude to the Holodomor” rather than a continuation of the first prong of attack in Soviet genocide against Ukrainians.

Soviet education policy has been thoroughly studied by American historians, yet their narratives contain gaps because access to sensitive archival sources has been limited. In her monograph Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934, Sheila Fitzpatrick delineated the historical period as the “cultural revolution,” lauding Soviet achievements.⁶⁰ This revisionist American historian of Australian origin examined the implementation of the education policy in all Soviet republics. However, Fitzpatrick had limited access to archives in Moscow and Smolensk in the late 1970s; so her historical account of discrimination and purges of teachers and professors focused mostly on the Russian republic. Fitzpatrick referred to the Ukrainian language issue several times, but failed to explain what happened in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. In two out of three statistical tables, the author included data from 1932 to 1933 to illustrate increased enrollment in secondary schools but missed data on the decreased enrollment in primary grades. Intentionally or unintentionally, Fitzpatrick missed the crucial evidence that several million children were unaccounted for.⁶¹ Primary schools were obligatory at the time, so missing statistical data in the Russian archives further highlights the regime’s attempt to cover up the crime perpetrated in Soviet Ukraine.

Another Russia-focused study by Larry F. Holmes The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 left no page of the Soviet teachers’ newspapers and archival documents unturned to corroborate the scholarship of Roberta Manning, J. Arch Getty, and Lynne Viola who pointed to limits of the regime’s power over society.⁶² Very few historians have claimed that Bolsheviks had successfully introduced their utopian schemes, except Marxist historians in the former Soviet Union. Holmes failed to contemplate how the battle over educational issues related to the life-and-death struggle for power taking place at the same time in Soviet Ukraine.

To overcome shortcomings of his predecessors, E. Thomas Ewing in his monograph, a methodological tour-de-force, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s compared classroom conditions in Soviet vis-à-vis American, French, British, and German schools. Ewing provided insight into ethnicity, social mobility, gender, state power, and grassroots resistance.⁶³ However, the author failed to mention purges of educators in 1930 and collapse of schools during 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR.

One of the first studies in English focusing specifically on teachers and schools in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s was Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–1934 by Matthew D. Pauly of Michigan State University.⁶⁴ The monograph on the implementation of language policy in Soviet Ukraine from 1923 to 1934 includes biographical sketches of the Ukrainian teachers and academicians as defendants in the SVU trial. Pauly’s frequent trips to Ukrainian archives make it an authoritative study of local history. The famine of 1932–1933 is mentioned because it was centered on the Ukrainian republic. Pauly has argued that Bolshevik anxiety about Ukrainian nationalism influenced the tenor of purges. Although Pauly told the story of the SVU trial, he provided no insight into its possible connection to the genocide known as the Holodomor.

Scholars who have studied the fate of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1920s,⁶⁵ 1930s,⁶⁶ and from the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 to the Great Terror of 1937⁶⁷ have noted that the intelligentsia did not fit into Bolshevik social class structure; yet intellectuals, as members of professional unions, had certain ethno-cultural, social, psychological characteristics and followed a code of ethical behavior.⁶⁸ A teacher’s professional mission was to enlighten the masses and lead them in the struggle for national liberation. Yet many turned into “best friends” of the Communist Party,⁶⁹ who under duress “enthusiastically” carried out propaganda, collectivization, and even grain-requisition campaigns. We must analyze if Ukrainian intelligentsia, particularly teachers, could truly make existential choices in circumstances of collective violence.

This book seeks to examine why and how the so-called “cultural revolution” occurred and its impact on society in Soviet Ukraine, especially the role that intelligentsia, the “brain” of the nation, played. Samuel Huntington postulated that great divisions among nations occur along traditional fault lines of culture; thus, he titled his essay provocatively: “The Clash of Civilizations?” Huntington has suggested that cultural conflicts are harder to resolve than political or economic. In ideological conflicts, the question is, “Which side are you on?” and people do choose sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is, “What are you?” and the wrong answer to that question means a bullet in the head.⁷⁰ Although Russian and Ukrainian cultures seem to have Eastern Orthodox religion as their faith and Cyrillic script as their writing system, branching from the Balto-Slavic language family, they have mutually unintelligible spoken languages⁷¹ and distinct differences in values and beliefs that govern their respective societies. Historically, Western ideas of constitutionalism, human rights, liberty, rule of law, and democracy have penetrated the Russian autocratic state via Ukraine. The historic and historiographic differences⁷² need to be considered when analyzing causes and consequences of the Holodomor in Ukraine and the denial of the Holodomor as genocide in Russia.

A systematic complex analysis requires multiple lenses on which to focus in order to avoid a trap of one’s discipline bias. Therefore, some of the issues explored in this book include the following:

· Philosophical: Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Existentialism.

· Political: modernity, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, role of government, role of the international community.

· Economic: industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, the use of forced labor.

· Legal: justice, moral versus natural law, suspension of morality and law (bystanders, rescuers), human rights.

· Psychological: thought control, perpetrator psyche, victim behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder, guilt, shame, sacrifice to help the sufferers, denial.

· Social: Social Darwinism, membership in communities (“us” versus “them”), resistance.

· Cultural: values, beliefs, perception of death and dying, coping with grievance, surviving humiliation, memorializing.

