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HOLODOMOR

​During 1932 - 1933 millions of Ukrainians perished in a famine orchestrated by the Stalinist regime. Almost 90 percent of these victims died between the winter of 1932 and spring of 1933, one of the greatest genocides in European history.

 

BOOKS FOR ORDER

How People Live in Soviet Russia.jpg

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How People Live in Soviet Russia: Impressions From A Journey by Mendel Osherowitch (7 copies remaining)

Edited by Lubomyr Luciuk. Translated from the original Yiddish edition by Sharon Power.

"Overlooked by mainstream scholarship for far too long, Mendel Osherowitch's book, How People Live in Soviet Russia, is one of the most penetrating and moving accounts of daily life in Soviet Ukraine during the Holodomor. Returning as a visitor after lived in the US for many decades, Osherowitch expected to witness his cherished his cherished socialist ideals being put into practice. Instead he encountered widespread degradation and the fear of infusing the everyday existence of Jews and Gentiles alike. Recording his observations with an uncommon level of understanding and insight, Osherowitch produced a book that sheds a new and unexpected light on the history of the Great Famine of 1932 - 1933. A must-read."

Professor Serhii Plokhy, Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

Not Worthy.jpg

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Not Worthy  (2 copies remaining)

Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and The New York Times

Edited by Lubomyr Luciuk with a Foreword by Roger Daniels

 

Presented here is an admittedly incomplete record of an international campaign symbolically launched on May Day 2003, whose aim was to have the 1932 Pulitzer Prize of Walter Duranty revoked by the Pulitzer Prize Committee of returned by The New York Times.

This did not happen. The Committee did not rescind the award and The Times continues to associate its name with the much-discredited Duranty, even though the evidence shows he shilled for the Soviets, before, during, and after the Great Famine of 1932 - 1933 in Soviet Ukraine.

The Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukra

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Голод-геноцид 1932-1933 років в Україні
The Famine-Genocide of 1932 - 1933 in Ukraine (3 copies remaining)

Edited by Yuri Shapoval (in Ukrainian; Russian)

"Much research still needs to be done about the causes and crippling legacy of the Holodomor. The publication of these materials, collected by Professor Yuri Shapoval and his associates, is intended to provide scholars and others around the world with primary source materials about the Great Famine., documentation that might otherwise prove difficult to access. By no means is this an exhaustive or complete record of what can be found in former Soviet archives but the selection presented here does provide important evidence of what and who brought on famine conditions in 1932 - 1933, and the human costs of this politically engineered catastrophe."

From the foreward written by Lubomyr Luciuk.

EDUCATIONAL DOCUMENTS

PHOTO GALLERY

VIDEOS

EDUCATIONAL
DOCUMENTS

HISTORY OF THE HOLODOMOR

In Ukrainian, the word Holodomor means “death inflicted by starvation.” From 1932 – 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in a famine known today as “the Holodomor,” which was caused by the policies of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime.

The famine was inflicted upon Ukraine in order to further two objectives. The first was to consolidate agricultural power by replacing Ukraine’s small independent farms with state-run collective farms in a process known as “collectivization.” The second was to discipline or eliminate those Ukrainians who wanted independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Stalin believed Ukrainian desire for independence posed a threat to his totalitarian authority. For that reason, the Holodomor aimed to destroy Ukrainians’ desire for independence by destroying their religious and civil leadership, as well as their language, culture, and traditions.

In 1928, the Soviet government began the process of collectivization, confiscating all property belonging to independent farmers and forcing them to work on collective farms. Farmers who resisted these policies were labelled kulaks or kurkuls, meaning peasants who own more prosperous farms.” During this process farmers were thrown out of their homes, deported to the Russian province of Siberia, sent to Gulag labour camps, or executed.

Things became worse. In 1932, the Soviet Union, at Stalin’s direction, imposed unattainable grain quotas on the amount of harvested grain Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state, and people began to starve. Villagers who could not meet these quotas were subject to searches by authorities, their food and livestock were confiscated, their villages blacklisted, and it was forbidden for them to receive any food, goods, or help.

A decree known as “The Law of Five Stalks of Grain” was introduced in August of 1932, and forbade anyone, even children, from taking even a handful of grain from a field, as all grain was deemed to be state property. The punishment for violating this decree was ten years imprisonment, or the death penalty.  Additionally, Soviet authorities instituted an internal passport system and blockaded over a third of Ukrainian villages. As a result, the starving farmers and their families could not go in search of food, nor could any food be delivered to them. People caught trying to leave were sent back to their villages to starve.

Despite these horrific conditions, authorities ordered local officials to impose even more unattainable grain quotas on the villages. The Soviet state extracted millions of tons of grain from Ukraine, which it used to feed Russian cities, and exported more than a million tons to the West, while millions of Ukrainians starved.

The USSR denied that the Holodomor had occurred, and today, Russian continues to deny that the Holodomor famine was a state-orchestrated genocide against the Ukrainian population. However, since 2006 more than 17 countries – including Canada – have recognized the Holodomor as genocide.

 

From Five Stalks of Grain by Adrian Lysenko and Ivanka Theodosia Galadza, 2022 ISBN 9781773853758

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