An Unknown Polish Document about the Great Famine in Ukraine: From the Memoirs of Stanislaw Zabiello, the Head of the Soviet Section of the Eastern Department of the MFA of the Second Republic of Poland

Abstract

The research goal is to publish an unknown fragment of the memories of the Polish diplomat about the Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933.

The research methodology. Critical source analysis and comparison with other available materials of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military intelligence.

Scientific novelty. The following text analyzes, for the first time, unknown memoirs of the Holodomor of 1932–1933, written by S.Zabiello, who was considered to be a leading Sovietologist in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the interwar period.

Conclusions. Much has already been written about the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and new researches are being underway. The aspect of the Great Famine has also been raised several times based on Polish diplomatic, consular and military intelligence documents of the Second Republic of Poland. This does not mean that no materials can be found in the Polish archives, where the Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932–1933 is mentioned. Of course, it is hard to expect to discover of a vast array of new and unknown sources. Most of the representative materials of this provenance have already been published. However, one of such unknown documents is a fragment of memories written by S.Zabiello, which we provide in this paper. S.Zabiello not only heard about hunger while in Moscow. He saw hunger with his own eyes when replacing the head of the Polish consulate general in Kharkiv, J.Karszo-Siedlewski, at the turn of August and September 1933. The Polish diplomat’s analyses have treated the issue of the causes of the tragedy that had affected the peasants. Based on conversations with the Soviet dignitary, K.Radek, S.Zabiello estimated the number of famine victims. He also wrote about acts of cannibalism etc.