The history of the Holodomor as genocide is complex, and a brief survey will not resolve the big question: What is it about human nature that makes some people want to inflict death on others? Nevertheless, this book will attempt to address more specific questions about the history of the Holodomor: Who was involved and in what way? What motivated those people to behave the way they did? What role did the intelligentsia, especially teachers, play? How can study of the past help us understand why brutality and suffering continue in our present world? Thus, the goal of this book is to provide a cautionary tale for present and future generations to become cognizant of the signs of state violence, and to stand in defense of human rights and social justice.

Chronological, statistical, and comparative analytical approaches were used to examine social changes in Ukraine over a decade from the 1920s through the 1930s. Historical research methodology was used to collect primary and secondary sources. Recognizing limitations of storytelling and the politics of memory, a narrative analysis of published witness accounts,⁷³ and diaries, written by teachers or those who personally knew teachers,⁷⁴ was triangulated with governmental documents and official reports that have been preserved in archives of central and regional Communist Party organizations,⁷⁵ Ukraine’s security service,⁷⁶ pedagogical museums,⁷⁷ and private libraries.⁷⁸ Dissolution of the Soviet Union made access to archives possible for research. Top secret resolutions and case files of repressed teachers hidden for decades shed new light on historical events. Facts gleaned from periodicals fill gaps in archival materials to reveal a complex picture.

Chronologically, this book is divided into five periods discussed in each chapter, respectively. Chapter 1 examines preconditions of the atrocity, from 1917 to 1922, when Ukraine lost its struggle for national liberation and Bolsheviks established their presence, equipped with Marxist ideology and a repressive security police to enforce it. Ideological roots of Soviet genocide against Ukrainians are traced to writings of the fathers of scientific communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and the founding father of the first socialist state, Vladimir Lenin. Bolshevik policies toward non-Russian nations and ownership of land were preconditions for establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat following the October Socialist Revolution of 1917. Efforts to rebuild the national education system by “old” (prerevolution) intelligentsia in Ukraine ran into conflict with demand for training new Soviet elite.

Chapter 2 focuses on the period from 1923 to 1927, when Soviet policy toward non-Russian nations was introduced and violence against nationally conscious intelligentsia became institutionalized while giving rise to new “red” intelligentsia. Teachers in Soviet Ukraine became instrumental by serving as propagandists of Bolshevik policies. On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution, Ukrainian separatism was proclaimed a great threat to Soviet power, and authorities set out methods of eliminating this tendency.

Chapter 3 analyzes events between 1928 and 1931, when Soviet policy of secrecy was instituted ahead of the first show trial of the nationally conscious intelligentsia along with a simultaneous suppression of uprisings against the Bolshevik policy of total collectivization leading to the rise of “corrective labor” camps. It foregrounds deportations of nationally conscious intelligentsia in the 1920s and one of the first show trials of participants in the fabricated Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, dubbed the SVU, and subsequent purges of thousands of teachers and the liquidation of the Commissariat of Education in Ukraine. Remaining teaching cadres were intimidated into becoming “enthusiasts” in carrying out Bolshevik propaganda, collectivization, and grain-requisition campaigns. Recalcitrant members of Ukrainian intelligentsia were exiled to labor camps, managed by the GPU in the Russian North, Far East, and Siberia, where they froze, starved to death, or were executed.

Chapter 4 zeros in on the ultimate phase of the genocide: extermination by man-made famine and other means in 1932–1933. Along with beheading the intelligentsia, Stalin and those around him used a variety of tools to put Ukrainian land tillers on their “knees,” including requisitions, blacklists, and blockades. Concurrent curtailment of Ukrainization spelled out death to farmers who were carriers of national tradition, culture, and language in Ukraine and beyond its borders in areas populated by ethnic Ukrainians in Russian SFSR. To survive meant to submit to the repressive regime.

Chapter 5 uncovers strategies of denial employed by perpetrators of the genocide. The denial of the Holodomor started with covering up the crime, and continues to this day. Enablers and bystanders contributed to silencing truth about the Holodomor. Silence and secrecy, although not unique, were hallmarks of the Soviet state. Two belts of silence existed: internal, inside the Soviet Union, and external, on the world stage. Bystanders included Western journalists and intellectuals, diplomats, and leaders of great powers who failed to prevent genocidal violence against Ukrainians in the 1930s.

The concluding chapter addresses issues of legal responsibility, as well as economic, social, cultural, and psychological effects of the Holodomor on subsequent generations of Ukrainians. It examines representation of the topic in historical writing and memorials. Spanish-born American philosopher and professor at Harvard George Santayana, known for his aphorisms, warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”⁷⁹ This warning is a lesson for our generation to discern the seeds of genocide in Russia’s hybrid warfare against Ukraine.⁸⁰

NOTES

1. Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), Ukraine’s leading poet and artist, was born a serf. His patriotic poetry has influenced generations of Ukrainians and inspired their struggle for liberation. Shevchenko was arrested in 1847 and banished from his native land for decades. His works were banned. Not until 1907, they were published in complete form in Ukrainian in the Russian Empire. See Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror–Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 28.

2. George G. Grabowicz, The Poet as Mythmaker: A Study of Symbolic Meaning in Taras Ševčenko (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1982), 1.

3. Zapovit by Taras Shevchenko, Pereiaslav, December 25, 1845. The translation is from The Ukrainian Poets, 1189–1962, eds. Constantine Henry Andrusyshen and Watson Kirkconnell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963). For additional English versions by various translators, see https://taras-shevchenko.storinka.org/my-testament-poem-of-taras-shevchenko-english-translation-by-various-translators.html. The selected stanza comes from a program of the event honoring Taras Shevchenko, “Ukraine’s Greatest Poet, Teacher, and Spiritual Leader,” in San Francisco, California, March 2021 (courtesy of Maria Tscherepenko, president of the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, personal communication, March 16, 2021).

