Holodomor in UkrSSR in the Harvard Ref ugee Interview Project (1950–1953): Recalling of the Tragedy by Displaced Persons
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2022.02.079Keywords:
Holodomor, oral history, displaced persons, The Harvard Refugee Interview Project (The Harvard Project of the Soviet Social System), interview method, Cold WarAbstract
The goal of the research is to reveal and to investigate the cases of recalling the famine of 1932–1933 by Ukrainians who participated in the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System (1950–1953). The Project was launched and organizationally and financially supported by the CIA. Its task was to receive first hand information about development of the Soviet society from 1917 till 1940s. Therefore, it was about mass interviewing of former Soviet citizens who refused to return to the USSR after the end of the World War II. These stateless people lived in Western Germany, Austria and the USA. Recorded oral testimonies (707 interviews) reveal context of recalling the events of 1932–1933 by informants. These oral history sources indicate spontaneous appearance during the interviews of unexpected by interviewers narrative about the Big Famine in Ukraine, as well as about peculiarities of the Holodomor trauma comprehension by the Project participants.
Methodology. Systematic, integral research of historical event, considering certain set of features, is conducted with application of structural-functional, typological methods. With the help of comparative-historical methods the author treats general regional and local peculiarities of the famine in Ukraine.
Scientific novelty. Revealed in the archive of the Project oral testimonies, recorded in the beginning of 1950s from displaced persons from the USSR, are studied for the first time in such a scale.
The main results. Despite abscence of a separate question about the famine in the questionnaires used by the Project organizers, the majority of Ukrainian informants spontaneously but often emotionally and passionately recalled events that took place 20 years ago. Therefore, we have confirmation of facts of overall extortion of food from peasants, of towing brigades work, of attempts to suppress anti-Soviet resistance of Ukrainian peasantry with the help of the famine etc. These facts correlate to a reasonable extent with the researches of contemporary Ukrainian historians. Comprehended in exile tragic experience of own life (as well as narratives heard from direct witnesses) has become a powerful factor of Ukrainian identity formation.
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