From Research to International Acceptance: Personalizing the Stories of the Holodomor

By Christine Turkewych

Professor Alexander Motyl (Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University), delivered the Toronto Annual Ukrainian Famine Lecture: “The Holodomor and History: Bringing the Ukrainians Back In”, on November 8 at the University of Toronto. Motyl’s delivery was dependably concise, elegant and understandable. Surprisingly, his content was minimally academic, i.e. references were not flagrantly cited. One can assume that he chose this approach because the publication “The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine”, compiled and co-edited by Motyl and Bohdan Klid, published by CIUS Press, was available for purchase that night and all pertinent research was available to be read.

Motyl’s lecture, for some audience members, was experienced as a “homily” because it had philosophical undertones. For this audience member, Professor Motyl made three salient points which may have emerged from his editing experiences for the recently published volume. Firstly, Motyl confidently used the term “genocide” to refer to the Holodomor in Ukraine 1932-1933, indicating that he had accepted the documentation and its analysis by those in the West as proof enough for its place in history. Secondly, he extrapolated that this genocide was a human tragedy, along with all other genocides such as those in Rwanda, Europe, Cambodia , to name but a few. As such, with the magnitude of its horrific ramifications, it should be embraced rightfully as an international tragedy and an affront to human rights by academics, political leaders and everyone else, Ukrainian or non-Ukrainian. For Motyl, there is no further need to debate the question: “Was the Holodomor genocide or not?”

Thirdly, Alexander Motyl urged that the emergent need now is to personalize this data and research. Quantitative data and political recognition of this genocide is definitely necessary to evoke a substantial response in the international community which has been respectably achieved in the West. Personalization through narrative and memoir are suggested whereby, the victims of this tragedy and its injustices will not be dismissed nor easily forgotten. For large numbers of people all around the world to become engaged and informed, narratives are a powerful instrument. Professor Motyl has published five non-fiction books and twice ventured into historical fiction narratives. His sharp wit engages diverse readers on many topics.

Motyl referred to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. as an example wherein victims are personalized by name with anecdotal accounts of their lives and the displays of their personal belongings. Theirs was not an extermination of faceless and soulless numbers. Similarly, the victims of the Holodomor were human beings with meaningful lives that were cut short. Their dignity can best be preserved by personalizing their stories family by family, village by village, and livelihood by livelihood.

Memoirs emerge as an appropriate method by which to capture this personal perspective. Very few survivors of that era are still alive and able to remember, but their experiences must be recorded, wherever possible. Motyl’s popularized message enables a strategy for the Ukrainian community: focus on recording their personal stories to humanize that international event as a way to ensure engagement of audiences everywhere, as well as a way of identifying its particularity to Ukrainians. Who can forget Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank? Who can forget Sophie in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice? Who can forget Miriam in Marsha Skrypuch’s Armenian genocide novel, Nobody’s Child?

Alexander Motyl is a published author of six books of non-fiction, numerous academic articles and two fictional narratives, My Orchidea and The Jew Who Was Ukrainian. The latter two demonstrate his understanding of the power of narrative in reaching wider audiences. Motyl’s message and convictions are shared by writers everywhere. Personalizing history through individual narratives, fictional or non-fictional, does ignite empathy and cements memory. When narratives are well written, when they receive literary awards and make the best seller lists, they become successful products for the ever powerful film industry and theatrical stage. Many of us can recall movies such as Leon Uris’ Exodus and the powerful rendition of the Cambodian inhumanities in the movie The Killing Fields, where the far reaching effects of genocides were vividly dramatized.

From 2006 to 2012, the Kobzar Writers Scholarships have been awarded seven times by the Shevchenko Foundation through the Kobzar Literary Arts Program. The Kobzar Writer’s Scholarship aims to assist a novice Canadian writer in honing his/her writing skills and connects him/her with publishers when the writer is committed to developing a Ukrainian Canadian theme. Among the seven recipients, three narratives concern the Holodomor, each with its own unique perspective of that genocide.

A Memoir Confronts the Truth

All too often, personalizing is interpreted as writing a memoir. When novice writers embark on producing memoirs of family history, they need an awareness of the nature of memoir writing. Anecdotal accounts are authentic and personal because you lived through it or your family member did. Memory is fragile and may provide painful revelations to you and your family. Be prepared to be uncomfortable when seeking the truth. “Writing memoir is like preparing yourself to go to confession,” says Michael McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes. “You have to examine your conscience.” Janice Kulyk Keefer had noted publicly that after publishing Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family, her own mother could not speak about it with her for almost a year.

Memoirs reveal family truths, and should reflect the author’s own insight into and about those events. To be powerful, a memoir does not merely chronicle events. It enables the author to self reflect and to provide insights that can be useful to other readers whose life stories are similar but as yet unprobed. Importantly, many memoirs will benefit from the editing skills of a publishing house. Self-published memoirs are all too frequently simple and repetitive diaries, absent of engaging craftsmanship.

The genocide of the Holodomor provides material for great creativity and scope for professional writers as well as hobbyists. With a common purpose, academic research can merge with narrative and the two can become co-dependent as writers immortalize the victims of the Holodomor - never to be forgotten.

Dr. Christine Turkewych is Director of Literary Arts at the Shevchenko Foundation. For submission guidelines and scholarship applications view www.kobzarliteraryaward.com.