4. Dovidnyk z osnovnykh statystychno-ekonomichnykh pokaznykiv hospodarstva raioniv Kyïvs′koï oblasti USRR (Kharkiv, 1933), 6–8; Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyïvs′koï oblasti (hereafter, DAKO), f. R-235, op. 1, spr. 21, ark. 1–108; quoted in Volodymyr Serhiychuk, “To Honor All Innocent Victims of the Holodomor,” in Women and the Holodomor-Genocide: Victims, Survivors, Perpetrators, ed. Victoria A. Malko (Fresno: The Press at California State University, 2019), 125.

5. My maternal grandfather Mykola Chernihovets′ was born in Chornobyl′, Radomysl′s′kyi povit, Kyïv huberniia in 1896 in a family of grain growers. Special thanks to Ia. M. Bul′boniuk for locating a church record in Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukraïny, Kyїv (TsDIAKU), f. 127, op. 1078, spr. 2519, ark. 115 zv.

6. “Radomyshl′,” in Istoriia mist i sil Ukraïns′koï RSR: Zhytomyrs′ka oblast′ (Kyïv: Ukraïns′ka Radians′ka Entsyklopediia AN URSR, 1973), http://imsu-zhytomyr.com/mista-i-sela-zhytomyrskoi-oblasti/radomyshlskyj-rajon-/radomyshl-.html.

7. See Table 5 in Number of Existing Population of Ukraine as of 1 January 2020: Statistical Publication, ed. Olena Vyshnevska (Kyïv: State Statistics Service of Ukraine, 2020), 30.

8. Alette Smeulers, “Perpetrators of International Crimes: Towards a Typology,” in Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes, eds. Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman (Antwer: Intersentia, 2008), 233, 235.

9. Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). The authors defined genocide and ethnocide as the intent to kill a part of a group “in order to terrorize the remainder into giving up their separate identity or their opposition to the perpetrator group or both” (26). The authors proposed a fourfold typology of genocide, based on the motives of the perpetrator: “(1) to eliminate a real or potential threat; (2) to spread terror among real and potential enemies; (3) to acquire economic wealth; or (4) to implement a belief, a theory, or an ideology” (29). In any given case, more than one of these motives are present. See also British political scientist and sociologist Martin Shaw, who adopts a broad definition of the concept in his book, What Is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

10. Vasyl′ Marochko and Götz Hillig, Represovani pedahohy Ukraїny: zhertvy politychnoho teroru, 1929–1941 (Kyïv: “Naukovyi svit,” 2003); O. Drach, “Spivrobitnyky Cherkas′koho pedahohichnoho instytutu – zhertvy stalins′kykh represii,” in Osvitiany Cherkashchyny – zhertvy radians′koho totalitarnoho rezhymu: dokumental′ne vydannia, ed. V. Masnenko (Cherkasy: Brama-Ukraïny, 2009), 213–18; Daria Mattingly, “[Extra]ordinary Women: Female Perpetrators of the Holodomor,” in Women and the Holodomor-Genocide, ed. Victoria A. Malko (Fresno: The Press at California State University, 2019), 51–89.

11. Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2019).

12. Hennadii Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva USRR v konteksti transformatsiï suspil′stva (1920-ti roky),” Problemy istoriї Ukraїny: fakty, sudzhennia, poshuky, no. 17 (2007): 138–61.

13. Ol′ha Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky: povsiakdenne zhyttia (Kharkiv: “Rarytety Ukraïny,” 2010).

14. Thomas Flynn, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

15. Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk 3, no. 7 (1898); quoted in Vil′nyi tlumachnyi slovnyk, 2018, http://sum.in.ua/f/Gholodomor. The derivative verb moryty is used in Ukrainian colloquial speech to figuratively mean “exhaust” or “torment.”

16. “Hladomor v SSSR,” Večerník P. L., August 17, 1933. See Iaroslav Hrytsak, “Khto i koly vpershe vzhyv slovo “Holodomor”? Ukraïna Moderna, November 24, 2017, http://uamoderna.com/blogy/yaroslav-griczak/etymology-holodomor.

17. Vasyl′ Marochko, “Holodomor–henotsyd,” in Entsyklopediia Holodomoru 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni (Drohobych: “Kolo,” 2018), 91–93.

18. Pavlo Shtepa, Moskovstvo: Ioho pokhodzhennia, zmist, formy i istorychna tiahlist′, vol. 2 (Toronto: Semen Stasyshyn, 1968), 362.

19. Michael Mischenko, “Hunger as a Method of Terror and Rule in the Soviet Union,” Ukrainian Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1949): 219–25.

20. “Nahadaiemo shche vil′nomu svitovi pro moskovs′kyi henotsyd,” Ukraïns′ki visti, May 31, 1953.

21. “Ukrainians March in Protest Parade. 10,000 Here Mark Anniversary of the 1933 Famine – Clergy Join in the Procession,” New York Times, September 21, 1953; “Over 154,000 N.Y. Ukrainian Americans March in Protest Parade Marking Anniversary of Soviet Fostered 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Weekly, September 26, 1953. Both newspapers mentioned that Raphael Lemkin spoke about “the millions of Ukrainians who died victims to the Soviet Russian plan to exterminate as many of them as possible in order to break the heroic Ukrainian national resistance to Soviet Russian rule and occupation and to Communism.” Per personal communication with Roman Serbyn on September 20, 2019, most probably Lemkin had little time to deliver the entire speech; thus, his concept of Soviet genocide against Ukrainians as the four-pronged attack was not mentioned in the newspaper reports and remained obscured throughout the twentieth century.

