New Sourcebook of Material on Holodomor: Bohdan Klid Interview

“The Holodomor Reader Collection: How and Why it Came About” was a lecture delivered by Dr. Bohdan Klid. The event also served as the platform for the Toronto launch of the new publication The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, held at the Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation – KUMF Gallery on March 8, 2013. Dr. Klid lives in Edmonton where he is the Assistant Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta. He is also Director of Research and Publications for the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC), which co-organized the talk and book launch with the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Canada and the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre.

The New Pathway had the opportunity to interview Dr. Klid at the talk’s venue, compiled by John Pidkowich.

New Pathway: What was the genesis of “The Holodomor Reader” project?

Bohdan Klid: I had planned for some time to compile, edit and translate into English a collection of recent essays from Ukraine on the Holodomor – the Famine in Ukraine 1932-33. I then learned that Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University was interested in compiling a book of readings on the Holodomor. His conception intersected well with my intention of ensuring that more information on the Famine be available in English. So, we explored the possibility of working in tandem. Two years after we first discussed the idea of working together, The Holodomor Reader was ready to go to print.

NP: What was your specific motivation in pursuing the Reader project and its publication?

BK: I think that question is best answered in our Introduction, where we state: “Although the amount of material relating to the Holodomor was huge and steadily growing, there was no real sourcebook or book of materials and writings on the 1932–33 Ukrainian Famine for English-language readers. As a result, finding basic information on the Holodomor and deepening one’s understanding of this terrible tragedy required the kind of research that most non-specialists have neither the time nor the energy to pursue.” The field of history is dominated by English-language literature and source material, so if an issue is to become widely understood, material about it needs to appear in English.

NP: So, the Reader fills a gap in the published literature on the Holodomor?

BK: Absolutely. While the Holodomor had gone from a little-known issue to being widely debated and discussed, a basic English-language reference guide and source book was still lacking. A sourcebook was needed that one could turn to in order to find basic materials and writings on the subject. Holodomor - Famine research has come a long, long way from James Mace’s 1984 essay on “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine” and Robert Conquest’s groundbreaking Harvest of Sorrow, published in 1986. This transformation was aided and abetted by the collapse of the Soviet Union, when access to collections of primary documents dealing directly or indirectly with the Famine became possible and uncensored scholarly studies began to be published in Ukraine and Russia. In the West, there were studies, such as Terry Martin’s The Affirmative Action Empire (2001) and Robert Davies’s and Stephen Wheatcroft’s The Years of Hunger (2004), that added to our knowledge of and to the debates around the Famine.

In 2004–2005, the Italian scholar Andrea Graziosi wrote one of the best interpretive essays on the Holodomor, presenting the thesis that the Ukrainian Famine can be considered genocide. He points to the deliberate actions directed against Ukraine by the Soviet leadership, which made the situation in the Ukrainian SSR markedly worse than in the USSR overall. More recently, Roman Serbyn shed light on a 1953 speech by the legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, the author of the term “genocide”, in which he asserted that Ukrainians had been victims of genocide, linking the Famine in Ukraine of 1932–33 with the assault on Ukrainian intellectuals and church leaders, the resettlement of traditionally Ukrainian lands by Russians and Belarusians, and so forth. Our book tries to include bits of the more important writings plus primary source materials, and even works of literature on the Holodomor.

NP: How does the Reader deal with the question of the Holodomor’s relationship to nationality issues?

BK: In choosing our materials, we sought to highlight the national characteristics and the connection of the Famine to the nationality question in the Soviet Union, not only because this interpretation is supported by the facts, but because it is overlooked by a good deal of the scholarly community in the West, most notably by Davies and Wheatcroft in Years of Hunger, which still holds considerable influence.

NP: How do you regard the question of whether the Holodomor was genocide?

BK: I supported the genocide thesis even before I started work on the Holodomor Reader project. Although not an expert on the topic, I had read a fair amount on the Famine in Ukraine, but I had not really studied the document sources closely. When I undertook an examination of the source material while working on the Reader, I became even more strongly convinced that the genocide interpretation is correct as supported by the facts.

NP: In the 1980s and even more recently, there have been charges that diaspora Ukrainians, particularly post-WW II migrs, have used the Famine as a political issue, a means by which they carried out their Cold-War politics; and that the interpretation of the Holodomor as genocide was “created” by these members of the post-war “Third Wave” immigration. What is your reaction to these accusations?

BK: Such assertions go against the historic record. In the Holodomor Reader we include some reactions to the Famine made by Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union in the interwar period, shortly after the event itself. These descriptions, made well before the onset of the Cold War, are most often indistinguishable from those of post-World War II migrs. As such, the charges hardly seem credible, although certainly, the issue of the Famine has been and will continue to be politicized and used in politics. This, however, stands apart from the fact that many Ukrainians, from the time of the event itself to the present, have viewed the Famine as a national tragedy and as an attack against the nation.

NP: Finally, what would you like to see happen with the Holodomor Reader now that it has appeared in print as a resource book?

BK: Our intention in producing the Reader is to have information widely available in English and available for use by non-specialists. As such, I hope to see the Reader become assigned reading in courses on Soviet history and genocide. I also look forward to its use in high school curricula, to be included as a resource for courses on genocide. This book would be examined for becoming part the Holodomor teaching kit and other training materials being developed by the education component of HREC’s mandate.

The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine is compiled and edited by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl. More information about the sourcebook may be obtained by visiting the CIUS Press website:http://www.ciuspress.com/catalogue/history/324/the-holodomor-reader

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Dr. Bohdan Klid