22. Raphael Lemkin, “Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine” (typewritten notes), folder 16, box 2, reel 3, ZL-273, “The Raphael Lemkin Papers, 1947–1959,” Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library. Steven Jacobs, Roman Serbyn, and Marko Suprun located the text of the speech in the New York Public Library. The manuscript was first quoted in Jean-Louis Panné, “Rafaël Lemkin ou le pouvoir d’un sans-pouvoir,” introduction to Rafaël Lemkin, Qu’est-ce qu’un génocide? (Monaco: Édition du Rocher, 2008), 7–66. The full text of the speech was first published as an appendix in Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine, eds. Lubomyr Y. Luciuk and Lisa Grekul (Kingston: Kashtan Press, 2008), 235–42. It was translated into six official languages of the United Nations and twenty-nine other languages and edited by Roman Serbyn and Olesia Stasiuk, Raphael Lemkin: Soviet Genocide in Ukraine (Article in 28 Languages) (Kyїv: Maisternia knyhy, 2009), available from https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/978-966-2260-15-1.pdf. For a complete text with a facsimile of the manuscript and an introduction by Douglas Irvin-Erickson, see Raphael Lemkin, Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine, ed. Lubomyr Y. Lucuk (Kingston: Kashtan Press, 2014).

23. Witnesses testified that trainloads with new settlers from Russian provinces started to arrive during the peak of the famine in Soviet Ukraine in spring 1933. Tugboat brigades that previously requisitioned grain in villages were put in charge of greeting the colonizers. Just at one train station in the village Svatove, such brigades unloaded seventy-five train transports. See Svoboda, no. 164, June 17, 1951. Over a million Russian colonists resettled in the areas depopulated by the famine in Soviet Ukraine. See Dmytro Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny (Drohobych: “Vidrodzhennia,” 1993), 197, 204, 211. The book was first published in English under the title Golgotha of Ukraine, Part I, The Moscow-Bolshevik Occupation Terror in Ukrainian SSR between First and Second World War (Winnipeg: “Ukrainian Voice,” 1953).

24. Wasyl Hryshko, The Ukrainian holocaust of 1933, ed. Marco Carynnyk (Toronto: Bahriany Foundation, SUZHERO, DOBRUS, 1983). The original Ukrainian version was published in 1978. At the time, American dictionaries defined the word “holocaust” to mean “a mass slaughter of people.” Dictionary definitions did not include “the Holocaust,” meaning “the murder by the Nazis of over six million Jews.” It appeared in 1980.

25. Vasyl Pliushch, Genocide of the Ukrainian People: The Artificial Famine in the Years 1932–1933 (München: Ukrainisches Institut für Bildungspolitik, 1973), http://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/10887/file.pdf.

26. International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine: The Final Report (Stockholm: Stockholm Institute of Public and International Law, No. 109, 1990), https://web.archive.org/web/20081001225745/http://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/Holodomor/Holodomor-Commission.pdf.

27. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988; hereafter: Report to Congress), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007398237; James E. Mace and Leonid Heretz, eds., Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Oral History Project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, vols. 1–3 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990; hereafter: Oral History Project), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009145045.

28. Report to Congress, vii.

29. Lemkin wrote, “Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accompanied by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.” Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law, 1944), 79.

30. United Nations, Treaty Series, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, vol. 78 (1951), 280, https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf.

31. “Zakon Ukraïny ‘Pro Holodomor 1932–1933 v Ukraïni’ No. 376-V (Vidomosti Verkhovnoï Rady Ukraïny 2006, No. 50, 504), 28 November 2006,” in The Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a Crime of Genocide under International Law, eds. Volodymyr Vasylenko and Myroslava Antonovych (Kyïv: Kyïv-Mohyla Academy, 2016), 226–28, https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/376-16.

32. This was the position of the American Bar Association articulated in their arguments against U.S. ratification of the treaty. See Anton Weiss-Wendt, The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the U.N. Genocide Convention (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017), 8. It took the U.S. Senate forty years to consent to ratify it on February 19, 1986, and on November 4, 1988, President Ronald Reagan finally signed a bill ratifying the U.N. Convention on Genocide.

33. Gregory H. Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, 2020, https://www.genocidewatch.com/ten-stages-of-genocide. Professor Gregory H. Stanton served as a legal advisor to Rukh, the Ukrainian Independence Movement, work for which he was named the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America 1992 Man of the Year.

34. The framework for analysis is reproduced with permission of Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of the Genocide Watch, per email communication with the author on October 2, 2019. The model was applied to the analysis of the Holodomor in the paper, “A Paradigm Shift in Studying History of the Holodomor as Genocide,” presented at the International Forum “Ukraine Remembers, the World Acknowledges” on the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor 1932–1933—Genocide of the Ukrainian People, Kyїv, Ukraine, November 22, 2018.

35. Roman Serbyn, “Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide,” in Rafał Lemkin: A Hero of Humankind, eds. Agnieszka Bieńczyk-Missala and Sławomir Dębski (Warsaw: Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010), 205–30. See also Douglas Irvin-Erickson, “Foreword: The Four Pronged Attack—Raphael Lemkin’s Theory of Genocide and the Destruction of the Ukrainian Nation,” in Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine, ed. Luciuk, iv.

36. Wasyl Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” in The Ukrainian holocaust of 1933, ed. Marco Carynnyk (Toronto: Bahriany Foundation, SUZHERO, DOBRUS, 1983), 8–68; Volodymyr Vasylenko, “Metodolohiia pravovoï otsinky Holodomoru 1932–1933 rr. v Ukraïni iak zlochynu henotsydu,” in Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni iak zlochyn henotsydu zhidno z mizhnarodnym pravom, eds. Volodymyr Vasylenko and Myroslava Antonovych (Kyїv: Vydavnychyi dim “Kyievo-Mohylians′ka akademiia,” 2016), 63–65; Volodymyr Serhiychuk, Genocide-Holodomor of Ukrainians, 1932–1933 (Vyshgorod: PP Serhiychuk M. I., 2018), 145–46; Myroslava Antonovych, “Individual and Collective Intent in the Crime of Genocide (on the Example of the Holodomor-Genocide against the Ukrainian Nation),” Actual Problems of International Relations, no. 145 (2020): 54–61.

37. Michael Ellman, “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited,” Europe-Asia Studies 59, no. 4 (2007): 663–93. See also Lesia Onyshko, “Poshyrennia informatsiï pro Holodomor v nezalezhnii Ukraïni: imidzhevi vtraty,” Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv: vtraty ukraїns′koї natsiї: Materialy Mizhnarodnoї naukovo-praktychnoї konferentsiї (Kyïv, 4 zhovtnia 2016), ed. Olesia Stasiuk et al. (Kyïv: Vyd. Oleh Filiuk, 2017), 193–97.

38. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991 (New York: Penguin, 1992); N. A. Ivnitskii, “Golod 1932–1933-kh godov: Kto vinovat?,” in Sud′by rossiiskogo krest′ianstva, ed. I. Afanas′iev (Moscow: Rossiia XX vek, 1996), 333–63; R. W. Davies and S. G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

39. Stanislav Kulchytsky, The Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor, trans. Ali Kinsella (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2018), xxiii–xxvi.

40. Pliushch, Genocide of the Ukrainian People; Hryshko, The Ukrainian holocaust of 1933; Andrea Graziosi, “Viewing the Twentieth Century through the Prism of Ukraine: Reflections on the Heuristic Potential of Ukrainian History,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 34, no. 1–4 (2015–2016): 107–28.

41. Stephen Velychenko, Painting Imperialism and Nationalism Red: The Ukrainian Marxist Critique of Russian Communist Rule in Ukraine, 1918–1925 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

42. Timothy Snyder, “The Soviet Famines,” in Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 21–58.

43. V. Iershov, “Politychni represiï v Zhytomyrs′komu pedinstytuti 1933–1941 rr.,” Volyn′-Zhytomyrshchyna: istorychno-filolohichnyi zbirnyk, vyp. 3 (1998): 37–71; V. Kondrashov, “‘Z korinniam vyrvaty natsional′no-kontrrevoliutsiini elementy z N.P.I.’ (Pohrom u Nizhyns′kii vyshchii shkoli na pochatku 30-kh rokiv),” Siverians′kyi litopys: vseukraïns′kyi naukovyi zhurnal, no. 2 (20) (1998): 13–15; L. Babenko, “Politychni represiï 1920–1930-kh rokiv u Poltavs′komu pedahohichnomu instytuti,” Al′manakh Poltavs′koho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu “Ridnyi krai,” no. 2 (21) (2009): 196–209; A. Lysyi, “Represiï proty studentstva ta vykladachiv istorychnoho fakul′tetu Vinnyts′koho uchytel′s′koho instytutu v 30-kh rr. XX st.,” Visnyk instytutu istoriï, etnolohiï i prava: zbirnyk naukovykh prats′, vyp. 8 (2010): 42–45.

44. For a revisionist critique of Conquest, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “People and Martians,” review of The Great Terror, by Robert Conquest, and The Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest, London Review of Books 41, no. 2 (January 24, 2019): 13–15. See also J. Arch Getty and Roberta Thompson Manning, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger.

45. Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (New York: Doubleday, 2017).

46. Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).

47. Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, “The Model of Totalitarianism,” in The Stalin Revolution: Foundations of Soviet Totalitarianism, ed. Robert V. Daniels (Lexington and Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1972), 198–213, esp. 200–201.

48. Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge, eds. David Joravsky and Georges Haupt, trans. Colleen Taylor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971); Roy A. Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism, trans. Ellen De Kadt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Dmitrii Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia: Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina, 2 vols. (Moscow: Izv-vo Agentstva pechati Novosti, 1989).

49. Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 1917–1953: Suspil′no-politychnyi ta istoryko-pravovyi analiz, 2 vols. (Kyïv: “Lybid′” – “Viis′ko Ukraïny,” 1994); Serhii Bilokin′, Masovyi teror iak zasib derzhavnoho upravlinnia v SRSR, 1917–1941 rr.: dzhereloznavche doslidzhennia, 2nd ed. (Kyïv: Penman, 2017); Viktor Chentsov, Politychni represiï v radians′kii Ukraïni v 20-ti roky (Ternopil′: Zbruch, 2000).

50. Serhii Kokin, “Stanovlennia totalitarnoï systemy ta pochatok masovykh politychnykh represii v URSR (1920–1922 rr.),” in Totalitarna derzhava i politychni represiï v Ukraïni u 20 – 80-ti roky: Materialy Mizhnarodnoï naukovoï konferentsiï (15–16 veresnia 1994 r.), eds. P. Panchenko and Ie. Proniuk et al. (Kyïv: NAN Ukraïny, 1998), 224–26; Valentyn Gusiev, “Pro deportatsiiu hrupy ukraïns′koï intelihentsiï za kordon u 1922 r.,” in Ibid., 180–82; Mykhailo Kuz′menko, “Naukovo-pedahohichna intelihentsiia USRR 20 – 30-kh rokiv XX st.: evoliutsiia sotsial′no-istorychnoho typu” (doctoral diss., Kharkivs′kyi natsional′nyi universytet im. V. N. Karazina, 2005); Viktor Adamsky, “The Deportation of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia,” in Genocide in Ukraine, ed. P. Kardash (Melbourne: Fortuna Publishing, 2007), 178–81.

51. For a discussion about the Soviet repressions against Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1930s and their eventual extermination, see Olga Bertelsen and Myroslav Shkandrij, “The Secret Police and the Campaign against Galicians in Soviet Ukraine, 1929–34,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 42, no. 1 (2014): 37–62; Myroslav Shkandrij and Olga Bertelsen, “The Soviet Regime’s National Operations in Ukraine, 1929–1934,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 55, no. 3–4 (2013): 417–47. For biographical portraits of repressed teachers in Ukraine, see Marochko and Hillig, Represovani pedahohy Ukraïny.

52. Volodymyr Prystaiko, “Zhertvy terroru: Iak DPU borolysia z ukraïns′koiu akademichnoiu naukoiu (Politychni protsesy 20–30-kh rr.),” Z arkhiviv VUChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB, no. 1 (1994): 70–78; Viktor Ocheretianko, “Peresliduvannia ukraïns′koï inteligentsiï v pershii polovyni 20-kh rr. (za materialamy fondiv “Rosiis′koho zarubizhnoho arkhivu” Derzhavnoho arkhivu Rosiis′koï Federatsiï,” Z arkhiviv VUChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB, no. 1–2 (1997): 240–52; Dmytro Arkhireis′kyi and Viktor Chentsov, “Antyradians′ka natsional′na opozytsiia v USRR v 20-ti rr.: pohliad na problemu kriz′ arkhivni dzherela,” Z arkhiviv VUChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB, no. 2–4 (2000): 16–55.

53. Valentyna Borysenko, Vasyl′ Danylenko, Serhii Kokin, Olesia Stasiuk, and Iurii Shapoval, Rozsekrechena pam’iat′: Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni v dokumentakh GPU-NKVD (Kyїv: Stylos, 2007).

54. Vasyl′ Danylenko, ed., Ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia i vlada: Zvedennia sekretnoho viddilu DPU USRR 1927–1929 rr. (Kyïv: Tempora, 2012), 21, 25, 27, 29.

55. Bilokin′, Masovyi teror iak zasib derzhavnoho upravlinnia v SRSR, 2nd ed., 620.

56. I borrow the distinction between capital-c Communism (meaning Soviet-endorsed) and small-c communism (meaning Marxist) from John Dewey; see “Why I Am Not a Communist,” Modern Monthly 8 (April 1934): 135–37.

57. Serhii Bilokin′, “Repetytsiia bezzakon′: sudovyi protses nad ‘Spilkoiu vyzvolennia Ukraïny’,” Ukraïna, no. 37 (1701), September 10, 1989, 13–15 and no. 38 (1702), September 17, 1989, 20–21; V. Kyryliuk, “Protses SVU − stalins′ka fal′shyvka,” Literaturna Ukraïna, December 7, 1989; V. Savtsov, “Zlochyn, iakoho ne bulo,” Radians′ka Ukraïna, September 12, 13, 16, 19, 26, and 27, 1989; H. Kas′ianov, “Dolia akademika Iefremova,” Pid praporom leninizmu, no. 19 (1989): 75–78; Helii Sniehir′ov, Naboï dlia rozstrilu (Nen′ko moia, nen′ko . . .): liryko-publitsystychna rozvidka (Kyїv: Dnipro, 1990); O. Sydorenko,“‘Pidlishoho chasu ne bulo . . .’: iak i chomu bulo sfabrykovano spravu tak zvanoї Spilky vyzvolennia Ukraïny,” Vechirnii Kyїv, May 15, 1991; Iurii Shapoval, Ukraïna 20–50-kh rokiv: storinky nenapysanoï istoriï (Kyїv: Naukova dumka, 1993), 64–81; Anatolii Bolabol′chenko, SVU − sud nad perekonanniamy (Kyїv: UKSP “Kobza,” 1994); Hiroaki Kuromiya, “Stalinskii ‘velikii perelom’ i protsess nad ‘Soiuzom osvobozhdeniia Ukrainy’,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (1994): 190–97; Volodymyr Prystaiko and Iurii Shapoval, Sprava “Spilky vyzvolennia Ukraїny”: nevidomi dokumenty i fakty; naukovo-dokumental′ne vydannia, ed. Ivan Il′ienko (Kyїv: INTEL, 1995); Iurii Shapoval, “Nevidomi dokumenty pro UAPTs u zv’iazku iz spravoiu ‘Spilky vyzvolennia Ukraïny,’” Liudyna i svit, nos. 11–12 (1996), 13–17; S. H. Vodotyka, Akademik Mykhailo Ielyseiovych Slabchenko: narys zhyttia ta tvorchosti (Kyїv: Kherson, 1998); Viktor Danylenko, “Odyn z 45-ty: V. Durdukivs′kyi,” Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, nos. 1–2 (1998): 253–62, http://memorial.kiev.ua/zhurnal/pdf/01-02_1998/253.pdf; Fedir Shepel′, “‘Zapliamovani’ tr′oma bukvamy: ‘Sprava SVU’ − tse trahediia ne til′ky intelihentsiї,” Den′, August 1, 2003, http://incognita.day.kyiv.ua/zaplyamovani-troma-bukvami.html; Iurii Shapoval, “Teatral′na istoriia,” in Dolia iak istoriia (Kyїv: Geneza, 2006), 16–34, https://ipiend.gov.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/shapoval_dolya.pdf.

58. See for instance, Opera SVU − muzyka GPU: spohady svidkiv; zbirka, ed. Iurii Khorunzhyi (Kam’ians′k-Shakhtyns′kyi: Stanitsa, 1992); Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, “SVU,” Neopalyma kupyna: narodoznavstvo, istoriia, arkhivy, no. 1 (1994): 31–66; Hryhorii Kostiuk, Stalinizm v Ukraïni: heneza i naslidky; doslidzhennia i sposterezhennia suchasnyka (Kyïv: Smoloskyp, 1995); S. O. Iefremov, Shchodennyky, 1923–1929 (Kyïv: Hazeta “Rada,” 1997).

59. Yuri Shapoval, “The Case of the ‘Union for the Liberation of Ukraine’: A Prelude to the Holodomor?” Holodomor Studies 2, no. 2 (2010): 154.

60. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

61. Vasyl′ Marochko, “Shkoly bez ditei ta vchyteliv,” in Holodomor 1932–1933 rr. (Kyïv, 2007), 53; Volodymyr Serhiichuk, “Shkil′na statystyka iak vazhlyve dzherelo dlia vstanovlennia kil′kosti vtrat pid chas Holodomoru-henotsydu 1932–1933 rokiv,” Narodna tvorchist′ i etnolohiia, no. 5 (2018): 5–15; Serhiychuk, “To Honor All Innocent Victims of the Holodomor,” 119–44.

62. Larry F. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

63. E. Thomas Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002).

64. Matthew D. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–1934 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).

65. P. Bondarchuk, Natsional′no-kul′turna polityka bil′shovykiv v Ukraïni na pochatku 1920-kh rokiv (Kyïv: Instytut istoriï Ukraïny NAN Ukraïny, 1998); V. Hrechenko and O. Iarmysh, Ukraïna v dobu “rann′ioho” totalitaryzmu (20-ti roky XX st.) (Kharkiv: Natsional′nyi universytet vnutrishnikh sprav, 2001); Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 138–39.

66. H. V. Kas′ianov, “Ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia v 1933 r.,” Problemy istoriï Ukraïny: fakty, sudzhennia, poshuky, no. 2 (1992): 92–98; V. M. Danylenko and M. M. Kuz′menko, “Naukovo-pedahohichna intelihentsiia v roky holodu,” Ukraïns′kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 5 (2003): 145–55.

67. Heorhii Kas′ianov, “Intelihentsiia radians′koï Ukraïny 1920-kh – 30-kh rokiv: sotsial′no-istorychnyi analiz” (doctoral diss., Instytut istoriï Ukraïny, 1993); Heorhii Kas′ianov, Ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia 1920-kh – 30-kh rokiv: sotsial′nyi portret ta istorychna dolia (Kyïv: Globus-Vik; Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1992); Heorhii Kas′ianov and Vasyl′ Danylenko, Stalinizm i ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia (20–30-ti rr.) (Kyïv: Naukova dumka, 1991); Vasyl′ Danylenko, Heorhii Kas′ianov, and Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi, Stalinizm na Ukraïni, 1920–30-ti roky (Kyïv: Lybid′, 1991); I. O. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny (1917–1937 rr.) (Donets′k: Iugo-Vostok, 1997).

68. Iu. V. Teliachyi, “Ukraïns′ke natsional′no-kul′turne vidrodzhennia v 1917–1921 rr.: do metodolohichnoho kontekstu problemy,” Osvita, nauka i kul′tura na Podilli 24 (2017): 10. For a definition of the term “intelligentsia” as a sociopsychological concept and an overview of the historical development of intelligentsia in Ukraine, see M. Shlemkevych, in Entsyklopediia ukraïnoznavstva, ed. Volodymyr Kubijovyč (Paris; New York: Molode Zhyttia Press, 1959), vol. 3, 877–79.

69. The phrase comes from the title of a monograph by O. V. Luk′ianenko, which examines everyday life of students and faculty of pedagogical institutes in Soviet Ukraine from the 1920s to the 1960s, “Naiblyzhchi druzi partiï”: kolektyvy vyshiv Ukraïny v obrazakh shchodennia 1920-kh – pershoï polovyny 1960-kh rokiv (Poltava: Vyd-vo “Simon,” 2019).

70. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 27.

71. According to Russian linguist Oleg Trubachev, Etimologicheskii slovar′ russkogo iazyka (An Etymological Dictionary of Russian), compiled by Max Vasmer, contains around 11,000 words, of which two-thirds are late borrowings (6,300 or 57 percent) and words of unknown origin (1,119 or 10 percent). Common Indo-European lexemes account for 3,191 words. As to the common East Slavic words, there are only seventy-two listed in this dictionary; thus, Ukrainian and Russian languages share 0.6 percent of their vocabulary. See Ilko Maidachevsky, “Linguistic Insights into Ukrainian History: Professor Kostiantyn Tyshchenko speaks about the role of modern linguistics in our identity and the rebuttal of the cradle-of-three-brotherly-peoples theory,” Ukrainian Week, November 16, 2012, https://ukrainianweek.com/Culture/65223. Ukrainian vocabulary was shaped mostly by European influences, especially by Latin and German (both directly and via Polish), whereas Russian borrowed a sizable part of its vocabulary from Turkic languages.

72. Russian and Ukrainian historiographies differ in their interpretation of six issues: (1) Ukrainian national identity; (2) the national liberation struggle of 1917–1921 and the establishment of the Ukrainian National Republic as an independent state in 1918; (3) the genocidal famine of 1932–1933, perpetrated by Stalin and his accomplices to denationalize Ukraine; (4) the double colonization and exploitation of Ukraine’s natural resources by Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union; (5) the legitimacy of the transfer of the Crimea; and (6) the indigenous origins of the Ukrainian population in the Donbas. See Volodymyr Serhiichuk, “I cherez sto rokiv – odyn na odnoho: Pro rozvytok rosiis′ko-ukraïns′kykh vidnosyn u XX stolitti,” Natsiia i derzhava, no. 3 (646), March 2017, 8–10, https://ia800901.us.archive.org/25/items/NiD_newspaper/646--31--03--2017--03.pdf.

73. Over 200 witnesses testified before the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, established in 1985 to conduct a study of the 1932–1933 famine in order to provide the American public with a better understanding of the Soviet system. Although there was no question about schools in a questionnaire developed for oral interviews, dozens of witnesses, some of them teachers, provided detailed accounts about schools during the Holodomor. See Report to Congress and Oral History Project. Witness accounts about teachers and schools can also be found in S. O. Pidhainy, ed., The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book (Toronto: Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, 1953–1955), 2 vols. In the 2000s, oral histories were collected by an Orthodox priest and his students in all regions of Ukraine, see Iurii Mytsyk, ed., Ukraïns′kyi holokost 1932–1933: svidchennia tykh, khto vyzhyv (Kyïv: Vydavnychyi dim “Kyievo-Mohylians′ka akademiia,” 2003–2013), vols. 1–9. Witness accounts about schools and teachers have also been published in Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni: dokumenty i materialy, ed. Ruslan Pyrih (Kyïv: Kyievo-Mohylians′ka akademiia, 2007).

74. See titles of memoirs written by teachers in Oleksandr Komarnits′kyi, Studenty-pedahohy u modernizatsiï vyshchoï osvity radians′koï Ukraïny u 1920–1930-kh rr. (Kam’ianets′-Podil′s′kyi: TOV Drukarnia “Ruta,” 2017).

75. Collections of documents that contain information related to the functioning of educational institutions in Soviet Ukraine between 1923 and 1934 are located in several archives. Specifically, Fond 166 contains documents of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR (Narodnyi komisarisat osvity, or NKO) and is housed in the Central State Archive of the Supreme Organs of Administration of Ukraine (Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady i upravlinnia Ukraїny; hereafter: TsDAVOU). Unfortunately, the most important year 1933 contains the least evidence. Materials about political and economic campaigns, propaganda and agitation activities, instructions, and circulars that deal with matters of education can be located in Fond 1 Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (Tsentral′nyi komitet KP(b)U) in the Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine (Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads′kykh ob’iednan′ Ukraїny, or TsDAHOU).

76. Diaries of repressed teachers can be located in Fond 6 of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv Sluzhby bezpeky Ukraїny; hereafter: HDA SBU). These diaries were compiled, edited, and published by Iaroslav Faizulin, “Represovani” shchodennyky: Holodomor 1932–1933 rokiv v Ukraïni (Kyїv: Feniks, 2018). Photographs of schools and teachers as well as images of collective farms, show trials, and the famine can be found in the Central State Cinephotophono Archive of Ukraine named after H. Pshenychnyi (abbreviated as TsDKFFAU or Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi kinofotofonoarkhiv Ukraїny).

77. Archival collections of the Pedagogical Museum of Ukraine of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine (Pedahohichnyi muzei Ukraïny) contain publications, bulletins, and educational periodicals published in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s as well as biographical sketches of leading educational theorists and teachers, available online at http://pmu.in.ua/actual-info/istoria_museiy/.

78. Private archive of Dr. James E. Mace, Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, contains rare publications in English and Ukrainian that deal with intellectual and cultural history of Ukraine, personal correspondence with scholars, and documents that shed light on Soviet nationality policy. The archive is housed in the James E. Mace Museum at the National University “Kyïv-Mohyla Academy” in Kyïv, Ukraine. Another part of Dr. James E. Mace’s archive as well as documents related to the work of the Commission can be found in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California.

79. George Santayana, The Life of Reason or, The Phases of Human Progress, 5 vols, vol. 1, Reason in Common Sense (Scribner’s, 1905), 284. A complete text of the five-volume magnum opus is available online via Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15000/15000-h/15000-h.htm.

80. For an analysis of Stanton’s model by an astute Kremlin watcher, Michael MacKay, see his article “The Seeds of Genocide in Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” Radio Lemberg, April 17, 2018, http://radiolemberg.com/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/the-seeds-of-genocide-in-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine.