Holodomor Book Final Small 2021 Print

1
Grains of truth
A collection of UK materials
on the Holodomor in Ukraine, 1932-33
2 3
Grains of truth
A collection of UK materials
on the Holodomor in Ukraine, 1932-33
This book is dedicated to the memory of

all victims of the Holodomor
London 2018
4 5
Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Foreword 7
Introduction 9
Personal recollections 17
Kateryna Buriak 18
Rev. Mychajlo Diachenko 19
Ivan Dowhopiat 21
Rev. Mychajlo Hutornyj 23
Anastasia Ostapiuk (nee Zhuravel’) 25
Rev. Mychaylo Hryhorovych Pyshnenko 28
Klavdia Semianiw 30
Andriy Skok 32
Vera Smereka 33
Maria Volkova 37
Lida Yatsyuch 44
UK Councils and the Holodomor 49
Published by the Associa- Holodomor memorials 53
tion of Ukrainians in Great Map of Holodomor memorials in the UK 55
Britain Limited, 49 Linden Illustrations 56
Gardens, London W2 4HG
as “Grains of truth: A col-
Foreign Office Excerpts 65
lection of UK materials Seed Collection in Soviet Union 67
on the Holodomor in Conditions in Soviet Union 68
Ukraine, 1932-33”. Conditions in Ukraine 69
Crimea and Ukraine 70
Printed by DPS Digital
Ltd., 28 Handley Street,
Protection of Property of State 72
Sleaford, NG34 7TQ, UK. Mr. Cairns’ Investigations in Soviet Union 73
Seed from State Grain Reserve 99
ISBN-978-1-5272-3279-2 Conditions among Population of Soviet Union 100
Situation in Soviet Union 101
Editors: Fedir Kurlak, Iryna
Terlecky,
Comment by Soviet citizens on Situation 102
Soviet Agriculture 103
© 2018 AUGB Ltd. Conditions in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 105
Harvest in the Ukraine 106
All rights reserved. No part Tour by Mr W Duranty in North Caucasus and Ukraine 109
of this book may be repro-
duced, transmitted in any
Notes 110
form electronic, photocopy Famine Conditions in the Soviet Union 111
or otherwise, without the Bibliography 115
written permission of the
Association of Ukrainians
in Great Britain.
6 Acknowledgements 7
Acknowledgements
Particular gratitude is due to the Holodomor survivors for sharing
their personal recollections and to Dr Lubomyr Luciuk for his kind
permission to reproduce excepts of The Foreign Office and the Famine:
British Documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932-1933.
Special thanks also to Dr. Ludmila Pekarska for preparing the bibli-
ography and photographs held in the Shevchenko Library & Archive
and to Hanya Dezyk and Orysia Chymera for their proof reading and
for all of their very helpful comments. We equally thank all Branches
of the Association of Ukrainian in Great Britain (AUGB) for providing
respective photographs and details of local Holodomor memorials,
Bradford Branch in particular for the photographs of local survi-
vors, George Jaworskyj for his photographs of the 75th anniversary
commemorations, Maksym Rewko for preparing the logo used on the
cover page and Larysa Kurlak for setting out the design for the ‘Holo-
domor memorials in the UK’ pages.
Closely linked with the publication of this book in helping to raise
awareness about the Holodomor, the Association of Ukrainians in Great
Britain held an Essay Prize Competition during 2018 which was open
to all Sixth Form students in the UK. We are especially grateful to
Hanya Dezyk for very ably organising this competition through from
start to finish, to the judging panel - Dr. Olenka Pevny, Lecturer in
Ukrainian Studies, Cambridge University, Larysa Kurylas, Architect
and Designer of the Holodomor Memorial in Washington DC and Dr.
Ludmila Pekarska, Curator of the Shevchenko Library & Archive in
London - for taking the time to scrutinise the essays and choose the
winning three entries which are now available online on the AUGB’s
website, www.augb.co.uk/holodomor
We are grateful to everyone who has assisted in any way to make the
publication and circulation of this book possible.
8 Acknowledgements Foreword 9
Foreword
The 20th century was the deadliest in human history primarily
because of the seemingly endless armed conflicts that caused tens of
millions of deaths and immeasurable human suffering across the globe.
However, what happened in Ukraine over just a few months in
1932-1933 stands out, not just for the sheer number of victims, but also
for the fact that the majority of them were starved to death in peacetime
and despite the land providing crops in abundance.
Orchestrated by the totalitarian Stalinist regime, the 1932-1933
Holodomor in Ukraine took the lives of between 7 and 10 million
people. The grave consequences of that man-made tragedy continue to
haunt us to this day.
The systematic attack by the Soviet government was directed at the
very fabric of Ukrainian society – designed to completely annihilate
Ukraine or, at the very least, put a stop to its aspirations for independ-
ence from Muscovite rule.
It is important that we do not forget that Raphael Lemkin, who
coined the term ‘genocide’ and initiated the Genocide Convention, said
that the Holodomor manifested itself as “perhaps the classic example of
Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification –
the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”
With whole families eradicated, villages wiped out and large cities
decimated, the magnitude of that mass annihilation of Ukrainians by
hunger was unparalleled. Each individual victim went through unim-
aginable suffering and death, while each survivor had to witness the
devastation through their own eyes. Some of them lived on into the 21st
century, their whole lives marred by the terrible loss of relatives and
friends to the Holodomor.
This book presents just a fragment of the individual Holodomor
survivor accounts, which have been made more accessible by their
translation into English. Some of these stories were recorded and
preserved by the Ukrainian diaspora through the decades, while other
survivors had to wait until Ukraine’s independence in 1991 for their
truth to finally be told. We will never come close to grasping the scope
of the tragedy that was the Holodomor without giving a voice to these
people and letting them speak the truth in their own, simple terms.
Despite the Soviet bans, the truth about the Holodomor trickled
outside, thanks not least to the bravery and professionalism of some
of the Western media. Young British journalists Gareth Jones and
Malcolm Muggeridge were among the very first to report on the Holo-
10 Foreword Introduction 11
domor, while most of their international colleagues chose to turn a blind

eye to Ukraine’s plight in return for journalistic privileges in the Soviet Introduction
capital.
I commend the efforts of the Association of Ukrainians in Great
Britain for compiling the unique materials presented here. For genera- About this book
tions, the Ukrainian community has kept alive the memory of the Holo-
domor. It was also thanks to the AUGB that Europe’s first memorials The very word ‘famine’ conjures up horrific images of long and
to the victims of the Holodomor were erected in the United Kingdom, painful suffering.
making sure that the truth is never forgotten. In an era of instant news, we still see terrible pictures of swollen
The lessons in this book remain relevant today, and I recommend it children, people too weak to move, the tragedy of mass deaths – often
to everyone who seeks to understand the lessons of history, in the hope caused by natural disasters, but too often the result of armed conflict.
that such atrocities can never be allowed to happen again. This book is about a peacetime famine – the Holodomor. A famine
which was not caused by any natural disaster or failure of the harvest –
Natalia Galibarenko but one which was deliberately engineered and which led to the deaths
Ambassador of Ukraine of millions from starvation in Ukraine in 1932-33. It was a famine
to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which was deliberately hidden from view and denied for many years –
robbing the victims of their dignity and their right to be remembered. It
was a famine which even today is relatively little known, and still has
to fight for its rightful place in 20th century history.
This book brings together for the first time documents and
testimonies which link Great Britain and the Holodomor: eyewitness
accounts from Holodomor survivors who settled in Great Britain after
the Second World War; extracts from official documents which show
that the UK Government was itself an eyewitness to the appalling
events which unfolded in 1932-33; resolutions from local councils who
have acknowledged the horrors of the Holodomor; and the memorials
placed in various parts of Great Britain in permanent remembrance to
the Holodomor’s innocent victims.
What was the Holodomor?
From the early 1920s, Ukraine suffered a series of famines. The

earliest, in 1921-22, was caused primarily by drought, but the Soviet
government also used it as an opportunity to weaken those sections of
Ukrainian society who were seen as a threat because of their support
for Ukrainian independence and their distinctive national identity. Even
so, Soviet policy had to concede to Ukrainian nationalist feelings to the
extent that during the early 1920s, Ukrainian culture was allowed to
flourish and Ukrainians were given government posts.
However, Moscow’s fear of Ukrainian aspirations to pull away
from the sphere of the Kremlin’s influence and control did not subside.
In the late 1920s the Soviet government began a violent and massive
purge against the Ukrainian intelligentsia, against cultural and political
12 Introduction Introduction 13
figures and even against the leadership of the Ukrainian Autocephalous search of food; and exiled (read slave labour followed by certain death)
Orthodox Church, which was brought to the point of almost complete or executed those caught hiding or stealing food.
extinction. The results were appalling. Millions died of starvation during 1932-
Stalin believed that “the national problem was in essence a peasant 33. Bodies were collected and heaped into mass graves. In towns and
problem”. The attack on Ukrainian culture was therefore intensified cities outside the famine region, bodies on the streets were a common
with an outright assault on the Ukrainian peasantry, which formed the sight as peasants looking for work and food died where they fell. Esti-
majority of the Ukrainian population. mates at the time, even from Stalin himself, were that 10 million died
Stalin’s drive for collectivisation and industrialisation of the Soviet in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. More recent research
Union was run in parallel with a propaganda campaign backed up by indicates that the number who starved to death in Ukraine alone was
force, violence and terror against the perceived greatest ‘enemy of the around 4.5 million – more than the entire population of Wales.
people’, the kulaks, (the better off farmers who farmed their own small-
holdings), who needed to be “liquidated” as “a class”. Cover-up and denial
The onslaught on the kulaks was launched in December 1929, with
the most intense period lasting from January to March 1930, which The man-made famine was accompanied by a massive campaign of
coincided with the main push for collectivisation. denial which lasted for decades.
As a result of these policies - dekulakisation and collectivisation - During the Holodomor, the Soviet government introduced stringent
282,000 peasant households disappeared in Ukraine between 1930 and travel restrictions into Ukraine to prevent journalists and others from
1931, some 100,000 kulaks were shot and almost 10 million peasants seeing for themselves the extent of the famine.
were deported to the Arctic in cattle trucks, causing the deaths of about There were some journalists – most infamously Walter Duranty of
three million people. By the end of this period there were no real kulaks the New York Times – who, in return for interviews with Stalin and
left. other high-ranking government officials, collaborated with the Soviet
Sanctioned state violence meant that by the end of February 1930 government to cover up the existence and scale of the famine, while
more than half of all privately owned farms in the USSR had been admitting privately that the famine both existed and that the death toll
turned into collectives controlled by the state. During the same period, was horrendous.
in Ukraine, the Kremlin took control of over 68.3% of all privately In later years, Malcolm Muggeridge, a former British journalist,
owned farms and smallholdings. labelled Duranty “…the greatest liar I ever knew…”. Indeed, only in
This target had been attained with uncontrolled violence. 50,000 1990 – more than 50 years after the event - a New York Times edito-
activists with special powers were sent by Stalin into the countryside rial, written by Karl A Meyer, finally acknowledged that what Duranty
to organise, punish and intimidate Ukrainian peasants. Terror reigned had written constituted “…some of the worst reporting to appear in this
in the villages. newspaper.”
Arrests, expropriation of property, deportations and executions There were others, however, who evaded the restrictions to seek out
spread to all peasants who resisted orders to join the collective farms. the truth, in spite of the abuse and vilification that they then suffered
By 1931, 75% of all Ukrainian peasants were forced into submission from both the Soviet government and other journalistic colleagues.
to work on the collective farms, where productivity fell and wastage British journalists Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones were among
increased. At the same time grain quotas for state use were increased their number.
to wholly unrealistic levels. The draconian quotas, together with the Malcolm Muggeridge smuggled out several articles via the diplo-
confiscation of all food and livestock from the peasants, led to starva- matic pouch which were published in the Manchester Guardian. What
tion on an unimaginable scale. he saw horrified him and stayed with him forever.
The quotas demanded by the state could not be met. In spite of At a German co-operative farm (a government concession in the
protests by some Ukrainian officials, even harsher laws were passed. Caucasus), he saw peasants kneeling in the snow, begging for a crust of
These forbade local use of grain until quotas had been met; deprived bread. In his diaries he wrote, “I must never pretend that I haven’t seen
those collectives who could not meet their quotas of all rights to trade; this. Ideas will come and go; but this is more than an idea. It is peasants
refused internal passports to prevent peasants from fleeing Ukraine in kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have
seen and understood.” tion of whole districts.
Manchester Guardian. Jones was murdered in Mongolia in 1935 in suspicious circum-

27 March 1933. stances – a murder that has been attributed to the NKVD, the Kremlin’s
Article anonymously written by Malcolm Muggeridge
Secret Police, for his open dispatches on the Holodomor.
…The population is starving. “Hunger” was the word I heard Other eyewitnesses include Andrea Graziosi, who was the Italian
most. Peasants begged a lift on the train from one station to consul in Kharkiv in 1933. His letters and dispatches form a unique
another sometimes their bodies swollen up—a disagreeable account about the events of 1932-33 in Ukraine. He described the influx
sight—from lack of food. There were fewer signs of military of starving peasants from the countryside to the city and the children
terrorism than in the North Caucasus, though I saw another
party of, presumably, kulaks being marched away under an abandoned by desperate parents in the hope that someone would look
armed guard at Dniepropetrovsk; the little towns and villages after them. He told how the dead and dying were dealt with, “People
seemed just numb and the people in too desperate a condition who are already starting to swell up are moved out in goods trains and
even actively to resent what had happened. abandoned about forty miles out of town so that they can die out of
sight. When they arrive at the destination, huge ditches are dug and the
Otherwise, it was the same story— cattle and horses dead;
fields, neglected: meagre harvest despite moderately good dead are carried out of the wagons…”
climatic conditions; all the grain that was produced taken by Western governments knew what was happening, including the UK
the Government; now no bread at all, no bread anywhere, Government, which received detailed dispatches from its Embassy in
nothing much else either; despair and bewilderment. Moscow – some of which are reproduced in this book.
However, realpolitik dictated that maintaining good relationships
Gareth Jones, a young Welshman, was a former adviser on foreign with Stalin and the Soviet government were more important than
policy to Lloyd George. He too travelled through Ukraine and subse- openly speaking up for the victims of famine in Ukraine and other parts
quently wrote articles for and was interviewed by several newspapers. of the Soviet Union.
In an interview with the Morning Post in March 1933, he said, “I This is borne out by Foreign Office documents. Laurence Collier
walked alone through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere wrote, in 1934: “The truth of the matter is, of course, that we have a
was the cry, ‘There is no bread; we are dying…” certain amount of information about famine conditions… and there is
no obligation on us to make it “public””. Less than four weeks later,
Manchester Guardian, in an internal FCO memo by “R” dated 25 July 1934, the government
30 March 1933.
Gareth Jones interview in Berlin – via Reuters. position was clear: “The least said [about the Holodomor] the soonest
mended”.
In a train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I In the great sweep of historical turbulence in the 20th century, the
flung into the spittoon a crust of bread I had been eating from Holodomor, then, became a minor footnote. It is perhaps not surprising
my own supply. A peasant, my fellow-passenger, fished it out that the deliberate famine, which destroyed millions of lives, received
and ravenously ate it. I threw orange peel into the spittoon;
the peasant again grabbed and devoured it. The Communist no mention in Soviet school history books. However, even UK school
subsided. history books focused more on Stalin’s great industrialisation and
modernisation of the Soviet Union than the human consequences for
A foreign expert returning from Kazakhstan told me that one the millions that suffered and perished during this period. The victims
million out of five million have died of hunger. I can believe became, as Stalin wanted them to be, just a statistic.
it. There is insufficient seed. Many of the peasants are too
weak to work the land. The new taxation policy, which prom-
ised to take only a fixed amount of grain from the peasants, The campaign for recognition
will fail to encourage production because the peasants refuse
to trust the Government. Ukrainians in the diaspora fought an uphill battle for many years to
In short, the Government’s policy of collectivisation and the maintain the memory of the Holodomor and raise awareness about the
peasants’ resistance to it have brought Russia to the worst
catastrophe since the famine of 1921 swept away the popula- crimes perpetrated by the Soviet government.
The fall of the Soviet Union opened the doors to thousands of hith- forgotten and that the Government pays tribute to the people
who continue to work to keep alive the memory of all those
erto suppressed documents and invigorated the search for historical
who perished in the Holodomor.
truth, both from academics and from a mass of eyewitnesses who had
never spoken out before for fear of the consequences. The Holodomor was a horrific, man-made disaster of
In addition, the family members of Gareth Jones, Dr. Siriol Colley unimaginable scale. We recognise the appalling human
(niece) and her son Nigel (great nephew), dedicated over two decades tragedy that occurred and its importance in the history of
Ukraine and Europe.
of their lives to collecting and publicising the diary and writings of
Jones on the Holodomor, which are now recognised as valuable source The fact that the UK government has not recognised the
material throughout the world. Holodomor as genocide in no way lessens our recognition
There is now absolutely no doubt about what happened not only of its severity and awfulness. Nor does it lessen our recog-
in 1932-33, but also during the years before, when the clear aim of nition that it is the Soviet leadership at the time who were
responsible for the policies and political decisions taken
the Soviet government was to destroy Ukraine’s national identity and
which resulted in the famine causing the deaths of millions
hopes for independence. of Ukrainians.
The question as to whether or not the Holodomor was an act of
genocide against the Ukrainian nation has yet to be tested legally. Conclusion
Eminent historians and commentators, including Robert Conquest,
James Mace and Anne Applebaum amongst others, have concluded Ukrainians will continue to campaign for the Holodomor to be
that taken together with the repressions against Ukrainian nationalism, universally recognised as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian
the Holodomor was an act that was deliberately inflicted to destroy nation.
Ukrainian identity and ethnicity. This is unlikely to be achieved in our lifetime for many reasons,
Dr. Raphael Lemkin described “the destruction of the Ukrainian both legal and political. However, regardless of when that recognition
nation” as the “classic example of genocide”, for “the Ukrainian is not will be ultimately achieved, there can be no doubt today that the Holo-
and never has been a Russian. This is not simply a case of mass murder. domor was a crime against humanity, which should be exposed in its
It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but full horror.
of a culture and a nation.” This is not a history book, but it nevertheless has several key aims.
Although 17 countries around the world have acknowledged the First, we believe that the Holodomor deserves wider recognition and
Holodomor as a genocide, others have not taken that step. that Stalin’s hidden purge against the Ukrainian nation should be an
On 10 November 2003 at the United Nations, 25 countries, integral part of the mainstream narrative of 20th century history.
including Russia, Ukraine, and United States signed a joint statement In highlighting the barbarity of the Holodomor, we hope to turn a
on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with a preamble that horrific statistic into a collective memory of individual lives and give
acknowledged that millions became ‘victims to the cruel actions and back to the innocent victims the dignity they were robbed of.
policies of the totalitarian regime’ and that the Holodomor ‘became a And finally, we hope that the world will never again turn a blind
national tragedy for the Ukrainian people’. eye to another people’s suffering, and that nowhere, ever, can such an
Pope John Paul II called the Holodomor ‘an inhuman scheme put atrocity be allowed to occur again.
into effect in cold blood by those in power at the time’.
The EU Parliament recognised the atrocities of 1932-33 “as an Iryna Terlecky
appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity”. Chair
The UK Government has acknowledged the scale of the Holodomor National Holodomor Committee, UK
as a horrific human tragedy for the Ukrainian people.
FCO letter to the Association of Ukrainians in GB.

December 2017.
It is important that the events of the Holodomor are not

18 Introduction Personal recollections 19
Personal recollections
The following pages are a collection of personal accounts of a
number of people who survived the 1932-33 Holodomor.
After living through the turmoil and horrors of the Second World
War, all these eye-witnesses subsequently settled, lived and worked in
the United Kingdom.
Their statements, which are being published for the first time, add to
the body of personal recollections that have been gathered in Ukraine
since 1991, and from amongst survivors in the Ukrainian diaspora. The
testimonies provide present and future generations with an invaluable
human and individual perspective on the systematic and brutal persecu-
tion which swept through Ukraine in 1932-1933.
The authors all witnessed and lived through an unimaginable
atrocity. Somehow they managed to survive and their harrowing experi-
ences remained etched in their memories - undiluted by the passage of
time - for the rest of their lives as they recalled their homes, villages,
family members, friends and neighbours.
There were many Holodomor survivors who, to the end of their
lives, were unable to talk about their experiences – partly because they
did not want to recall the horrors that they had seen, and partly because
they lived through a time when speaking out was a crime punishable by
imprisonment and even death. And that fear stayed with them.
We are therefore all the more grateful to those survivors featured in
this book for recounting their very painful experiences – difficult and
upsetting as it might have been for them - so that the sufferings of the
nation can never be forgotten.
The accounts have been subject to minor editing in translation from
Ukrainian, but the eyewitnesses’ own words and expressions have been
kept as faithful to the original as possible.
20 Personal recollections Personal recollections 21
Kateryna Buriak Rev. Mychajlo Diachenko

28/11/1925 - 16/09/2010. 17 /08/1922 - 04/12/2016.
Born Kherson region. Born Khutir Shevchenko, Cherkasy region.
Settled in Bradford. Settled in Stockport.
Interviewd by Maria Danylczuk in 2008.
My father and mother had four children: Marusia, Oksana, Anna
It is very difficult for me to talk about the Holodomor. Every time I and me.
think about it I just want to cry. During Ukraine’s brief period of independence in 1918-19, my
There were six of us in our family – my mother and father, two father helped to establish Ukrainian schools and was himself a Schools
sisters, a brother and me. Inspector. However Ukraine’s [period of] Independence was short-
I remember that there was nothing to eat. I walked and walked far lived. In 1922 we fled [Soviet] persecution and moved to Kosoroteva in
and wide with my brother searching for branches and bushes to feed on. the Donetsk region. It was less repressive there and the authorities did
My eight-month old sister Oksana was the first to die because my not ask as many questions. My mother died of tuberculosis in 1924 and
mother did not have any milk to feed her with. Then Halyna, my three my father remarried.
year-old sister, died followed by my older brother Philip, who was born Stalin wanted to collectivize the farms in Ukraine. My father had
in 1923. built a house, had a smallholding, grew his own food and had livestock.
My mother kept telling my father to go and work on the kolkhoz1 He was classed as a ‘kulak’ - a well-to-do person, an enemy of the
where he would at least receive something to eat. However, he [refused Soviet people. In 1930 they arrested and interrogated him but then later
and] said that he would rather die than work there. Sadly, that is what released him. In 1932 he was re-arrested, sentenced to 5 years’ impris-
happened. He died leaving only my mother and me. onment and his citizenship was revoked for 10 years. [At the time] I did
My mother went to work on the kolkhoz and would leave me on my not know where he was incarcerated because in those days if you asked
own all day. At least she returned home at the end of every day with a too many questions, you would have also been imprisoned.
cupful of food. I was so young to have had to live through all of this. In the autumn of 1932 they confiscated our house and all of our
We both survived. Eventually, when the famine had ended, with the possessions. A brigade came and took everything - food from the table,
help of my mother’s sister, we were able to grow crops but it was so seeds for sowing next year’s crops, foods that were drying near the fire
hard to get used to there just being the two of us out of a family of six. and food to feed us during the winter months. They even took the boots
that I was wearing. Steel rods were pushed into the thatched roof of our
house to see whether we had concealed any grain there and they poured
paraffin into the river to prevent us from catching any fish to eat.
We were taken away on a sleigh to Khutir Lukiv in the Donetsk
region. The previous inhabitants of the village were Germans who had
been deported to Germany leaving all of the houses empty.
We were given one of the larger houses to live in. There was nothing
inside but a blanket and there was also nothing to heat the house with.
The winter of 1932 was particularly harsh. My stepmother, three sisters
and I slept together under one blanket. We were forbidden to return to
our village. We searched the fields for the odd potato, crushed stones
from fruits and looked for other roots [to eat]. My sisters caught spar-
rows to eat. Just before Christmas life became so intolerable that my
stepmother decided that we should return to Kosoroteva village. We
could not continue to stay where we were.
Against orders we returned on foot to Kosoroteva village hoping
1 State-controlled Soviet collective farm owned by the workers.
that my stepmother’s godmother would be able to help us. We arrived

at our house but it had been taken apart - there was nothing left except
Ivan Dowhopiat
for the walls. That was the kind of year that it was. People were so 15/07/1919 - 2008.
desperate. Born Sloboda village, Burynskiy, Sumy region.
We went to my stepmother’s godmother’s house but she was not Settled in London.
there. We later learned that she had been taken to Siberia. We broke Interviewed by Ukrayinska Dumka in 2007.
into her house and found that it was empty except for a bed and a couple
of blankets. My sisters went out to try and find what they could. We Q. What can you remember?
made bread from the chaff of wheat and the few grains of wheat that It is very difficult to talk about it [the Holodomor]. I keep it to
we could find. myself.
Two days before Christmas in 1932-[33] there was an amnesty and I remember when they took away the grain, when they took every-
my father was released from prison. He returned home in a terrible thing away. I remember my father chasing after them after they had
state. He was black and blue from being tortured. His body was covered taken the flour saying: “What are you doing? We have five children…!”
in bruises. Three wounds that he had received during the Great War had I was the eldest. In 1933 I was 14 years old.
opened up and he needed food and medical attention. But where could We had a smallholding. They had given us land for four people
he hope to get such help? when the new economic policies were introduced. My father did not
My sister Oksana died of starvation aged 16 just after Christmas in want to join the kolkhoz. We had plenty to meet our family needs – a
[January] 1933. My father lived until the Saturday before the feast of cow, a horse, pigs, and some chickens. That was until they started to
the Holy Trinity. I remember sitting on a wooden bench that day and take everything away. The communists (or Stalinists) came - however
my father died with his head on my lap. I was only ten years old. It was you want to describe them - collectivisation was implemented and that
a terrible time. was the end of the matter. They did not evict us from our home because
This is how they forced the kulaks to work in the kolkhoz. We were my father had bought an old house and then built a woodshed. It wasn’t
not allowed to gather what was left from the harvested wheat fields for worth turning us out.
fear of being shot. My father worked as a blacksmith at the sugar factory. None of
There was one family in the village that exchanged some flour to us (five children) died in the famine because my father and mother
make bread but it was mixed with chalk. They made a flat cake and after always tried to get some food. We had a few clothes, so they travelled
eating it they all died. to Kharkiv and bartered them for some flour. We [even] ate the chaff of
The worst time was in the spring of 1933. However, an old man buckwheat. My mother dried it, I then went to my grandmother’s house
helped me. He gave me a piece of makukha2 to eat. He told me that to grind it, and then my mother baked small pancakes. When we still
I should go to the town as it was better there. I had an aunt that lived
had some flour, she would mixed that it in so that the pancakes would
in the town so I went to find her. I searched but couldn’t find her. I
hold together. She put them into boiling water to make a soup.. And
called out: ‘Aunt Maria…’ because I did not know her surname. People
that’s how we survived.
laughed at me - Maria was a very popular name. I then lived on my own
One of my younger brothers became very swollen, just as wheat
for a year. Eventually my aunt Maria recognised me in a market near
began to grow near our house. I stripped the ears of wheat and gave
the station at Sartana. She took me to her house in Mariupol and invited
them to him, which ultimately saved his life.
me to live with her family.
Q. Tell us how the food was taken away.
I do not know how I survived those two years. It was a miracle.
They had these designated yards for people who were not part of the
kolkhoz. The communists came with revolvers and those who weren’t
part of the collective had to go to their headquarters. There they gave
orders on how much potato and grain you had to bring in. After dinner,
you had to go back to them so that they could give you a receipt for the
amount that you had collected. And if you didn’t bring anything in, the
brigade would take everything from you. We didn’t have anything left
2 Poppy-seed cake.
for them to take, but the brigade nevertheless came to the house.
Since the sugar factory was only a short distance from where we
Rev. Mychajlo Hutornyj
lived, I ran to tell my father that they had come. My father ran home and 24/04/1924 - 05/05/2013
they were still there, on a sledge - it was January. My father begged a Born Kryvyi Rih.
small amount of flour from them, but because he had left work without Settled in Bradford.
permission, he was thrown out of the factory. Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008.
They took the grain, they took my father’s job… So what can you
do…? During the famine my parents left the village. I remember my father
My father went to the railway station because they gave out bread laid out in the house. There was nothing left for us to exchange for food.
there. I remember him coming home in the evening and we took the He did not survive the terrible fate and died on the 17 June 1932. My
crumbs out of his pocket and ate them. mother was pregnant at the time and three days after my father’s death,
Q. You managed to survive, but what about the other villagers? my sister Halyna was born.
Few survived in our village. Very few people were left alive. The My mother went to work down a mine because the workers there
older people all died. were given 250 grams of bread. She worked there for five years, in the
I remember my grandfather and grandmother... my grandfather iron-ore mines.
lying in bed asking for someone to bring him even a sweet… My mother’s father, my grandfather, lived 3 kilometres from us and
In the spring, the real crimes began. Potato was sown, and people worked as a bread delivery man. He would collect morsels of bread –
dug them up to eat… and they caught and killed them all…. they were not packaged in those days - and brought them to us.
Yes, that’s how it was. If it were possible to describe everything, it Also, in order to survive, we collected weeds to make soup. However,
would be a huge history. But not everyone believes that it happened, at that time, there wasn’t even any salt around.
that we had to eat chaff… They say we are making it up. After my father had died I went to his workplace to ask for help to
dig his grave. Six men arrived but they were all afraid to dig the grave
because they themselves were not sure whether they would be able to
climb out of it once it had been dug.
However, they did dig it and we buried my father. To this day I do
not know where that grave is.
My mother later told me that before his death, my father had told
her that if he could just survive, that I would grow up to be successful.
Without him, he feared that I would have difficulties. Hence my mother
ensured that I received at least some education. She worked hard all
her life.
During the famine I walked about 2 kilometres in search of bread.
However, at that time, because of the density of the queues, you could
only get bread if you either climbed over the heads of people or in
between their legs. Whenever I managed to get some bread, I would cut
off a piece and immediately sell it to buy some milk.
In 1932 – and this was just the beginning – all of the kulaks were
removed from the village. My father did not let on at the time that my
grandfather had been [one of those] exiled “to the new land”. We did
not see him again until 1942.
The famine was not hidden. When we set off in the morning, we
would see dead bodies in the streets. We used to go to the banks of the
river to pull up the reeds to eat.
That period was sorrowful. Many members of our family died. My

father had three sisters – they all died. My mother’s brother was shot
Anastasia Ostapiuk (nee Zhuravel’)
over some ears of wheat. He went into the field to gather some wheat 05.05.1923. - 31.03.2014.
and was shot there. Born Kropyvniya village, Novohradskiy raion, Zhytomyr region.
I also used to go to the station. As the train wagons pulled in you Settled in Manchester.
could usually pick something up. One man said to me: “let’s go, the Interviewed in 2008 by Viktor Andrusyszyn and Bohdan Ratycz.
troop train is coming and we should be able to get some corn...”. We
went and filled our pockets but he was then arrested and imprisoned I was born into a village family and was 10 years old when the Holo-
for 6 years [for appropriating state property]. I was young then and so domor took place in 1933.
avoided punishment. I remember 1932 well, and the preceding years. My father was a
On one occasion I was stopped on a bridge and asked what I was bookkeeper in the kolkhoz and the village council. He was responsible
carrying. I had some bread. I began to cry and one of them said: “Let for calculating the number of days worked on the basis of the informa-
him go…”. Fortunately for me, they did let me go. tion provided to him by workers out in the fields. The amount [of grain]
It was a miracle that we survived. reaped, or whatever other work they carried out, was calculated in terms
The communists showed their power and satisfaction through the of a working day, or a day and a half, and this in turn determined the
suffering of people. I saw how a communist ate: he ate three varenyky3 amount of bread that the worker would receive.
and threw 2 away. A number of us boys watched and waited to grab the I know from a photograph shown to me by my mother that my father
leftovers. had been in Petliura’s army. However, she hid that photograph so that
Ukrainian wheat was transported through our station en-route to nobody would know. Indeed, nobody did know, not even us [her chil-
somewhere. If anybody got too close to the train, they were immedi- dren].
ately shot by the guards. Then the famine began to spread through the village. People had
Somehow, thank God, we survived. It is a fact, that it was mass- very little food because they stopped being paid a wage or in kind for
murder. a working day. The authorities simply gave them a little grain or some-
thing on account of the work carried out in the kolkhoz. They stopped
giving out bread. This was the beginning.
As time passed people began to fall ill from hunger. Some fled the
village. They didn’t know what to do because they had eaten everything
that they had at home.
Komsomol brigades came to search the houses to check whether
there was anything hidden in storerooms or elsewhere, and whether
there was an icon or cross hanging on the wall. The komsomol activ-
ists did what they wanted with the people and nobody punished them…
They searched the houses every week. If they found something cooking
on the fire, some soup or borscht, they would take it and pour it away
into the ground. It was as if we all had to die, as if we were marked out
for death. This was in 1931-32.
Seeing what was going on, my father left his job in the village
council and put in a request for a horse so that he could plant potatoes
(in the kolkhoz). He ploughed a furrow in a large field with the horse and
a plough. Behind him people planted potatoes and they were followed
by others who covered the plantings. On a number of occasions he took
some potatoes, dug them into the ground and then marked the spot with
a small stick. At night, in the dark, he crawled out so that nobody would
3 Dumplings
see him heading for the field. horseback. If they caught anyone in the field, they would beat them…
We would have soup on following day made with the potato that Our village was large. It had a school with a large orchard containing
he had brought back and mixed with some other type of plant. We ate apple and pear trees. However, nobody was allowed to pick any of the
anything that we could because it was spring and nothing had grown yet. fruit. It was removed and given to someone else.
Later in 1932 my father died – he simply did not have any strength I remember that on one occasion my mother gave me some sort of
left in him. Initially he became very thin. None of us had enough to eat. pastry to eat during school break time. However, I was afraid that if other
My father worried and then became ill with pneumonia. The hospitals pupils saw me eating it, they would report me to the teacher and that she
didn’t take people in and so he died at home. He called me and said, “My would then tell her superior… So I told my mother that I couldn’t eat
daughter, you are the eldest. Look after the little ones…”. it – I had asked to be excused to go to the toilet and threw the pastry into
I was the oldest in the family. Then there was Ludmila, who went the hole fearing that otherwise, my mother would be arrested and tried.
blind and died from hunger. Then there was Sonya and Yevhen, the They would have taken my mother away and then put the children into
youngest. Both of them survived. an orphanage. So even the children were scared of each other.
After my father had died, my mother went around the garden and My mother would stand the four of us in a line each morning and
picked horseradish. It was springtime and the green leaves were sprouting would then take out a small religious picture. I do not know where she
out of the ground. She took the horseradish, cleaned and grated it, and normally concealed it. We would repeat the “Our Father”. My mother
then pulled leaves from a tree. My mother knew what was edible – she told us all; “For the fear of God never tell anyone at school that your
dried the leaves, mixed them with the horseradish and baked biscuits or mother has taught you this...”
pancakes. She gave them to us to eat and then went to work. I remember when I went with my aunt Olha (my mother’s sister)
I saw with my own eyes how each morning a cart would come to to another village to see if we could find anything to eat or to trade
collect the dead from the houses in the village. Our neighbours, the something in. When the train stopped at the station, there were children
Khomenko family, had a house full of children. So when Mr Khomenko, lying all around close to the tracks begging for food. However, those
the father, died, his wife ran from the house and cried, “Wait, don’t take on the trains had nothing themselves to throw out to them through the
him yet, because my son will be ready tomorrow. Let them at least lie windows.
together.” This was because the dead were all thrown into a single grave. There was a good, bumper harvest in 1932-33, but when the grain had
You know, there was such misery that it is impossible to describe… been collected and placed in the grain store, they said that the govern-
There was one family in the village where everyone had died except ment needed help. They then loaded cart after cart with sacks of grain,
for one son, Matviy. The leaders of the kolkhoz built a small wooden attached a red flag, and moved off to Novohrad to deliver up everything
shed in the farmyard. They used it to store the potatoes and they locked to the government. So the [good] harvest didn’t help anyone because
Matviy in there too. He lived and slept in that shed and was tasked to practically everything was being sent somewhere else to someone else.
cook the potatoes for the horses, so that the horses had something to eat Meanwhile, the people suffered from hunger. It was an impossible
and could work in the fields. Then they would take the potatoes. They time, but as you can see, God is good and we somehow managed to
smelled so good! survive.
The children crowded around the shed and begged – like bees around The communist authorities were so terrible. They simply wanted
a hive. Matviy couldn’t do anything, because he was locked in. They to break the Ukrainian people so that they stopped believing in God
only unlocked the door to take away the cooked potato, deliver fresh and believed only in Stalin. Such a government…! May God prevent
potatoes and then locked the door again. However, there were a few the same kind of atrocity from ever happening again in any country…
small holes and gaps in the wood that we would peep through and some- because it was horrific… They spoke so nicely at the meetings – about
times Matviy would push some potato through these holes for us chil- how everything would be better and that it would be paradise. However,
dren. That was about all he could do. the reality was very different. Famine scythed down everyone who lived
Harvest time was a real tragedy. Many ears of wheat lay in the fields. on Ukrainian land – including Poles, Germans, Russians...
We would go along the paths and hide in bushes. When we saw that
there was nobody around, we collected the wheat into our aprons and
ran home quickly because every field had two guards with sticks on
Rev. Mychaylo Hryhorovych Pyshnenko the power station and that eased things a little.
There was also my uncle Luka. In 1933 his wife Evdokhia died and
23.09.1923. - 15.02.2013. Luka died on the following day. As for their children, my cousins, one
Born Pyshenky village, Opishlyan district, Poltava region. went to work in the Sovkhoz4 and the other stayed at home.
Settled in Keighley. Luka and Evdokhia’s son, who was born in 1928 and was just five
Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008. years old, was taken by my cousin to the village council so that he
could be taken into care. She completed the paperwork, left him there
My name is Mychaylo Hryhorovych Pyshnenko. I was born on 23 and went home. Several weeks later this boy was found drowned in a
September 1923 in the village of Pyshenky in what was the Opylanskyi bath – that communist-activist had drowned him. Instead of taking care
district of the Poltava region. of him, he drowned him. So my mother and cousin buried him and now
My father was thrown out of the kolkhoz in 1931. A member of there are five gravestones: my uncle Luka, aunt Evdokhia, my brother
the commissariat then arrived at our house during the night and said: Mykola, sister Natalka and little Ivanko.
“Hrytsko, you have to escape because they’re going to arrest you Our house was sold and we had no rights to it at all. Later, when
tomorrow and throw you out of your home”. my father returned in 1934, he bought a house on the farmstead for
My parents immediately then hid a few items and my father quickly 50 karbovantsi. There was then me and my brother Oleksiy together
fled into the night. They [the brigade] came to the house the next with my mother and father. In 1937 another sister, S’anya, was born.
morning. “Where is Hrytsko?”, they asked. My mother replied that he’d However, in 1938 my father was taken away. We did not know where
gone to Poltava. They then said that they would make an inventory of to and only discovered more recently that my father had been shot
everything in the house and that she and the family would have to leave [executed] in May 1938.
the house altogether. My mother responded: “Where to? It is winter. Our village suffered greatly. It consisted of some 300 homes and
There are four children. Where will I go?” several smallholdings. 146 people had died but what can one do about it
They took my mother and threw her and us children out of the house. now? Such was our fate. In a neighbouring village, some 10 kilometres
I was only eight years old in 1931 and my youngest sister had only just away, 700 people died out of the 1000 dwellings there.
been born. They sealed the house and told my mother that she did not That’s what I remember. I lived through too much.
have the right to live anywhere.
Fortunately, an elderly neighbour, living on her own, took us into
her house. They mocked her for this, but she retorted that we were .
human beings and that she would not turn us away.
So my father had escaped and found work at the Dnipro Hydroelec-
tric Station where a dam was being constructed for the power station on
the Dnipro river.
We lived with the elderly lady, Mariyana, thanks to the good will
and help of people, neighbours.
By 1933, we had reached a point where there was nothing left and
nobody could help us anymore because there was nobody left.
My brother Mykola was the first to die. He was only three years old.
Then my one year-old sister died. This left just me and my brother, who
was five years younger than me.
We survived by searching through gardens and weed beds. We ate
weeds and raided birds nests, taking their eggs and even eating their
young – that is how my brother and I survived.
My mother was swollen by this time, but later when things began to
improve and people had more, they helped us. My father returned from
4 Soviet state-owned collective farm.
Klavdia Semianiw returned home from the town. At this time the kolkhoz wheat fields were
abundant with grain but (by contrast) there were also thieves about. If
Born 6 September 1925. they caught sight of anybody carrying anything that they could feed
Petrovske village, Kharkiv region. their children with, the thieves would pounce, beat them, take whatever
Settled in Farsley (nr Bradford). they had been carrying and prevent them from entering their house.
Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008. When my mother returned, I don’t know who it was, but someone
said to her: “Maria, take the child, meaning me, and somehow try and
I lived in my parents’ house in Ukraine during 1932-33. We had a get to the town. You might be accepted there. There is nothing left here.
smallholding, were dekulakized, and they [the communists] took abso- You won’t survive if you stay”.
lutely everything from us. All that remained were my father, my mother At that time, as far as I could tell, the man transported post (or some-
and the four of us girls. They cleaned us out to the last piece of grain. thing similar) from our village to the town. He took me with him but
We lived this way for some time, without anything, eating pota- left my mother behind. We arrived in another village, but I cannot now
toes in their skins, potatoes that had been discarded because they were remember its name. I was left there to stay with a woman until my
rotting… mother arrived. We remained there for some time. My mother would go
At one point my father told my mother that he would go to the town, and beg for bread and this kept us alive.
to Donetsk, in search of a job. We could then, perhaps, follow on and Then, somehow, my mother got us to Donetsk. She had a brother
things would surely get better. living there and we went to see him. However, we could not stay with
While my father was in Donetsk, my younger sister died from him straight away. So when we arrived in Donetsk, we effectively had
hunger because there was nothing to eat. Some two weeks or so later, nowhere to live, had no job, and my mother could not register for work
another sister died. That left me with my mother and younger sister. because she was not registered in the town. Since she had no home
Soon afterwards, my father returned from Donetsk. He could not be address, she could not get any work. We had to sleep on the streets,
registered for work there because he was a villager, had been dekulak- outside houses, and beg for bread.
ized and he was Ukrainian. They told him that he was not needed there. Eventually, my mother did find a job. She was then able to register
When he returned home he was thin, battered and tired. We were all and we went to stay with her brother. He had a family so we had to sleep
bloated with swollen stomachs because there was nothing to eat - no on the floor in the corner of one room. Thus began my life in Donetsk.
dogs, no chickens, no pigs… Nothing! That is what I can tell you [about the Holodomor].
We even ate grass and fought over it when we found some because But, do you know, every child when close to death would ask for
we thought that if we rubbed it between our fingers we could extract some milk or food. When my sister was dying she said to me: “Klavdia,
some milkwort (milkweed) which we could eat. give me some milk…”. “Mummy, please give me something to eat…”.
Eventually I was the only child left in the house and my mother said But there was nothing to give. We walked around like skeletons. Our
the same to my father who responded by saying that none of us would bodies were glowing and we looked as though we had been pumped up.
survive. The next morning my mother found him dead - he had died That is how we were. It was terrible, truly terrible! Nobody paid any
during the night. I didn’t know this and just wanted to climb onto my attention to anything. No attention at all.
father and play – I was only a child then, I didn’t understand... On the streets in the villages, people, usually children, just sat there
That is how we ended up, just me and my mother. – one here, dead, one there, dead… Dogs walked by, sniffed them and
My mother sometimes left me at home by myself. There was even they didn’t want to eat them because they were… oh…!
nothing in the house to drink from or to cook with. People lay dead in It was a terrible time for me - one that I will never forget.
the streets, flies ate their eyes out. Nobody paid any attention. Everyone
only thought about one thing - where to find something to eat. People
walked about swollen, stepping over corpses, but nobody did anything.
There was nothing anywhere.
On one occasion I was left alone by our house. I slept in the garden
for I don’t know how many nights before my mother miraculously
Andriy Skok Vera Smereka

Born 17 September 1925. 19/01/1923 - 01/05/2010.
Arbuzynkakh village, Mykolayiv region. Born Krolevets, Sumy region.
Settled in Halifax. Settled in Bradford.
Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008. Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008.
I have one document, a birth certificate, which shows my date of I was born in the town of Krolevets, Sumy region, Eastern Ukraine,
birth in Ukrainian and in Russian. on 19 January 1923. My father was a priest with parishes in neigh-
In 1927-28 when everyone was being dekulakized, my father lived bouring villages.
on a farmstead in the Mykolayiv region. He had a couple of cows, a In 1932, when I was 9 years old, famine began to take hold in
couple of horses and a few hectacres of land. Ukraine. It is hard for me to talk about this because we suffered greatly.
Some time later, when I was older, I found out that my father had Bread disappeared as did all seasonings for soup. We were told
fled home but then returned after a while to take us, his children and which herbs were poisonous and which were not. We wandered through
our mother, to live in Kyiv on the left bank of the Dnipro, opposite the gardens and orchards looking for edible herbs. My mother would cook
centre of the city. This area was known as Mykolayivska Slobidka and some borscht but this consisted of just water and herbs. We all had to
it was where we lived until 1934. eat this borscht - water and herbs. We couldn’t even get any salt. From
It was here that I remember seeing a dead boy lying in the street. then on our stomachs were often swollen.
This was either in 1932 or ‘33. I remember this clearly even though I People collected linden leaves. Even now, when I pass a linden tree,
am now 83 years old this memory is lodged firmly in my head. I was I pull off a leaf and eat it. This serves as a reminder that we used to
walking down the street with very few people around, and there was this eat linden leaves. They were very bitter but we ate them whenever we
young boy, perhaps 7-8 years old, lying dead in the street. Nobody paid could.
any attention. People just walked around him, passed by him. Nobody What saved us was that there were many woods in our region. They
even glanced at him. I then crossed the road and there was a man lying were known as the Kochubeyski woods. When the trees were felled
there, uncovered, dead. Again nobody came near, not [even] the police, there, strawberries would grow in the clearing. Women from our village
nor the militia. Nobody. I remember this! would gather at midnight and walk for 10 kilometres to get to these
I also remember where we lived across the river from Kyiv that the clearings. I was 10 years old at the time and my mother took me with
area was surrounded by steppes. The school that I attended was situ- her. We reached the clearing at dawn, just as the sun was rising, gath-
ated beyond the city by some woodlands. I will never forget the dead ered the strawberries and took them home. This helped to boost our
people. To get to the school I had to go through the deserted woodlands. morale and to save us from starvation.
There were no houses or habitation, nothing, and I was always told – be Understandably, at that time people became very ill. To minimise
careful because they catch children there and eat them… This is what I the level of psychological damage to us, my mother tried to protect us
remember of 1932-33, a time when people were eaten… from seeing the terrible scenes that were everywhere around us. When
I went to school at the time of Soviet rule. At school it [the famine] my friend’s father died, I begged my mother to let me go and visit my
was a taboo subject, nobody spoke about it. friend, but she would not allow it. Many people were dying at that time.
Some English journalists were aware of it at the time but when they We children used to run to the funerals because we knew that we might
returned to England and tried to recount what they had seen they were be given some broth or soup afterwards.
told to “shut-up – there is nothing going on there”. Every day my mother examined our fingers, because when a person
is hungry their body begins to swell. This swelling always begins in the
fingers. My mother always checked our fingers to see if there were any
signs of swelling.
Thank God, somehow we survived.
When our grain began to grow in 1932, people collected it whilst it
was still green to make flour. but nobody wanted to become a member of the collective, because this
On one occasion my father returned from a funeral and brought back would have meant that one would have been left with nothing in return
a loaf of bread which was so yellow that it was almost green. for becoming a member.
In 1933 the situation worsened. My mother sent me to live with my One man described how he travelled to Belarus because there was no
grandmother, thinking that it would be better for me there. Unfortu- famine there and that food was still available. He earned some money,
nately, it was even worse. At least where we lived there were meadows travelled to Belarus and brought back some salo (salt-meat) and loaves
nearby where we could collect sorrel leaves. But where my grandmother of bread. However, the Komsomol activists – young people preparing
lived, all of the sorrel leaves had already been collected. With no sorrel to join the communist party - peering through a window, saw that he
leaves, the soup was made from herbs alone. This did not taste good. had returned with some food. They immediately went to his house to
There was an apple tree in the orchard. We collected all of the small confiscate it. Fortunately, his mother managed to throw the salt-meat
unripe apples and grated them into the soup to at least make it a little into the slop-bucket. She threw it into the dirty water to save it knowing
bit more appealing. But my grandmother never ate apples until harvest that the activists would not search there. This man’s father then sent his
time and she banned us from putting any apples into her dish. son to Belarus again. However, on this occasion, his return was delayed
It was hard for me to understand the strong will of my grandmother. as he sought to find some salt. By the time he had returned home, both
No matter how bad the famine got, she steadfastly refused to touch the his mother and father had died and were already buried.
apples before harvest time. The Ukrainian nation suffered great hardship. The famine was
[Prior to the Holodomor] my grandfather (on my father’s side) had a horrific. Thank God we somehow survived.
good smallholding. He had a garden, some land, horses, pigs and cows. What was hardest to comprehend was that the famine was man-made
But during the Holodomor he was left with nothing. Everything had and that our own people took the food from ordinary citizens. They [the
been taken away from him. communists] also sent people in from Moscow, who ransacked villages,
Initially, the state imposed a tax. Anyone that could not pay the tax robbed people and confiscated their last items. How many innocent
had their possessions taken away. I remember that my mother had a people were lost...
cabinet which she brought to the house after she got married. They even I had a friend called Halya. When I looked at her, her eyes were like
took that cabinet. cherries. Lovely brown eyes. Her father had a small house and kept
The village council, that is to say those that ruled the village - the tools for his smallholding. One day they were arrested (they came to
head of the collective farm, head of the village council, secretary of the our school to fetch Halya) and exiled them to Siberia. They were deku-
village council - were given unlimited powers. They did whatever they lakized, as were many other good landowners.
wanted. They could confiscate property from ordinary village people In our village there was a family with the surname of Drotiv. They
at will. First they took taxes. If somebody could not pay these taxes were ginger-haired with lots of children. My mother often gave them
they took their cows and pigs. Later they took all the food in the house. things because they were very poor. They took this Drotiv family and
Some people tried to hide food from the authorities, burying it in the re-settled them into the empty house of a good landowner. Before my
soil under the floorboards (if they had earthen floors in their homes). very own eyes this house [deteriorated and] became dirty, the land
The authorities searched for food and grain, dug up gardens, pulled up unkempt, because they did not know how to look after it or how to tend
floors... Whatever food they found, they took. to the land. Several years later, just before the war perhaps, the good
Some villagers said that the authorities kept whatever they took landowner returned home. He wandered around the village and then
from the villagers for themselves, personally. disappeared again. Nobody knew what became of him.
My path to school took me past the farmstead of the secretary of The good landowners were destroyed and the village holdings
the kolkhoz. People used to say that he had fat running down his mous- suffered for a long time after this. Those that worked on the kolkhoz
tache. As a child during the famine, I imagined that he had everything, had no initiative. They did not have the level of knowledge that the
cows, pigs..., and that fat literally poured out of his mouth. dekulakized villagers had... They did not know how to work the land.
The confiscated cattle and pigs were herded into sheds in an attempt They were told to do a day’s work and that is what they did - and then
to create a kolkhoz. The cattle would bray because nobody fed or they went home. They were incapable of working the land properly.
tended to them. People were forced to go and work in the kolkhoz, That is how the better people in the village were ruined.
When I returned home from my grandmother’s house, I remember

our home being quite dark. My mother gave me a biscuit but it was
Maria Volkova
not very nice. I took it, started to bite into it and then broke down and Born 23 June 1926.
started to cry. My mother said to me: “What else can I give you? There Serhiyivka village, Donetsk region.
is nothing else in the house”. Settled in Nottingham.
In 1934 we left to go and live in the nearby town. There [at least] Interviewed by Nick Higham, BBC, in 2009.
they gave out small portions of bread.
One of my friends recalled that when the famine began she was with Q. Maria Volkova. How old are you?
her mother while her father had gone to the Donbas region in search Eighty three years old. I was born on 23 June 1926.
of work. She and her mother went to Kyiv. They didn’t know anybody Q. Maria, tell me how old you were and where you lived when the
there and had nowhere to live. They went to the cemetery and slept Holodomor began?
amid the gravestones. During the day, the mother left the girl to lie I was six years old. I lived in the village of Serhiyivka, Kras-
amongst the graves or to play in the cemetery itself while she went in noarmiysk district, Donetsk region. I was born in this village.
search of work or money to buy some bread with. Then on one such Q. Can you describe to me how the Holodomor began, when you
day, somebody approached the girl and tried to persuade her that all she began to realize that there was a lack of food.
had to do was to say that she had no mother or father and she would be You know, our childhood ... I obviously do not remember anything
taken to a Children’s Home. The girl refused to say this and then told from when I was a one year-old, but by the time we reached the age of
her mother about what had happened. On hearing the story, her mother 3-4, we understood everything. We knew that we had nothing to eat. We
took the girl to the river Dnipro and said: “if you leave me, I will throw played in the street and would come running home: “Mama, we want
myself into the river and drown”. However, the girl had become so something to eat!” And my mother would reply: “Go and eat the cherry
hungry that when she was next approached, she succumbed and said tree leaves.”
that she did not have a mother or a father... She was then immediately Q. So, this was when you were pretty young and the famine grew
taken to an orphanage where she remained until the start of the war. really bad in 1932-33. Can you describe some of the scenes in your
Subsequently, however, she somehow managed to escape the village in ‘32 and ‘33.
orphanage and went in search of her village and parents. When she This is how it looked in our village. We saw how people walked...
reached her old family home (her family had been dekulakized) and elderly people, young people, children, all carrying bags, moving from
asked for some water, her mother gave her the drink and said: ”Our own yard to yard, begging. For some reason I said to my mother: “Mama,
daughter has disappeared somewhere. I do not know where she is”. The the children have come again”, and I cried as I said it. And my mother
girl replied: ”Mama, it is me – I am your daughter…”. replied: “There is nothing for me to give to the children. You yourselves
I have heard many sorrowful tales of what happened to people during are also hungry.”
the Holodomor. It was a terrible time. I just thank God that I survived. We really were absolutely hungry. And my father, who was still with
us at that time in 1930, saw that my mother had emptied everything
from her wardrobe (chest) in exchange for food. She traded all of her
clothes for bread, wheat, or some type of cereal.
There were some people who had things [stored] somewhere, but
nobody knew where.
My mother had a suit and one woman said to her: “I will swap you a
glass of wheat for this suit” and with tears in her eyes, my mother gave
away/swapped the suit for the glass of wheat.
Q. Did people fall ill as a result of this?
They were all so ill that their stomachs were swollen. Their hands
and feet looked as though they had been pumped up with water - so full
of water.
However, I also want to add that when the last remaining garment is bitter and sweet. We were told that this too was poisonous. It grew
had been removed from the wardrobe, my parents asked themselves on heaps of rubbish – a tall trunk with branches that had lots of small
what they should do next. “You have a bicycle, sell the bike...”, my berries, similar to blackcurrants, but with green water and tiny seeds
mother said to my father. inside. There was nothing more to it other than this green water, but
At that time, a cousin whose name I remember very well, Ilko it was sweet and we searched for it and ate it day and night. We even
Sukhnov, had said that there were people selling wheat. So my father picked a bucketful of this bittersweet and dried it for the winter. And we
sold the bicycle, bought a bucket of wheat and brought it home that proved that it was not poisonous!
same morning. That night, however, KGB or NKVD officers came to In 1932, there were 28 children in my class at school. By the
our house, confiscated the wheat and took my father away. following spring there were only 12 of us left. It was only then that they
They initially sent him to a prison in Artemivsk, some 90 kilometres (the authorities) thought that something needed to be done.
from our village, as an enemy of the people. From there he was then Q. Many people must have died. What happened to them, to their
sent to Moscow to work [as a slave-labourer] on the construction of the families?
Moscow-Volga Canal. He never returned from there and we were left They died as families. In some cases fathers were taken away and
without a father. their wives and children were condemned to searching for weeds.
I remember how we woke up that next morning with the sun brightly My grandmother cried all of the time, upset that we were spending
shining in the street and my mother standing there, crying. We asked all of our time among the weeds. But other children died [from sheer
her what the matter was and she replied: “your father isn’t here – they hunger] doing this.
have taken him away”. Someone said that they were selling grain dust at the mills. This dust
Each day they [the communists] spread this rumour... There were was produced during the grinding process – and it was, perhaps, mixed
individuals who would walk around saying that grain could be bought. with some earth… I do not know... But people took this grain dust and
And that same night they would come and arrest those who had been mixed it [to eat]…
sucked into the trap. It was all prepared and specifically aimed at In 1932, pumpkins planted in the spring grew and my grandmother
removing good people, labelling them as enemies of the people, taking fed them to us. We ate a piece of the pumpkin but without anything
them away to work on that five-year plan adopted in 1929. ...And we else - there was no bread - we developed serious stomach problems. We
were left without a father. were very ill! Standing in line at school, feeling faint and needing to run
That grain that they took – they re-sold it. It was a deliberate ploy... to the toilet.... Diarrhoea! Incessant diarrhoea! I said that I wouldn’t eat
They re-sold it several times to take people away to carry out unpaid it any more. Then at lunchtime we came home from school to find that
work. They needed this type of labour force. my grandmother had taken the pieces of the pumpkin that we hadn’t
Q. When there was no grain left, you could find no grain, what did eaten, mashed it up and told us that it was porridge. And there was
you do for food? nothing to add into it - no kind of groats or the like. We stopped eating
We had nothing in the garden. People didn’t have the strength to those pumpkins.
plant anything. So nothing grew that year - 1931. We went in search of Then my grandmother obtained some “flour” from the place where
weeds. Nobody saw us and, by this time, they no longer followed us. they ground the grain. It was actually the grain dust. She took the
I remember how we would get the roots from weeds... they were all pumpkin, added the roots of some type of herb to it and then mixed
bitter. We were told that the weeds might be poisonous. it with the grain dust to make so-called hal’ety5. There may have even
On one occasion I found some root. I didn’t know what it was, we been some earth in there. We ate that hal’ette during the day.
didn’t look at the leaves ... whatever it was it looked like a root. I ate it One further thing. My mother made an occasion of my sixth
and the area around my mouth and hands turned brown. Later I needed birthday by inviting children to our house. I well remember that all of
to be scrubbed clean but I realised that this root was good for me. I the swollen children came and I also remember that my mother picked
somehow began to feel stronger. We then always looked out for this some little yellow pumpkin flowers and put them into the soup along
– and soon all children looked for it. I subsequently discovered that it with something else. The children ate this pumpkin-flower soup and
was burdock.
Then in the summer we also looked for bittersweet, which literally
5 Hard dry biscuits.
said: “God, what a good egg-soup this is!”. filled with the sunflower seeds. Suddenly a guard on horseback caught
Some time later, in 1935-36, they recalled that soup “with the eggs”. us and forced us to empty our bags out. We did this and left...
So I asked my mother where she had got those eggs from. She then Q. Your father was arrested and I think you never saw him again.
admitted that they were pumpkin flowers (and not eggs). What happened to the rest of your family, your brothers and sisters,
Even when we met up in later years as adults, those children your aunts and uncles, your grandmother?
continued to recall how my mother had saved them. They still couldn’t I had two sisters and my mother. We did not see our mother very
believe that there were no eggs in that soup. often then. She would go somewhere [for long spells] to stand in bread
Q. Can you remember when it started to get better and how did it queues.
change? There was no bread in the village, but in the cities, where there were
I will tell you how it was at school in 1933. Children had become workers, it was possible to get one eighth of a bread. She would stand
so weak by then that they were unable to stand in a line. They would in the queue all night and in return she could have received one eighth
collapse and excrete blood as a consequence of eating all sorts of weeds. of a bread, or perhaps nothing at all. She spent a week there, gathering
The teachers then sent a statement to the village council saying that eighths of bread and then carrying them home. This was in the winter
something needed to be done with the children. of 1932. My father was no longer at home - they had already taken him
Close to the school there was a grassy area where people used to away.
bring their cattle to graze. They then ploughed this area and planted On one occasion there was a big freeze and she had to walk 25
some millet seeds. And this millet grew. We went there to tend to it to kilometres to get home. A man on a sleigh passed by her and pulled
make sure that it grew. up his horses. He asked her whether she would like a lift? My mother
At school we received a plate of soup. I do not remember eating replied that she would. The frost was so severe that she was not sure
anything at home at that time. This was in the winter and spring of whether she would make it home before dark. As soon as my mother
1933. The soup was cooked in the school every day. On account of put down her things into the sleigh, the man quickly set off leaving my
being fed at school, we were forced to do work outside of the school. We mother standing there. She began to run after him – running and crying.
walked into the waterlogged fields where the snow was still thawing, He had taken everything – that bread that she had bought after a week
each with a bucket to scoop out the excess water. We dragged this water of queuing. He rode on and on and eventually turned, came back and
to the countless burrows and poured the water into them to flush out the pulled to a stop. My mother ran up to him, fell on the sleigh and cried…
gophers. These are grain-eating agricultural pests. As the grain grew, “I stood for a week [to buy this] and you did that to me…! You want to
they would eat it. I didn’t have the nerve to try and catch them so we take this from me?” He replied: “No. I did not want to take it from you.
called on the boys to catch them as they came out of their holes. The Had you sat down straight away onto the sleigh, you would have never
boys would then eat these gophers. They also caught hedgehogs and ate got up again because of the freezing temperature. But you have now got
them too. your blood circulation going and will therefore live.
When the beets had been sown in the kolkhoz, we went to collect Q. Some people say that this famine was deliberately brought about,
weevils, a type of beetle, which destroyed the beets by eating the leaves. deliberately engineered by Stalin. Looking back now, what do you
There were so many of them that we all carried a small bucket or jar and think?
were tasked to collect a kilogram each. We would put these beetles into The Holodomor did not begin in 1930. It began in the 1920s when
our buckets and they would start crawling out. We then shoved them everything started to be taken away from people. This was the overture
back in again... Once done we would empty the bucket out in the field to the Holodomor. They were preparing for it and then, in 1929, when
and burn them. There were heaps of these burned beetles in that field. In they released the first five-year plan. At its core was the industrialisation
payment we received 125 grams of bread per kilo of beetles. This was of the country.
in the summer of 1933. However, to achieve the plan they needed finances and human
In the autumn, the law on grain was introduced. Ten years imprison- manpower. Where could they get this from? Only from the village!
ment [for gleaning ears of grain]. However, the schoolchildren prepared Label people as kulaks, take everything from them, evict them from
themselves and agreed to collect sunflower seeds and not ears of grain. their homes, take the men away to work and leave the women and chil-
We wandered through the field, everyone with their own bag which we dren to their own fate.
The houses that had been emptied after the people had died during Volga canal was being built.
the Holodomor were then re-populated with Russians from Russia. The friend took us there to the construction site. I looked. The fence
Why are there so many Russians living in Ukraine [today]? Because was very high to prevent the prisoners from escaping. There was a
they moved in then. This was a deliberate policy. They wanted to destroy guard. And there I was, barefooted. We had nothing. It was summer. I
the [Ukrainian] nation because it was always striving for freedom. And moved closer, noticed a dug-over piece of land leading to the site and
they did not need this. They needed slaves. raced past the guard as he screamed: “Where are you going? Where are
At that time the following anecdote circulated around our village you going…?”
about the first five-year plan: Five years worth of sowing seeds were I had been told that there was a construction site where all enemies
delivered to a village. People couldn’t understand it. They were accus- of the people worked. I ran towards it. It was a massive building site.
tomed to sow every spring and then reap the harvest in the autumn. People were so tiny that they looked no bigger than a finger. This
Yet here was a five-year sowing plan. They decided that only Stalin showed how deep the canal would be. All of the workers were carrying
could answer their question so they decided to send some village repre- baskets of cement on their backs and were scaling the ladders. I looked
sentatives to meet with Stalin. The representatives arrived in Moscow and looked, but I didn’t recognise anyone. I did not see my father. How
but began to worry that they might be labelled ‘enemies of the people’ could I have done when there were thousands of them, like ants, drag-
and taken away. They were afraid that they might never return home. ging cement on their backs. These were the labour resources. This is
However, Stalin took them in and one of the representatives asked what I saw in the summer of 1933...
Stalin to clarify how to sow five year’s worth of seeds when the village
only had enough land to cope with one year’s worth of sowing. Stalin
led them to his window and said: “Look at Red Square. There is only
one car to be seen. You see, this is the beginning of the five-year plan.
By the end of the five-year plan, cars will be swimming through like a
river. Do you understand?” They understood. “And you will have a car
[at the end of the five year plan]”, he added. The representatives thought
that this could be a good thing and with that, they returned to their
village. The people were eagerly awaiting to hear about the meeting
and so, like Stalin, the representative walked over to the window just as
a coffin was being driven past. The representatives then said: “Do you
see that? This is the beginning of the five-year plan – they are carrying
a deceased. By the end of the five-year plan the number of corpses will
be flowing through here like a river”.
This was 1933 and the numbers of deceased people was by this time
flowing…
My mother shared the bread that she had brought back with her after
the incident with the sleigh. I did not eat it but kept it for my father. I
did not know whether or not he was alive.
In the spring of 1933, people collected money and we travelled to
Moscow to try and find my father. We stayed with friends on Krasnaya
Presnya. I brought an apple with me. There were no trees, all the trees
had been cut down. There were no apples, nothing! Yet I had brought an
apple for my father. I thought that I would see him and be able to give
him the dry piece of bread that I had saved for him.
We were promised that they would find out whether he was alive.
We did not know anything about him, but we knew that the Moscow-
Lida Yatsyuch rings, little crucifixes on chains and suchlike, some nice pottery and
tablecloths. Initially she started to take them to the marketplace to trade
25/07/1925 - 09/05/2018 them in. Later she took them to the “Torgsins” – shops where people
Born Tsybuleva Stantsia, nr Mykhailivka village, Kirovograd region. could trade in their gold for a bowl of wheat or corn. The “Torgsins”
Settled in Bramley (nr. Leeds). took the valuables practically for nothing. Yet people, compelled by
Interviewed by Orysia Chymera and Bohdan Lanovyj in 2008. their hunger, continued to bring in all of their valuables.
It got to the point that there was absolutely nothing left in our house.
I was born on 25 July 1925 at Tsybuleva Stantsia, near Mykhailivka It was empty. The walls were bare. My mother had even removed the
village, Kirovograd region, and attended school in Mykhailivka. rushnyk6 and sold it for a piece of bread or some grain.
I was about 7-8 years old when the famine took hold but I also still At that time there were five of us children. The youngest two died
recall the period leading up to it - when they started to close down quickly: the smallest died shortly after birth followed by my brother,
churches. who was about 3-4 years old. He had nothing to eat and kept asking for
We were children then and only later learned who had caused the milk. My mother told me to give him water.
famine and why. As for us, she placed a small bowl of salt on the table, told us to wet
My father was a tailor by profession but during harvest time (before our fingers, dip them into the salt and then suck on them. That is how
dekulakization) he would stop his own work to help local farmers with it was…!
the threshing. He had his own flail and a tractor-runner. He was also On one occasion my grandmother on my father’s side brought us
trained to operate a steam engine. 2-3 ears of corn with the corn kernels still attached. My mother took this
That was how we lived. We didn’t have any land, only a garden. Life corn, cleaned it and placed it into some sort of a bowl, blessed it with
then was normal and good. holy water and distributed a handful of the corn kernels to each of us.
Later, because my father did not have a lot of cattle - we only had one That was what we ate on Easter Sunday.
cow, a few chickens, geese and the like – they confiscated his flail and My parents often cried, but we were all small - I was small – and
the tractor-runner for the kolkhoz and wanted him to join the collective. could not understand why they were crying.
They didn’t send him to Siberia because we didn’t have any cattle to In time it turned out that I had become quite swollen. Since my
speak of. However he refused to join the kolkhoz arguing that he was father had been a tailor, we had a mirror in the house and I remember
specialised as a machinist and would find employment elsewhere. He looking into it wondering why I looked that way. I went outside into the
found a job at the local sawmill. sunshine. There was a bank of earth up against our house but things had
Then the famine began. Firstly they took our cow, a piglet… and got so bad that I couldn’t even climb up onto that bank.
then they took everything… all of our stored grain... They even took the My father fully understood the dire circumstances that we were in
salt that was stored high up on a shelf in a large pottery jar. but he did not know what he could possibly do.
The people that took everything from us were members of the Our neighbours, who were almost all grown-ups, with the two
Komsomol (Communist Youth). They were very young and tended to youngest children being teenagers aged about 14-15 years old. All five
come from a class of people that didn’t want to work. of them in that neighbouring house died from hunger. It was terrible.
When the Soviets came to power they took control of the villages. They [the brigades] had also taken everything from them. They wanted
They went from house to house, in a drunken state, beat people, to force them to work in the kolkhoz…
searched the houses to try and find who had hidden what and where, But what did people receive for working in the kolkhoz? I will
and they forced people to go and work on the collective farm. tell you. My mother worked in the kolkhoz while my father was still
They took everything, and if there was anything left over that they working in the sawmill. They said, “go work there… they have made
couldn’t take, they poured petrol over it to destroy it. They did every- some soup or dumplings”. So she went, brought back the soup, but it
thing that they could to ensure that the people had nothing to eat. And was just water, no dumplings. There was nothing – just water.
when they had taken everything from us, everything that we could And so it came to pass that people began to die on the streets on
possibly eat, the famine began. a massive, massive scale. Some man would be going somewhere and
My grandmother on my father’s side had some gold - earrings,
6 Traditional embroidered cloth.
would then just die in the street. Someone else would move his body And the others sang:
over so that the corpse didn’t get in the way or get run over. A cart This is where our church is:
would come by and collect the dead. Pioneers do not believe in God.
There was one girl, my age, who lived close to us and who I played And where is your Christmas?
with. At one point I just didn’t see her again… and her mother and The snow has swept away our Christmas,
father died too. That’s where our Christmas is.
Another one of our neighbours, a Ukrainian, whose husband was
taken away to Siberia, had a daughter. Well, she ate that daughter. Obvi- Those are the kind of songs they sang - against God, against the
ously the daughter wasn’t alive by then but nevertheless the woman was Church.
prosecuted. She had eaten her daughter after her death. Everything that People were afraid and nobody challenged them because the conse-
took place then was truly horrific. quences were dreadful – they would beat or even kill.
They took away all grain from everyone. They would come and Then an “intelligent one” from their midst climbed up onto the roof
‘pick’, as we would say, in the cellar, always searching, breaking down of the church, dislodged the cross and threw it down to the ground.
fireplaces, digging up floors, pulling up wooden floorboards where there They closed the church and sent the parish priest and the church warden
were floorboards, probing with metal poles, searching to find anything to Siberia. After that, nobody heard anything more of them and they
that might have been hidden. And if they did find anything hidden, it never returned.
was straight to Siberia [for the homeowner]. They closed the church… Lord knows what happened to every-
My aunt lived two doors down from us. Her husband was a doctor. thing… They smashed everything up, destroyed it.
They had two sons and lived well because of his profession. However, At the outset of the famine they still collected the grain from the
because he was Ukrainian and supported Ukrainian causes, they sent people and stored it locally. However, there were some large hangers
him to Siberia and threw my aunt and her sons out of the house. It situated close to the railway station. So they then began to transport the
was taken over by the NKVD – otherwise [more latterly] known as the grain – wheat and rye and everything else from the kolkhoz – from all
KGB. surrounding villages and stored it all in these hangers. They then had to
They saw everything that happened in the villages, but they didn’t ship off somewhere into Muscovy.
care. The KGB woman herself went around forcing people to work in This began to be called the grain factory and its manager tried to
the kolkhoz where [she said] they would find a good and prosperous mechanise the process of transferring the stored grain directly into the
life. railway freight carts by introducing a conveyor belt machine. However,
Many people travelled out of the villages trying to get to a major he had no specialists to operate it and someone told him about my father
town in the Donbas region. Some died on the way while others died in who was still working at the sawmill. At the time, my father could only
the Donbas where they had to register [for food]. To register, they were provide us with sawdust and nothing else, so we then ate things like
asked where they lived? Where do I live? On the street. Well, if you live white acacia, acorns, all sorts of weeds, leafy spurge and something that
on the street, you cannot register. And so they just died there. A terrible, we called kalachyky8, which grew close to the ground and produced tiny
terrible scenario evolved. berries… We ate anything that we could lay our hands on.
As for the church, I even remember when we still blessed the paska7. People had eaten up all of the cats, dogs and caught birds. My older
Our church was still open at the time. Drunken Komsomol youth, agita- brother caught birds using a small trap that he had made, removed the
tors, who forced people to work in the kolkhozes, drove their cart feathers and we boiled and ate the bird. Then there were no more dogs,
around the church singing songs. If you like, I’ll even repeat the words cats or birds left to eat. Meanwhile, they loaded the grain onto those
of one of those songs because I can still remember it: wagons...
The manager of the [so called] grain factory approached my father
Pioneers: do you believe in God? and asked whether he understood the workings of machinery. In the
Where is your church? first instance the machine needed to be repaired and he asked my father
whether he would be able to repair it. My father agreed to take a look,
7 Easter bread. 8 Malva.

50 Personal recollections UK Councils and the Holodomor 51
went, and repaired the machine. In return the manager gave him a pood9
of flour and three litres of oil. UK Councils and the
This was like pure gold because it could not be bought anywhere
at any price. My father could not carry it all so he took my brother, his
eldest son, and they brought everything back to the house. Well, it was
Holodomor
paradise then in our household. This gift, the pood of flour and those
three litres of oil, saved us from hunger. And not only us, but also our UK Councils that have recognised
elderly grandmother who had brought us those ears of corn. the holodomor as genocide
Some time later the same manager of the grain factory asked my
father whether he would work the machine. My father immediately
agreed. He could work with the grain, grab a fistful and eat it while
working.
Then they began to transport all of that grain somewhere into Russia Keighley Town Council
– mainly to Moscow, while our people were dying [from starvation]. 4 September 2009
I would like to come back to the issue of the church. The person
that took down that cross later committed suicide by hanging himself. The first Council in the UK to pass a motion calling the 1932-33
Before they had emptied the church, he visited it and found some Holodomor genocide.
religious book there. He hung himself after reading it. They took the The motion, proposed by former Keighley Town councillor and
church apart. Only the stone steps and floor remained. Everything else Deputy Mayor, Mykola Lajszczuk, unanimously agreed that “the
was taken away [and the church demolished]. Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 be recognised by this Council as Geno-
By the time the famine had begun to subside and we all started to cide in order that its victims can be properly remembered, and that this
revive, my mother had left the kolkhoz and went to work in the Sovkhoz. is never allowed to happen again”.
As I told you earlier, the two youngest children in our family had The Council also undertook to petition the UK Government to
died and so there were three children that survived the famine. These formally recognise the Holodomor as genocide.
were my two older brothers and me. I was still quite small then and I
went to a kindergarten while my mother went to work. Rochdale Borough Council
It is true that they gave us something to eat at the school so the 17 October 2008
famine was already coming to an end. People began to revive because
what had been sown in the fields in the autumn went on to grow in Rochdale Council unanimously adopted the following motion (item
abundance. And so the famine passed. 12(b)) proposed by Councillor Irene Davidson and seconded by Coun-
As for the church, only its foundation remained. At Easter, people cillor Angela Coric:
would still bake their little paska and bring it to the site of the church. “That this Council notes that Rochdale’s Ukrainian community,
There, an elderly man would bless these Easter breads. which has for more than 50 years made a significant contribution to
And that is how we survived the famine. Had our father not been a our diverse society in the Borough is commemorating the 75th anni-
mechanic, we would have all died. But the memories of everything, as I versary of the Holodomor in the Ukraine. Council further notes that the
recall them now, are horrific – something that I didn’t fully understand Holodomor was the systematic starvation to death of at least 7,000,000
at the time when I was just 7-8 years old. Ukrainians during 1932 and 1933, when the Soviet regime imposed its
policy of collectivisation of farming and livestock and confiscation of
food, causing untold famine in Ukrainian villages.
“That this Council recognises that the Holodomor was a devastating
act of inhumanity and one of the largest national catastrophes to affect
the Ukrainian nation in modern history. Furthermore this Council notes
the importance of this anniversary and that we properly remember the
9 Approximately 16 kilograms.
52 UK Councils and the Holodomor UK Councils and the Holodomor 53
atrocities which took place, so that they are never allowed to happen death of at least 7,000,000 Ukrainians by the Soviet Authorities during
again. 1932 and 1933.
“This Council therefore calls upon the three party leaders and our “While the Council recognises that neither the current Govern-
Members of Parliament to write to the Government and request that ment of the Russian Federation nor the Russian people in general bear
Britain officially recognises the Holodomor as an act of genocide.” responsibility for the Holodomor it does consider it to have been an act
of genocide.
Bolton Council “The Council therefore:
4 March 2009 “1) Formally acknowledges the Holodomor to have been an act of
genocide.
At a plenary session of the Executive of Bolton Council, the Execu- “2) Instructs the Chief Executive to write to the Government
tive unanimously passed the following motion (“Under Standing Order informing it of the Council’s position and requesting that the Holo-
No.4”) proposed by Councillor Nicholas Peel, seconded by Councillor domor be officially recognised by Government as an act of genocide.”
John Walsh and further seconded by Councillor Roger Hayes:
“That the Council supports the campaign to raise awareness of the Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council
Holodomor and for the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 to be recognised 9 July 2013
as Genocide, in order that its victims can be properly remembered and
that this is never allowed to happen again.” Following consideration of a motion proposed by Councillor Teresa
Smith and seconded by Councillor Joyce Bowerman, the Council
Kirklees Council resolved:
10 December 2009 “That Tameside Council note that the Ukrainian community in
Tameside has for many decades made a significant contribution to
Before a full meeting of Kirklees Council, Dr. Siriol Colley, great- our borough and it is right that the Council recognises the eightieth
niece of Gareth Jones, read extracts from his diaries on what he saw in anniversary of Holodomor. The Ukrainian Community have for many
Ukraine at the height of the Holodomor. years sought to raise awareness of Holodomor, the Ukrainian Famine
The Council unanimously passed the following motion formally in 1932-33 and to have Holodomor recognised as genocide. The recog-
proposed by Councillor John Smithson and seconded by Councillor nition of Holodomor as genocide will help the victims be properly
Jim Dodds: remembered and help prevent this ever happening again.
“This Council remembers the many millions of victims of the It is right that this borough recognises the eightieth anniversary of
Ukrainian Famine, known as the Ukrainian Holocaust or Holodomor, Holodomor and supports the campaign to have it recognised as geno-
inflicted on the Ukrainian Nation between 1932 and 1933 by Stalin as cide. This Council therefore agrees to write to the Government to
part of his plan for collectivisation during which over seven million request that Britain officially recognised the Holodomor as an act of
Ukrainians died, and recognises this as an act of Genocide against the genocide.”
Ukrainian Nation, and to ask Her Majesty’s Government to also recog-
nise the Holodomor as Genocide.”
City of Bradford Council

15 December 2009
City of Bradford Council unanimously passed the following motion

proposed by Councillor Ian Greenwood and seconded by Councillor
Kris Hopkins:
“The Council notes that the Executive has already acknowledged
the historic significance of the Holodomor as a systematic starvation to
54 UK Councils and the Holodomor Holodomor memorials in the UK 55
Holodomor memorials
in the UK
1. National Memorial.
Ukrainian Auotocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), London.
Type: Marble Cross.
Inscription: In memory of the seven million victims of the artificial famine
in Ukraine, 1932-33. Ukrainians in Great Britain.
2.(1) Ukrainian Grove, edge of Bradford centre.

Type: Tree.
Inscription: In memory of 7 million victims of the man-made famine in
Ukraine 1932-33. This tree was planted on the 50th Anniversary by the
Lord Mayor of Bradford Councillor N. Free on 4th December 1983.
2.(2) Memorial Gardens, Bradford.

Type: Commemorative Plaque.
Inscription: Holodomor 1932-33. For the millions of victims of the gen-
ocide by famine in Ukraine. Dedicated by the Ukrainian Community in
Bradford, November 2013.
3. Ukrainian Catholic Church, Halifax.

Inscription: Genocide in Ukraine 1933. This remembrance plaque com-
memorates the tragic event of fifty years ago when over seven million
Ukrainians fell victim to an artificial famine caused by the Russian Godless
regime. Its purpose was to break the Ukrainian spirit and will in the strug-
gle against Russian enslavement and occupation of the Ukraine. Unveiled
on Sunday, 22nd May, 1983 by Donald Thompson Esq., M.P. in Halifax.
4. AUGB Huddersfield Branch.

Inscription: Holodomor 1932-33. In memory of the millions of innocent
victims of the enforced Famine-Genocide in Ukraine engineered by Joseph
Stalin. Vichnaia Pamiat!
5. Memorial Gardens, Rochdale.

Type: Memorial Stone.
Inscription: Голодомор 1932-33. Ukrainian Famine. An Act of Genocide.
56 Holodomor memorials in the UK Holodomor memorials in the UK 57
Holodomor. Dedicated on the 22nd November, 2009 by the Ukrainian

Community of Rochdale. Map of Holodomor
memorials in the UK
6. Ukrainian section, Heaton Cemetery, Bolton.
Inscription: A memorial to the undying memory of the millions of Ukrain-
ian victims of Holodomor-genocide 1932-33. Erected 24.11.2013. by the
Ukrainian Community in Bolton.
7. AUGB Ashton Branch.

Inscription: Association of Ukrainians in Tameside. ‘HOLODOMOR’ An Edinburgh
act of Genocide against the Ukrainian Nation. In commemoration of the
75th Anniversary. Remembering the millions of innocent victims who per- 10
ished during the enforced famine in Ukraine. Вічна їм Пам’ять! Ukraine
Remembers - The World Acknowledges. AD2008.
8. Aberystwyth University, Wales.

Type: Commemorative plaque to Gareth Jones. Halifax
Inscription: In memory of Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones, born 1905, who
graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University Rochdale Bradford
of Cambridge. One of the first journalists to report on the Holodomor, the Huddersfield
Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine.
2
3
9. Memorial Gardens, Cheltenham. Bolton 65 4
7 Derby
Type: White Stone Cross.
Inscription: In memory of seven million Ukrainians who died during the Ashton Leicester
famine 1932-1933. 12
10. Junction of Blenheim Place and Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. Aberystwyth 11

8
Inscription: Holodomor. Eternal Memory. Genocide by forced famine in
Ukraine. More than 7 million died. We remember best when we remember
9
together. Dedicated by the Ukrainian Community in Scotland. November London
1
2017. Cheltenham
11. Ukrainian Catholic Church, Leicester.

Details: Due to be unveiled on 25 November 2018.
Key: Details pages.53-54,

images pp.56-58.
Holodomor
10 5 memorials in
the UK (as
listed on pp.
53-54.
9 4
3 7
(1) National Holodomor memorial.

UAOC, Acton, London.
Malcolm Muggeridge
(above) and Gareth
Jones (right), the two
British journalists
who risked their
lives by visiting areas
ravaged by famine
and then accurately
reporting on what
they had witnessed.
In 2008 their bravery
for reporting on the
1932-1933 Holodomor
was posthumously
recognised by Ukraine.
Commemorative plaque to Gareth Jones.

Aberystwyth University.
Holodomor
survivors: (right)
Vera Smereka,
below, (left to
right) Anastasia
Ostapiuk, Rev.
Ivan Diachenko,
Klavdia Semianiw,
Rev. Mychaylo
Pyshnenko,
Rev. Mychajlo
Hutornyj, Andriy
Skok, Lida
Yatsyuch, Maria
Volkova.
Top: 1963. Ukrainians in

the UK commemorating
the 30 anniversary of the
Holodomor.
Middle and bottom:
2008. 75th anniversary
Commemorative Concert
held in Westminster
Central Hall followed
by participartion in
Evensong in Westminster
Abbey and a Panakhydia
Service at the memorial
to all Innocent Victims of
oppression, violence and
war.
Top: Dniepropetrovsk, 1932. Grain for the State. Top: Kolkhoz workers.
Bottom: Grain being delivered to hangers for Bottom: “Torgsin” shop - where the starving
storage and ready for transportation. trading any gold or jewellery for little return.
66 Holodomor memorials in the UK Foreign Office Excerpts 67
Foreign Office Excerpts

It is incredible to think that for over half a century, the 1932-33
Holodomor was shrouded in total secrecy in the USSR. It was as if the
millions of deaths hadn’t happened. Soviet press and literature made no
mention of the famine, not even during the Khrushchev “thaw” years
when the Great Purges of the 1930s and state police repressions began
to be exposed. Soviet TV, when dealing with 1933, would consistently
resort to showing a smiling Stalin overseeing the May-Day parade
during that year. Even as late as 1984 - 50 years after the Holodomor
- the extensive “History of the Ukrainian SSR” publication described
1933 as the year of victory for kolkhoz order throughout Ukraine and
improved living standards for villagers.1
Violence, repression and census falsification successfully quelled
discussion of the famine in the USSR.2
The active suppression of the famine story by Soviet authorities also
had a powerful impact on Western historians and writers. Ukrainian
emigre claims sounded too political to many scholars in the 1950s,
1960s and 1970s. They could be dismissed as ‘notoriously biased’ and
their accounts scorned as ‘dubious atrocity tales’.3
Yet extensive documentation did exist in the free world which makes
it all the more curious that Western scholars preferred not to research
the Holodomor in more detail until Robert Conquest had published the
first full history on the subject in 1986, “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet
Collectivization and the Terror-Famine”.
One rich source of documents was the British archive. In the 1930s,
by virtue of its experienced foreign service, its importance in world
affairs and the fact that it was the first European power to establish
diplomatic relations with Moscow after the revolution, London knew
more, with the possible exception of Berlin, about the situation in the
Soviet Union than any other Western government. In 1932 and 1933,
the British embassy in Moscow regularly forwarded to the Foreign
Office dispatches in which it drew on information from diplomats,
Top: Photo by Otto Wienberger, Kharkiv, 1933. Corpses of the starving lie on
correspondents, British subjects in the Soviet Union and Soviet citizens
the pavement and are a normal sight. Passers-by no longer pay attention to to report what was happening in the famine regions.4
them.
Bottom: “A great multitude, which no man could number”. 1933. One of a 1 Kovalenko and Manyak, 33: Holod. Narodna Knyha-Memorial, (Radianskyi
series of photographs taken by Dr. Fritz Dittloff which were reproduced in Pys’mennyk, 1991), 16.
Dr. Ewald Ammende’s book: “Human life in Russia”. George Allen & Unwin 2 Applebaum, Red Famine. Stalin’s War on Ukraine, (Penguin Random House UK,
Ltd., London 1936.
2017), 308.
3 Ibid., 338-340.
4 Carynnyk, Luciuk and Kordan, ed., The Foreign Office and the Famine, (Lime-
68 Foreign Office Excerpts Foreign Office Excerpts 69
These documents, published as “The Foreign Office and the Famine”

by M. Carynnyk, L. Luciuk and B. Kordan in 1988, show the extent to
Seed Collection in Soviet Union
which the Foreign Office knew about the famine as it was happening, Sir Esmond Ovey (Moscow) to Sir John Simon (Foreign Secretary)
but pursued the line of maintaining “correct and friendly relations with 28 March, 1932.
the Soviet Government, with a view to encouraging trade as much as
possible”.5 There are stories going about Moscow to the effect that traffic
Without doubt this is a field that requires further research and study. between the Ukraine and the consuming regions lying to the north
“The Foreign Office and the Famine” has long gone out of print so of it is closely controlled, no one being allowed to bring more than
its content (or that of the Public Records Office) is likely to be only 1,000 roubles out from the Ukraine, and all grain in the possession of
accessed by researchers or academics (or, perhaps some very deter- private persons entering the Ukraine being confiscated. The Ukraine
mined laypersons). is, normally, the granary which feeds these consuming areas, but the
With the kind permission of the book’s editors, we are able to granary, it is said, has been stripped very bare and some of the popula-
reproduce below a fraction of self-explanatory excerpts of despatches tion in both town and country in the Ukraine is short of food... 7
- specifically in relation to Ukraine - which, in most cases, were sent
from the British Embassy in Moscow to the Foreign Office.
Appeals to the British Government made by Ukrainian organisa-
tions in Europe and Canada, or other organisations, and correspondence
relating thereto are not being reproduced here.
We are, however, in addition to extracts, reproducing one particular
report almost in full - that of Andrew Cairns, which makes compelling
reading.
It should also be noted that the Foreign Office referred - interchange-
ably and often misleadingly - to famine in “Ukraine”, “South Russia”,
“Russia” and the “Soviet Union”.6 We have retained the original refer-
ence.
stone, 1988), xix.

5 Ibid., xlvi.
6 Ibid., xlvii. 7 Ibid., 3.
Conditions in Soviet Union Conditions in Ukraine

William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon
4 May 1932 Sir Esmond Ovey (Moscow) to Sir John Simon,
18 July 1932
Recent visitors to the Ukraine report that the bread ration, even
for manual workers themselves, has been cut down; that members of As will have been apparent from my despatch No. 239 of the 4th
workers’ families and other employees and their families have no ration May, conditions in the Ukraine are apparently unsatisfactory. Agricul-
of bread at all and have to supply themselves with bread as best they can ture in particular has not accomplished what was expected of it and
outside the co-operatives, at prices which swallow up the greater part, there is a severe food shortage... It is doubtless due to the seriousness
or even the whole, of the workers’ wages on bread alone. They also of the situation that the Central Government has thought it necessary
confirm, as already reported in previous despatches, that the Ukrainian to make use of the Congress of the Ukrainian Communist Party... of
peasants have been left in a state approaching famine after succes- the 18th July, to address a series of admonitions through the mouths of
sive grain collections, whether for the needs of the towns, or for the Molotov and Kaganovich.
war reserve, or for export, or for seed purposes in other areas, and that ...It was clear from their speeches that the main reason for their
many of them move to the towns in search of bread. Live stock is dying presence at the Congress was to take the Ukrainian Party organisation
for lack of fodder or is being killed for food. At the barrage works at severely to task. The Party conference had laid it down that the cereal
Dnieprostroi, in addition to the ordinary worker, who is entitled to a yield of the Ukraine in the course of the next two or three years must
reduced ration of 400 or 600 grammes a day, there are said to be gangs be raised by 1 1/2 times the amounts harvested in the most favourable of
of pressed workers, who receive no more than 200 grammes.8 recent years and must be realised in the present year. (It is difficult to
imagine that this objective will be attained.)9
8 Ibid., 5-6. 9 Ibid., 79-80.

Crimea and Ukraine varied, he said, but even for the Donbass workers there was nothing to
eat. All the food went to the engineers and specialists. He said this, he
added, although he was a Communist and a shock-worker.10
4 May 1932, Forwarding a Report by J.M.K. Vyvyan
...It is impossible so much as to have one’s shoes blacked without

being met with the same outcries: “We have no leather here like yours,
no bread, no meat - nothing. There is nothing to live for!” This was
said to me with a G.P.U. officer within 2 yards. Except in the case of
rare Communists, there seems to be no patriotic inclination to hide
conditions from a foreigner. He is the natural receptacle for complaints
against the “system,” in whom I found on two occasions that even
Communists were willing to confide.
On our arrival at Sinelnikovo Station on the 14th July I saw, for
the first time, people huddled on the roofs of the trains, and the first
questions which we asked bystanders was to account for the queues
and heaps of would-be passengers, some of which were scarcely distin-
guishable in appearance from the beggars and cripples, many of them
children, that wait at stations to ask for bread or alms. The first man to
whom we spoke was most communicative. The peasants, he said, were
either fugitive members of collective farms who would not work, or
those who could not get work. Many peasants from his neighbourhood
(Voronezh) had been arrested and transported. But in Voronezh, Kiev
and Chernigorsk conditions were worse than elsewhere, and in one area
(rayon) of the Voronezh district the numbers of live-stock had fallen, as
a result of collectivisation, from 400 cattle and 200 sheep to 10 cattle
and 50 sheep.
The station restaurant was patrolled by some scavengers, who were
not, however, beggars. We had finished a tin of sardines and emptied
some tea-leaves into it, and, when we left, one of these unfortunates
went up to the tin and began to scrape the mixture of oil and tea-leaves
into his mouth. A crowd of the more mobile passengers (those who have
waited for a day or more usually lie in heaps on the platforms) then
approached me and began to ask questions. “Were not conditions bad?”
I was noncommittal, and suggested that the new harvest would bring
plenty of bread. An old man laughed and exclaimed: “Whatever the
harvest is we shall get no bread - nothing,” and was greeted with
approval. A man, who turned out to be an above-ground mine worker
in the Donbass, however, contradicted him, and began a disquisition on
the future, employing the usual figures of Communist rhetoric. I was
therefore surprised when the same man came up to me a few minutes
later, accepted a glass of so-called beer and began to talk. Conditions
10 Ibid., 95-96.
Protection of Property of State Mr. Cairns’ Investigations

Undertakings, Collective Farms in Soviet Union
and Co-operatives
William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon, 12 August 1932,
and Andrew Cairns to E.M.H. Lloyd, 3 August 1932
10 August 1932
Editor’s note: This next despatch from the British Ambassador in
Moscow is followed by a lengthy report by Andrew Cairns, a Canadian
I have the honour the transmit to you herewith a translation
wheat expert whose reports were among the most graphic and exten-
of a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of
sive accounts of suffering, contained concrete human reality and were
People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R., dated the 7th August, instituting
grounded in his own careful investigation.12
severe sanctions for the protection against pilferage of the property of
Internal Foreign Office minutes justifiably described Mr. Cairns’s
State undertakings, collective farms and co-operatives, and of goods
report as “excellent”, “long but not long-winded” and “amazingly full
conveyed by rail or by water. By this decree goods in transit, and the
of facts, and full of interest on almost every page...”.13
property of cooperatives and collective farms, including crops in the
fields, are to be treated as State property and the maximum penalty
which may be inflicted in case of pilferage is the supreme measure of
Confidential
social protection namely death. The decree also provides severe penal-
ties against kulak or capitalist elements who use threats against loyal
With reference to Sir Esmond Ovey’s despatch No. 323 of June 21st
collective farm workers with the object of disorganising the collective
I have the honour to transmit herewith a copy of а further report by
farm system and damaging collective farm property.
Mr. Cairns on conditions in the Ukraine, Crimea and North Caucasus.
...The decree is also directed against the taking of grain by marauding
This report is of special interest as it deals with two of the chief grain
or merely provident peasants. To pluck an ear of corn by the wayside is
producing areas of the Soviet Union, and as in the course of his travels
now in this country a capital offence.11
Mr. Cairns visited such well-known establishments as the State farms
“Verblud” and “Gigant,” as well as “Drusag,” the German agricultural
concession in the Kuban.
2. I will not attempt to summarize or comment on Mr. Cairns’ account
of his journey. The truth about Soviet Russia is best apprehended not by
facile generalisation but by the merciless impact of multitudinous fact.
Mr Cairns is by training and temperament singularly well qualified to
acquire and sift the facts about Soviet agriculture and his reports have a
unique value as a mirror of the state of the country at the present time...
William Strang
Enclosure in No. 10
Dear Lloyd, Moscow, 3rd August, 1932
I left Moscow on June 15th and returned July 30th. During my
six weeks absence I saw a good sample of the Ukraine, Crimea and
Northern Caucasus. As I did not have time to write an account of my
12 Ibid., xiv.
11 Ibid., 102-103. 13 Ibid., 165.
observations in time for yesterday’s bag, I sent you two draft cables, and poorest rye meal was 100 roubles per pood. At the depot in Kiev
one for publication by our correspondents, and a confidential one. This many people asked for bread.
letter will go out in the next bag, about the middle of August. In the morning of June 17th, I went for a walk and soon came across
In view of the fact that prices and crop prospects vary considerably, a small street bazaar. The chief trading was being done in wild strawber-
depending on the time of year, I am writing this report in the form of a ries and green vegetables (mostly pulled much too soon). The following
chronological description of what I have seen and heard. are typical of the prices quoted: Milk 21/2 roubles per litre, old potatoes
I rose very early on June 16th to watch the fields. Up to 11 a.m., at 1.2 roubles per Russian pound of 400 grammes, very little coarse black
about which time we reached the Ukraine, the farming seemed to be bread at 6 roubles per kilo, small rolls 1.3 roubles, 10 eggs 51/2 roubles,
done mostly by individual peasants as the grain was largely confined leg of chicken 21/2 roubles. Several women followed me around the
to small strips. All morning and forenoon the crops were very poor bazaar, but I could not make out much of what they said as they all
- a good deal of winter kill, thin and short. At a station close to the talked at once, some in Ukrainian and some in Russian, and two of them
Ukrainian border the peasants I spoke to in the bazaar all cursed collec- were crying between each sentence. But what first class actresses they
tivisation. There was practically no bread for sale and small buns of were! Despite the tragedy of it all, I could not keep from laughing at the
very coarse black bread were being sold for one rouble each, and small expressions on their faces as they drew their finger like a knife across
chickens at fifteen roubles each. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. the fields their throat, pulled in their cheeks and held their hands on their stom-
increased in size rapidly (more collectivisation), but the bulk of the achs while they pretended to vomit, and while they bent their backs and
crops were very poor, thin and very weedy. The spring sown crops were hobbled about. I can understand only a few words of what people say
extremely bad - late and almost smothered in weeds. In such an old unless I am directing the conversation, so I finally got one woman alone
district, where, according to the official statistics, every acre of suitable and made her stop talking and answer my questions. She said there was
land is supposed to be cultivated, I was surprised to see a great deal of practically no bread because the Government had collected so much
land recently in crop, but now uncultivated. From 1 to 7 p.m., at which grain and exported it to England and Italy; that the collective farms
time I arrived in Kiev, I collected prices at many stations, of which the around Kiev were very bad; that all the members were hungry and
following are typical. At the first large station a loaf of extremely coarse many were leaving; she had left her village with many others because
black bread sold for 10 roubles. I asked the women why the bread was she could not get food and that some were dying of starvation; she had
so dear and they said a pood (36 pounds) of very poor rye meal cost a job in Kiev but it was impossible to keep from being hungry as she
90 roubles, and as they could not afford to buy a pood, they had to pay could not buy much food with her small salary. Later I found a little
proportionally very much more for smaller amounts. In the depot, the butter being sold in small pieces at the rate of 12 roubles per pound. It
Government were selling small rolls for 11/2 roubles, and thin slices was the most expensive butter I have seen in Russia and when I asked
of pork fat (about 2 by 3 inches) for 2 roubles. I saw very little butter the peasants why, they all said there were no cattle as they had all died
or milk and no meat for sale at all the bazaars I visited during the day. or had been killed. I asked several women why they did not belong to a
Every station had its crowd - from scores to several hundred, depending collective farm; they said they did not join, or had left, because they and
on the size of the town - of rag-clad hungry peasants, some begging for their children were very hungry. In this bazaar, as in scores of others I
bread, many waiting, mostly in vain, for tickets, many climbing on to have visited, I noticed that many of the hens for sale contained a good
the steps or joining the crowds on the roof of each car, all filthy and few fairly large and many small eggs, so they had obviously been killed
miserable and not a trace of a smile anywhere. All day long I saw much while still laying.
fine grass, but practically no livestock of any kind. I did not see a single In the afternoon (after a fair lunch at the Intourist hotel for 15
good crop until we got very close to Kiev. The autumn sown crops were roubles) I called on Narkomzem - the Department of Agriculture. I
generally badly winter-killed, spindly, weedy and short, and the spring was turned over to the Vice-President of the collective farm centre -
sown crops were choked by weeds. But all crops were of good colour, an extremely stupid man who had been in Chicago several years (a
indicating that they had ample moisture. I did not see a single tractor all mechanic in a printing shop) and understood English. He said he had
day. In the late afternoon there was a little butter for sale at 2 roubles just returned from a month’s inspection trip of the surrounding villages
per pound and slices of heavy, black bread (from a loaf about the size of and had found them very interesting and beginning to improve. Last
a Canadian 5 cent loaf) at 1 rouble each. The peasants said the cheapest summer, and especially last winter and this spring, conditions had been
extremely bad as the peasants did not like the collective farms and I asked several people why things were so dear, and, seeing I did not
would not work, but now they have learned that if they do not work they understand a word of Ukrainian, they pulled in their cheeks, pretended
cannot live, so they are beginning to work. Last year they had a good to vomit, drew their finger’s across their throat, and said, in Russian,
crop, but this year they were going to have a better one! He said they “ Kushat’ nyet, nichevo nyet” (there is nothing to eat, nothing at all).
would take me to see institutes in Kiev for two days and to farms on the A woman was selling bread for 6 roubles per kilo, which she said you
third day. I protested and got him to agree to only one day for institutes. could buy for 5 if you stood in line for hours and got into the shop
In the evening I met a man (the manager of a very small co-opera- before it was all gone. I spoke to two young peasant girls and heard
tive store) who had been in New York. He said he was a third category much abuse of the collective farms which I could not understand.
worker and received only 100 roubles per month. From the Govern- In the hotel next day, June 18th, I tried to get eggs and strawberries
ment he got 200 grammes of black bread per day for himself and 200 for breakfast, but had to be satisfied with bread and butter and slightly
for his boy and had to buy everything else at open market prices. He coloured water called tea. I asked why I could not get strawberries when
asked the price of white bread in the States and remarked that it cost the whole of Kiev seemed to be living on strawberries and premature
5 roubles per pound in Kiev. I asked him why prices were so high and vegetables, but was told they did not know. All over Russia, even in
he said it was due to inflation and the great shortage of food, because special foreign restaurants and shops, I have had similar experiences -
the peasants did not like the collective farms and, when forced or taxed they don’t seem to want your money and show no enterprise whatever.
into them, would not work; pointing to the crowds he said: “There they We were supposed to visit five institutes around Kiev, but thank
are, wandering up and down the streets.” He said the purchasing power goodness it turned out to be a free day, so I had to visit only two. The
of the monthly income of the average worker in Kiev was about five first one was for research and teaching work in the sugar industry.
dollars. While climbing up a very steep hill to get a good look at the The teaching department had 50 professors and 600 students - 60%
beautiful Dnieper River, I came across two women pulling what at first from collective farms and 40% from State farms. The right side of the
I thought was dandelions or young leeks for greens, but upon exami- Ukraine, called the Kiev Oblast, has 63% of the peasants and 66% of
nation it turned out to be tender grass. I asked them what they were the land collectivised. The professors I met seemed intelligent, well
going to do with the grass and they said “make soup.” They were third educated and had good laboratory equipment, but the directors were
category workers and got only 125 roubles per month and only 200 of the usual type. The second institute was a very large sugar experi-
grammes of bread per day. I pointed to the river and remarked that mental station, said to be the finest in all Russia. On the way home my
it was very beautiful; they agreed but said they were hungry. Later I guide (the Chicago mechanic and Vice-President of the collective farm
climbed to a high hill to look at several very large churches. All were in central organisation) tried hard to get me to agree to visit the other insti-
a terrible state of dilapidation; one had been used for a prison, another tutes on the following day, but I would not be moved. He said he would
was being used as some sort of club for workers, and around the others take me to an institute where they were turning out 400 expert sugar
were many old priests begging, and groups of women and children, in engineers every year and that although they were very short of such
rags and filth, taking turns at killing the lice in each others hair before engineers just now, as they had built many new sugar factories, they
retiring for the night on the damp grass. On the way back to my hotel would soon liquidate the problem. With the exception of my stay in the
I saw a horrible sight - a man dying on the street. He was apparently tourist hotels of Kiev, Rostov and Kharkov, I got no sugar during my
insane as he was going through all the motions of eating and rubbing six weeks absence from Moscow, despite my offer of dollars in Torgsin
his stomach with apparent satisfaction. A crowd gathered around and (special shops where one can buy for valuta, foreign currency, only) in
some, thinking he was begging, dropped a few kopeks, but he was quite six different towns.
unconscious and soon stopped moving. Further on I took advantage of In the evening I found one of the largest bazaars in Kiev and had a
a foreigner’s privilege and took my place at the head of a long queue most interesting time. Mens’ soft leather top boots, 300 roubles; ladies’
and got into a store to see heavy, warm, soggy bread being sold for 10 split leather shoes, 120 roubles; a few small squares of sugar at two
roubles per loaf, and a little pork fat at 12 roubles per pound. Outside thirds of a rouble each; butter 10 roubles per pound; eggs 6 roubles for
the store were swarms of people; some retailing the bread at a rouble 10; very small tins of fish 7 roubles; old scabby potatoes 1 rouble, and
a slice, others buying a few young vegetables, and a few begging or very small new ones 11/2 roubles per pound; bread 101/2 roubles per
eating bits of bad vegetables or fish scales picked up from the street. loaf; a policeman offering a pair of completely worn out top boots for
5 roubles; pigs feet 4 for 10 roubles; and scores of men and children, in the early part of April, the Economist published a series of letters
with badly swollen tummies, in rags, asleep on the ground (while flies over the signature of Frank Wise. All of them told of how wisely and
by the thousand crawled over them) or begging or picking up scraps of efficiently the Russians had sold their grain, especially as compared
vegetables and fish scales to eat. A terrific rain storm broke and I had to with the Canadians and Americans. How about presenting him with one
stand under a roof for 2 hours, during which time many people crowded of the samples to show him what a complete job of selling they really
around to try and make me understand them. Many of them were quite did! I wandered into a small repair shop and, to my surprise, found the
young, and nearly all were town workers. They were unanimous that owner could speak English. He had been in New York before the War,
things had never been so bad, that nearly everybody was hungry, that had been through the War and Revolution in the Red Army and ever
the peasants would not work, because they were all hungry, and were since he had been trying, without success, to get back to the States. The
moving into the towns by the thousands, that less than 80% of the crop Government charged him 1500 roubles per year for the privilege of
had been sown by collective farms and that the individual peasants had working hard in his tiny shop (he was a very good worker as I watched
eaten their seed. All pointed to a crowd of over 500, everyone soaked him at it) and, in addition, had charged him 400 roubles as his “volun-
to the skin, waiting for a store to open where bread was only 8 roubles tary contribution” to the success of the Third decisive year of the Five
per loaf and said in effect: “there is the Five Year Plan for you.” Appar- Year Plan. He did not know what they were going to ask as a voluntary
ently they were not exaggerating about the number of peasants who contribution to the success of the “Fourth and Final Year of the Five
had left the farms, as my Government guide told me earlier in the day Year Plan,” but he was sure it would be more than 400 roubles, as many
that the population of Kiev had increased from 400 to 600 thousand people were watching him and every communist in Kiev seemed to be
in 2 years, and the number of workers by 110 thousand. On my way his boss. He said that before the Five Year Plan started there was plenty
home I stopped to give coins to 3 small girls (they were all nearly dead of food in Kiev and that he could buy all the white bread he wanted;
with hunger and the smallest one certainly could not have lived more now there was virtually nothing to eat. The people did not believe a
than a few days longer) and a crowd gathered around to tell me there word that the papers said, because they knew the collective farms were
were many such children in Russia. A man came forward and called “no good” and that the peasants were too hungry and angry to work.
me comrade, and said the people were telling lies because soon, with The night watchman of the bazaar came and took me to see several
mechanization, kolhoses and sovhoses, everything would be lovely, but groups of children with straw legs and enormous stomachs, women
the crowd shouted him down. In the hotel I got my key from a young standing at shop doors begging, and women and children picking over
Jewess who said she had come there from Philadelphia for a visit in garbage heaps; and also to see the “meal” I had seen previously. He had
1929 and saw “what was what”; so she had returned 9 months ago, been a prisoner of war in Germany and liked it very much. Later I went
given up her U.S. citizenship and never wished to return to America. with the New York man to his home — one small room for himself,
On June 19th the Government were to call for me at 8. At 10 a.m. a wife and two children.
messenger came with a note saying it had rained so hard that we could Next day, June 20th, I did not wait very long for Narkomzem to
not go to the country, but that they would call at 11 to take me to see come for me, but went to see them. After passing through office after
collective truck farms near the city. At 2 p.m. another note arrived to say office, all filled with scores of planners, most of them arguing, I found
their car was broken and they could not get another one. I returned to the Vice-President of Kolhoz-center. He said he had already had a
the big bazaar and spent two hours visiting several Government shops 4 hour party session and had a 6 hour one in the afternoon so could
and stands. There was no real meal, either rye or wheat, for sale but not go to the country with me. I told him it did not matter as I could
oats were being sold at 3.6 roubles per kilo, peas 7.5 per kilo, lentils at easily get an interpreter from Intourist, so he took me to the President
1.6 per pound, beans at 3.2 per pound, potato meal at 1.96 per pound, of Narkomzem, who told me he would like to take me to the country,
soya bean meal at 1.68 per pound, and many other different types of but his car was also being remounted. We next went to the office of the
“meal.” There were many kinds - some poorer, some better, than the President of Kolkoz Center. The office was empty when we arrived,
two samples enclosed — which were being sold for 2.9 roubles per but soon there were 13 people in it, all arguing (apparently unaware
kilo. You will notice that they are a mixture of ground chaff, oat and that I knew a few words of Russian) which communes or collective
other hulls, bran, a little straw, very much fibre, a little flax and very farms were good and which were very bad. They then ‘phoned about
little starch or other digestible nutrients. Shortly before I left London ten people for a car, but none of them would let their car go out to the
country as the roads were very bad. I said I would gladly pay dollars was because everything was open and above board in the Soviet Union,
and hire a car from Intourist as I could not afford to waste any more whereas in other countries the soldiers were kept in secret places. I
time. They ‘phoned, but Intourist refused to let their cars go out of the thought of the hundreds and thousands of armed soldiers I had seen in
city. While they argued further I picked up some tables on the Presi- every village, town and station I had seen, and of the large numbers I
dent’s desk and noticed that up to June 15th the collective farms had had seen even on farms, but I did not say anything. We drove for a good
sown 72.7% of the spring seeding plan and only 37.8% of the potatoes few miles over extremely poor roads (the crops were very weedy and
and the individual peasants only 44.6% of all spring crops. Later the poor in most places, but here and there I noticed a good field where
President arrived and said he would get a car in the morning for sure. I the cultivation had been good; all the crops were of good colour as the
went back to the hotel (a distance of only three blocks, yet I was asked weather had been ideal all spring) and passed quickly through several
by 5 people for bread) to sit alone in a big dining room over a 20 rouble villages, in all of which the people looked thoroughly miserable, before
meal while 12 men played music to help my digestion. reaching our destination - the October Revolution Commune. After
In the evening I went for a very long walk in a new direction, saw many narrow escapes we got stuck in the mud. The Government guide
a woman dying on the street and finally wandered into a big church started out for a nearby kolhoz and the chauffeur shouted at him to bring
where, to my surprise, I found a very large crowd worshipping very horses which could pull, because most of the horses in the country were
devoutly. Later I saw a christening and a wedding. The bride appeared starved. While waiting for the horses, I took advantage of the Govern-
to know the elaborate ceremony by heart, but the groom knew only the ment’s absence and had an interesting conversation with my interpreter.
wine- drinking part. I was surprised to see a good proportion of young She told me she got only 130 roubles per month and, being classed
people worshipping in the Church. Outside a crowd gathered around as a third category worker, only 300 grammes of very poor bread per
to tell me the wedding was very poor because people needed every day, 11/4 pounds of sugar per month and a small cake of soap. Every-
kopek of what small wages they got for food, as the Government gave thing else she had to buy in the bazaar. She said she was so thin partly
them only a very small piece of bread each day. On the way home I because she had to study and work very hard, but largely because she
saw a truck load of rye meal being unloaded into a big bakery. The men had a baby boy 18 months old and that she could not possibly describe
carrying the bags told me the meal would cost over 100 roubles a pood the difficulties she had in raising him as it was practically impossible
in the bazaar. As usual, a crowd soon gathered around and all agreed to get anything babies needed. She said first category workers were
that conditions were very bad, that people were hungry because there supposed to get 800 grammes of bread per day and second category 600
was no bread or anything else, that the peasants were not working so and 500, but they got less. I questioned her further and she said: “Please
there would be less bread next winter, and that the collective farms were let us not talk about it any more as it is too painful. Things were very
in a very bad condition. One man followed me all the way back to the good in Kiev in 1928, but they have been getting steadily worse ever
hotel. He said he was a second category worker and got 180 roubles per since. They are terrible just now and from the questions you ask and
month and 525 grammes of bread per day, that first category workers what you say you have seen I know that there is no use my pretending
got 600 grammes of bread per day and street car conductors only 400 otherwise to you.” Later she told me that the housing conditions in Kiev
and absolutely nothing else. What surprised me most in Kiev was not were extremely bad and that many people living in basements had been
what the people said (although conditions there seemed to be worse drowned a few nights before, owing to the floods caused by the heavy
than in any place I visited in the next five weeks), but that they should rains.
all - young, middle-aged and old alike - be unanimous and that none of In about an hour the Government man returned with 22 peasants
them seemed to care what they said or who heard them, even the police (apparently the collective farm had no horses available) who pulled the
and G.P.U. car out. I gave some of the peasants tobacco and paper to make ciga-
Next morning (June 21st) the car actually arrived in good time and rettes, and was sorely tempted to ask them questions, but from their
we set out for the country. As we passed several big gun wagons along faces I could tell what their answers would have been, so I did not ask
the road, and also a very large military camp, I remarked that never my interpreter to put my questions. Just as we were approaching the
in all my life had I seen so many soldiers as I had seen in Russia. My Commune we had to stop to find our way around a water hole. A large
interpreter said perhaps it was because we were fairly near the Polish group of women passed on their way out to work in the fields. They
and Roumanian borders, but the Government guide told her to tell me it asked me, according to my interpreter, to come and help them so I asked
them how they liked the Commune and they said the Commune was noble example to the world, but I looked in vain for a faint hint that
alright but they got very little bread. I was rather annoyed - because my the farm was not exactly typical of what one would expect to find in
coat had jumped out of the car on a bump half a mile back and picked Russia, and found instead expressions of regret and humility that the
up by someone before we noticed it and returned - so I asked them why authors’ countries were doing nothing of the kind. I could not quite see
they had very little bread and, much to the displeasure of my guide, they why establishing a show place for foreign tourists who visited Kiev,
replied that the Government had collected and exported it all. and putting red pants on a group of children, was a particularly great
The president of the Commune, who was waiting for us, said they accomplishment so, after praising the farm as the finest commune I had
had finished the spring sowing plan and had just completed a counter seen in Russia and enumerating several of its good points, I wrote that I
plan of 20% more than the Government plan for the commune. The farm regretted that it was not exactly typical of Russian farms.
had 1,233 hectares, 725 in crop, 183 winter wheat, 37 spring wheat, 54 When we left the office I learned to my surprise that we were going
oats, 201/2 potatoes, 15 cauliflowers, 71/2 tomatoes, 20 barley, 180 clover straight back to Kiev. I protested vigorously. I said I had waited three
and alfalfa, 10 maize, 148 milking cows, 236 young cattle, 90 horses, days to get out into the country and could see no sense in returning to
198 pigs, 80 hens, 250 chickens, 3 tractors, 257 workers, 515 people, Kiev in the early afternoon, and asked why I could not see the artel
56 members of the Communist Party, 36 Komsomols and 100 pioneers. a few miles from the commune. My guide was troubled, but after a
I had already learned from experience that the number of Communists discussion with the president said he would take me to another one
in a commune or artel was a direct function of the amount of money the instead. On our way to the farm he wished to show me, we passed
Government had supplied for capital equipment, so I was not surprised through several villages (all containing many very unhappy-looking
to find a very large and expensive brick barn, a fine machine shed, a people), but we stopped in only one and that only accidentally. We
large brick building for the workers’ club, a fine office, a big building were just entering the village on a narrow street, when some horses
used for a kindergarten, a small park and fine flower beds, fairly good took fright at our car and we had to stop. I immediately took advan-
livestock and, of course, good land. In 1930 they got 90 poods of winter tage of the opportunity and jumped out and went over to where some
wheat per hectare, 71 in 1931 and were expecting 110 this year. The women were standing. They all said they were very hungry as they had
wheat I saw was all very good, but it was all on ground which had been no bread, but as I could make out little else they were saying, I called
manured, a practice which is virtually unknown in Russia. The director to my interpreter to help. She hesitated, but I insisted; so out she came,
said they were getting 900 to 1,000 litres per day from 145 cows, 50% followed by my guide. Soon a large crowd gathered and oh how angry
of which went to the Government factory for 40 to 50 kopeks per litre, they were! A woman came up weeping and wailing, and said she could
depending on the percentage of butterfat; the members got 1/2 litre each not work much because she had a bad heart, and the Government had
day and the rest was sold in the kolhoz bazaar for about 50 kopeks taken her horses and cows and that she had practically nothing to eat.
per litre! I was also told that the commune was not interested in the My interpreter turned to me and said, “she is a kulak, it is the class
bazaar as they preferred to sell their produce to the Government. I asked struggle in the village; what is there to do, it is the class struggle.” I told
the president how long he had been in his present position and was her I found it difficult to appreciate what she said, as I could easily see
surprised to learn that he had been a simple member for 6 years (the all the women in the crowd were genuinely sorry for the woman and
commune was organised in 1924 out of 3 artels which were organised that when she spoke they all said “pravda, pravda” (true, true). Soon a
in 1919) and the president for 3 years. He said only a communist could young fellow appeared and, according to my interpreter, told the crowd
become president of a commune and the Government guide added that that if they were not satisfied they should come to the village soviet (he
it was not necessary to be a communist to be the president of an artel. I was the secretary) with their troubles, but the crowd fairly howled him
have not been on an artel yet that did not have a party man as president. down. The temper of the crowd was getting hot so noticing that most
After we visited the barns, nearby fields, and, of course, the inevitable of the girls were wearing crosses I looked at one. The girl’s mother was
kindergarten, the president completely gave my guide’s game away by very pleased and said: “God gives us everything and he will get us out
asking me to sign the visitors’ book. Before doing so I looked through of the mess the Communists have got us into.” Her remark made my
it and read all the passages in English which had been written by Amer- guide very cross, but he had scarcely started to reprimand her when an
ican and English tourists. All of the notes contained many words of extremely angry peasant came rushing forward and said his children
high praise, a good few writers said Russia was setting a splendid and had nothing to eat, to which all the women said, “pravda, pravda.” The
secretary of the local party said, “it serves you right for hiding your the young communists, who were over enthusiastic and had collected
grain from the Government collectors” and all the women said, “nie too much and who even went so far as to collect grain to fulfil counter
pravda, nie pravda” (it is not true, it is not true). I suggested that we plans after the Government plan had been executed. I then asked why
should visit the office of the collective farm, but my guide said it was there had been so much abuse of the Ukraine in the Moscow press for
in another village! not nearly fulfilling its grain collection plan and he finally admitted that
Finally we arrived at the farm we were to visit - an artel called the plan had been too high but that it was not the fault of the central
“Elich,” or something like that. It had 1,362 people, 1,024 hectares, authorities as they had been supplied with wrong information and too
820 in crops, 320 winter rye, 65 oats, 10 barley, 50 hectares young optimistic estimates of yields by the communist party locals. My inter-
fruit trees and 5 bearing, 160 clover, 105 garden truck, 72 potatoes, preter added that she did not agree that all the fault should be placed on
26 cows collectivised (136 for individual use), 97 horses, 84 sheep, 19 the local people, as the Moscow planners had been much too optimistic,
old and 22 young pigs, 12 oxen. Their main income was from vegeta- especially regarding the Ukraine, and that all last autumn and winter
bles. Last year they had delivered 75% of their vegetables and 25% many people were talking about the unreality of the plan. I asked her
of their grain to the Government, but this year they would not deliver what would have happened if I had been here then and openly said the
any vegetables to the Government, but would keep 10% for their own plan was unreal, and she replied: “If you were a Russian they certainly
use and sell 90% in the bazaar, to consumers only. They had also been would have put you in prison!” Later I congratulated my interpreter for
relieved of delivering any grain to the Government this year, because being so frank and told her I appreciated very much her not trying to
they were in the “Kiev workers’ area.” They sold their milk wholesale give me only good news as I wished to see and hear as much as possible,
for 1/2 roubles per litre. They paid their members 50% of the estimated good and bad, and then form my own conclusions. She replied sadly
income (1.2 roubles per “worker day” of eight hours — some members that she was glad I was pleased, but she was afraid that from the point
earned two “worker days” pay in one day and some took a week to earn of view of the Government she was a poor guide, but she realised that
one day’s pay) and last year each household had earned from 300 to there was no use saying things were not very bad. She then added: “But
1,000 roubles! (Schiller jeered at these figures when I gave them to him you would be surprised to know the number of tourists who are satis-
later.) The members got 600 grammes of bread and 3 hot meals (usually fied with only the good side, and I think most of them believe all they
means a bowl of soup) per day for 48 kopeks. My guide said some- are told.” The Government guide asked what we were talking about and
thing to the fellow in the office who had given me the figures and then I told her not to translate what I had said as she might get into trouble
my interpreter told me that he (the man who supplied the data) wanted and she answered that she must say something as she did not know him
me to know that he was not a communist. I smiled, turned to a young personally. Later she said: “But I’ll be even more frank; when we were
fellow who had just come in and asked him if he was not a party man talking about food rations and living conditions this morning I told you
and president of the artel and he said, yes - all the people in the room only part, not all.” The communists, she said, realised very well that the
laughed. He told me later that he was a metal worker, that there were French revolution had been broken by the peasants and they were very
400 households in the artel, 220 peasant and the rest metal workers’ and much afraid the Russian peasants would break the Russian revolution if
that it would be much easier for them to change the psychology of the they were left alone as they were in NEP (when things were very good,
peasants than in a typical collective farm. and there was an abundance of food and she could take a holiday and
On the way back to Kiev I asked the government guide why the indi- spend money and not worry about tomorrow). The Party was, therefore,
vidual peasants on the right side of the Ukraine had sown, up to June determined to change the psychology of the peasants and eventually to
15th, only 44%, and the collective farms only 72% of the spring seeding make good communists of them. I said they might do so eventually, but
plan. At first he said it was not true, but when I told him I had seen the in my opinion they would never do so in one, or even two, generations.
figures in the office of the president of Kolhoz Centre he said he thought She agreed, and added that although the communist papers and books
I meant the Kiev rayon only, where the collective farms had sown 87% said there would soon be plenty of food and clothes, she was afraid she
and the individual peasants 60% of the plan. On further questioning he would not see such days, although her little boy might, as in order to
said the chief difficulty had been lack of seed. I asked why they should get plenty of food it was necessary for the Government to be on friendly
be short of seed when I had been told that they had a good crop last year. terms with the peasants.
He said it was due to a mistake of the local party people, particularly (Tonight I was talking to the correspondent of the Polish Telegraphic
Agency and he made a remark which I though very smart. “Lenin said, the money to pay for rent, light, clothes (only occasionally did they get
‘the Russian soldiers won the war with their feet, by running away from co-operative tickets to buy clothes at fixed prices), etc. I asked what
it,’ but I say the Russian peasants have won the collective farm battle they paid the Government and he said that up to February last many of
with their bottoms, by sitting on them.” Incidentally he also told me their products were contracted for, but now they sell them in the kolhoz
that 40% of the wheat harvest in Eastern Poland and a large part of the bazaar and pay the Government a rent of 300 roubles per year instead.
harvest in Roumania had been ruined by rust which had blown over Later he told me that the members got their meals for 24 kopeks per
from Russia. He was very emphatic that Russia could not export any day. I remarked that the farm seemed to be highly favoured and my
grain this year and said he had just heard from friends that the Russian interpreter said:’ ‘yes, of course it is, because it is populated entirely
trade delegation in Greece had admitted that Russia would not export by Jews, and as a national minority they get many privileges,” but the
one shipload of wheat.) president said they had already paid the Government 3,000 roubles
When we said good night in Kiev, the Government guide said he (he contended that my interpreter had made a mistake in saying 300
was afraid my impressions were very bad as I had asked the peasants before) for rent this year and had subscribed 16,000 roubles to the latest
why they said they had very little bread. I told him that I had come to Government loan, whereas their plan called for only 13,000. I argued
his country, not as a tourist, but to make a study of their agriculture, and that 3,000 roubles was nothing at all in view of their net income of 900
that in order to make such a study it was very necessary that I should roubles per worker, as grain kolhozes had to give the Government from
see good, bad and indifferent conditions; when peasants told me they 25 to 30% of their gross production and therefore, if I were a member of
were hungry what could be more natural than that I should ask why? I a grain farm, I would leave and try to join a fine farm like his. He then
then added that I was pleased with the trip because I had seen that where told me that already in the month of June they had 1,500 applications
the land was well cultivated they had a good crop, but I was dissatisfied for membership from peasants, but they had to refuse them all as they
because I felt that I had not been shown a representative picture. He had taken in recently 100 Jewish speculators whom they were going
assured me that the office had not told him what to show me; that he had to reform. Later when he told me they had sold 20,000 roubles worth
planned the trip entirely by himself and that if I would stay another day of flowers to Moscow this year and had made 180,000 roubles out of
he would take me to the other side of the Dnieper and show me farms tomato juice from over-ripe tomatoes last year, I said: “all you say goes
which were not so good as the commune we had visited - the contrast to confirm my impression that you have a very fine agreement with
would show me the great possibilities of good organisation and good the Government, and enjoy very many privileges.” He replied that they
management. They had made many mistakes in Russia and people who had paid the Government 15,000 roubles as a tax in addition to 8,000
had been barbers or waiters in foreign countries had been brought here roubles rent. He admitted they were very well off, but it was because
as industrial and agricultural specialists, but even they were better than they worked hard and knew how to organize (on the way home my
many of their own people; he agreed with what I had said earlier in the guide said they made so much money because they were speculating)
day about their attempting to mechanize too rapidly; would I not agree whereas on several nearby vegetable farms the members were hungry
with him that they were learning by their mistakes. I agreed to stay because they did not know how to manage a collective farm. The diffi-
another day, but I did not see the farms he promised to show me. culty with the grain collectives, he said, was that the Government’s
Next day, June 22nd, I was taken to visit the Jewish National Kolhoz grain collecting plan was based on forecasting yields and when a farm
near Kiev. The president was a very cocky young communist who did not sow as much as the plan called for, or if there was crop damage
turned out to be much too inconsistent a liar and much too talkative for due to winter frosts, hail or drought, the Government still collected
the comfort of my guide. The kolhoz had 180 families, 300 workers, 90 the full amount of the plan, and the peasants went hungry. He further
hectares all in vegetables, 185 cows (the best on the whole right side volunteered the information that it was almost impossible to remain
of the Ukraine; some gave 3,600 litres per year and one had given 32 an individual peasant any longer, as the very high taxes were forcing
litres in one day), and 100 pigs. When I was told that last year they paid the individuals into towns or the collectives. My guide, who had been
3 roubles per “worker day” and that the average income for the year getting increasingly nervous and restless because the young Jew had
was 900 roubles per worker, I expressed surprise and asked why they so much to say, spoke up and declared that what the president said was
were allowed to make so much when other kolhozes made so little. misleading as the real reason why so many individual peasants wanted
The president said most of the members lived in town and they used to join the collectives just now was because the collectives were mecha-
nized and therefore more productive. I turned to the president and asked 23rd. I got very little sleep during the night as at every station hundreds
him why, in view of what my guide had said, there were only 63% of of peasants were fighting to get on to or into the roof, couplings and
the peasants in collective farms in the Kiev oblast. He replied that the steps of the train.
Government had no capital or machines left to equip collective farms, I got up at dawn to watch the fields and all day was surprised to
and that if they let the individual peasants into the existing collectives, see so much good land which had obviously been in crop in recent
they would immediately ask for bread, and because there was none for years, now lying idle. The spring sown crops were everywhere very
them they would make a row and cause trouble. What the Party wanted late and full of weeds, but all of good colour as the weather had been
was peasants with livestock, not paupers. But my guide promised that ideal. Where the land had been fairly well cultivated, the winter wheat
by next year they would have 80% collectivisation, and 100% before was good to very good. A woman came into my compartment in the
the end of the second Five Year Plan. Being given further information forenoon and whenever I would remark upon a field of good wheat we
by the president which indicated what a prosperous concern the farm passed, she would say: yes, but there is very little of it. Every station we
was, I remarked that I had been all over Kiev and had seen practically passed had its hundreds to thousands of miserable, hungry people and
no bread, milk, butter or meat for sale, but plenty of young vegeta- every train we passed was crowded inside and out with most unhappy-
bles and strawberries. I had therefore concluded that fruit and vegetable looking citizens. The same woman (her husband was in London and she
farms must be favoured by the Government at the expense of the grain worked in Batum) told me that she had waited four days for a ticket; that
and mixed farms. The president seemed to agree, but my guide would all the peasants around where she had been visiting were hungry; that
not. Later I was shown the farm’s contract with the government and the collective farms were cruel jokes; that black bread was 3 roubles per
learned that whereas they had agreed to pay 135 roubles per hectare pound and white bread 24 roubles per kilo. I had not opened my food
for the use of their land, the rent had been reduced to 97 because they box since leaving Moscow and when I did I found my sandwiches were
had done such good work. The president explained that they practically very bad, my butter rancid, and my loaf of white bread very mouldy. I
lived on premiums and had just won a car and radio. threw the sandwiches out of the window and she asked me why I threw
When we were leaving they asked for my impressions and I said away food when I must be able to see that the thousands of miserable
it was a very fine farm, and that their cows were the best I had seen in people we had passed all day were hungry. I agreed that they looked
Russia (the president said they produced from 8 to 9 litres per day on hungry, but I would not offer them putrid food. She said it did not
the average, as compared with only 3 to 5 on other collective farms), but matter. She took my very mouldy load, cut the mould off and gave
taking the highest of the figures they had given me of their payments to the mouldy bits to the train conductor, and skimmed off the top of my
the Government, they seemed to be very much favoured as compared rancid butter for him also; the rest of the bread and butter she kept for
with most of the farms I had been on, and that I was bound to say that I her two children and herself. She said she had tried to buy bread at four
did not think the farm at all typical of the collectives in the Kiev district. stations, but could not get any. I made some tea and asked the conductor
My guide, who the night before had persuaded me to stay on an extra to join us. He was as thin as a crow - he got only 60 roubles per month,
day to see representative farms, said if I would promise to stay a month 5 pounds of bread per day for his wife, 6 children and himself, 5 pounds
in the Kiev oblast he would show me many farms as good and some of sugar per month, and nothing else. As we passed a very long train of
much better. I asked about the one we had passed on the previous day cattle cars everyone of which was packed with people like sardines in
where the peasants said they were hungry. The president of the Jewish a tin, I asked the woman why so many people were travelling back and
kolhoz answered that he knew that district; the trouble was due to weak forward. I got the answer I expected - they were all looking in vain for
party discipline and kulak influence. He knew districts where party men food. I spoke to some men and women who were riding on the steps of
had been shot recently by kulaks and in many districts the kulak influ- our car and they said they had left their kolhoz and were on their way
ence was so strong that in some places kulaks were actually made presi- to Rostov to look for work. As usual, all day I looked for cattle, but saw
dents of collective farms. only fine grass going to waste.
I had intended going from Kiev to Odessa, but was persuaded by As soon as I got my usual bron (G.P.U. or Government order) for a
Narkomzem to visit the Dniepropetrovsk oblast first, where they said room I went to Insnab (restaurant for foreigners). By mistake I sat down
agricultural conditions were very good. I left Kiev early in the evening at a big table with about 15 German specialists and watched them eating
and arrived in Dniepropetrovsk late in the afternoon the next day of June a fairly good dinner for only 1.8 roubles. Later I got a very much poorer
meal for 14 roubles. is and how stupid those people are who gather Russian five year plan
In the evening I found the bazaar but it was already closed and all rouble statistics and then return home to talk about phenomenal progress
I saw was 3 poor hungry devils being arrested for stealing and many and the rapid rise in the real wages of Russian workers. But even taking
people being threatened with arrest for trying to sell after hours. While the rouble at its purchasing power of 4 or 5 cents (or 1/2 to one tenth of
having a shoe shine a man came up and told me he worked in an office, its nominal value) the price of the wheat meal in the very heart of the
was classed as a Third category worker, and got only 150 roubles per Ukraine (where much wheat was confiscated last year for export) works
month and 200 grammes of black bread per day, absolutely nothing out at from $10 to $12.50 per bushel of wheat or roughly from 20 to 25
else except what he bought in the bazaar. He said he was glad he had times its present international value. If you bear in mind the low wages
no one dependent upon him, as he found it hard enough to get food (even in paper roubles) of the Russian workers and the fact that they
for himself. Black bread was 6 roubles per kilo in the bazaar. He said (especially the second and third category ones) get nothing like enough
second category workers in Dniepropetrovsk got 400 grammes of bread bread from the Government, and also keep in mind the great scarcity
per day and first category workers (special type of factory workers) 800 and fantastic prices of other food stuffs, you will have a good idea of
grammes per day and 500 grammes of sugar per month. When I asked some of the hardships the people in this country have to endure. As in
about meat, milk and butter he laughed and said all the cattle had been practically every other bazaar I have been in, people gathered around
killed or died of starvation. Later while watching 35 men and women to curse the Government, to say the peasants were too hungry to work
being herded down the street by six militiamen with drawn revolvers, I and to sneer at the State and collective farms. On the way home I read,
saw eggs being sold 10 for 61/2 roubles, milk for 2 roubles per litre, and printed in English, on big red banners stretched across the entrance to
some skin and bones for 5 roubles per pound. the central park: “The World ‘Spartakiad’ is a militan holyday of the
Next morning (June 24th) I called to see Narkomzem, but found proletarian sportsmen of the world — holyday of the triumph of the
the building closed as it was a free day. On the steps three komsomols successful fulfilment of the first Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union
(young communists) spoke to me. They asked me a lot of questions which is of international importance for the proletariat.” (Note: Wrong
about prices in England and America and after examining my pen, spelling intentionally.) The following morning (they were expecting the
pencil, watch, etc. they told me that they had many collective and state English workers football team in the evening) I saw about 40 rag-clad
farms and tractors, but not much to eat (they could see the humorous hungry children (who make their living by begging) being herded down
side of it), that butter was 8 to 10 roubles per pound, and that there was the main street by militia men.
no meat and very little bread; all because the peasants would not work. On June 25th we visited farms. The first one was a co-operative
Later I got into the building by a back door and met the vice-president sovhoz. It contained 700 people, 300 permanent workers, 300 cattle,
of Narkomzem. He phoned for over an hour to try and get a car but 125 of which were milking and giving 8 litres per day (last year 80
finally gave it up and promised to send one for me next morning. On the out of 125 calves had died and this year only 3 out of 102 had died),
way back to my hotel I passed through a small bazaar where I saw bread 42 sows and 225 young pigs, 1,600 hectares of land (1,027 of which
for sale at 11 roubles per loaf, and very thin meat at 4 roubles per pound. was suitable for cultivation) 880 in all grains, 168 winter wheat, 120
In the afternoon I went to the central bazaar. Wheat meal (offal left maize, 45 rye, 240 oats, and a large area of garden truck. The presi-
in) 150, millet 120 to 150, bran 50, middlings 70, and very poor oats at dent explained that the root crops and garden stuff were full of weeds
50 roubles per pood, and many types of “meal” (similar to the enclosed because they simply could not get enough workers, but on the previous
samples) at fantastic prices. Butter was 8 roubles per pound, eggs 10 for day 85 shock workers from a factory in Dniepropetrovsk had weeded
7 roubles, rice 2 roubles a very small glassful (about 1/2 cup) and bread two hectares. They had 4 tractors and 120 (all extremely poor) horses.
14 to 15 roubles per loaf. At the present official rate of exchange of 7 The president said they would easily fulfil their contract to deliver 900
roubles to the pound sterling, wheat meal at 150 roubles per pood is tons of vegetables to the closed shops in Dniepropetrovsk and would
equal to approximately 286 pounds sterling per quarter, yet during the sell the rest on the bazaar.
first three or four months of last harvest season, Russia sold in England The next farm we visited was an artel called Shevchenko, after the
about one half of all the wheat she exported for from 20 to 25 shillings famous Ukrainian poet. The farm had 267 families, 360 workers, 243
per quarter. I know it is ridiculous to translate roubles into pounds at the cows, 232 calves, 70 young cattle, 221 working horses and 21 young
official rate of exchange. I only do it to show how ridiculous the rate ones, 2,096 hectares, 1,740 in crops, 225 of winter wheat, 101 rye, 15
spring wheat, 148 maize for grain, 120 for ensilage and 72 for green feed, all “norm crazy” and would not listen to him. They said they could not
806 potatoes and 20 in garden truck. The president said the cows (160 afford to wash out the locomotives every 1,000 kilometres, yet they
of them were not collectivised as they belonged to private members) were ruining them by not doing so. They insisted on using a mixture
were then giving 10 litres per day and that the average production per of anthracite and bituminous coal, although he had told them to send
cow was 2,000 litres per year. Last year they had hail and got only 40 all the anthracite to the factories where it was sorely needed, to forget
poods of winter wheat per hectare, but they expected 70 to 80 this year. about their norms and to give the engines all the draft and soft coal they
Where the land had been well prepared the wheat was really quite good, wanted. They saved coal by letting the steam pressure drop from 17 to
but it would not average anything like the figure they quoted. They 8 atmospheres when the train was running down a grade or on the level,
showed me, with great pride and joy, their enormous new concrete then when it came to an upgrade the engine could not pull the train. The
and brick stable. They took me first to the “cow kitchen” where units, continual rapid contraction and expensation [sic], due to the sudden
consisting of three boxes each, moved in and out on a endless belt or change of temperatures, were ruining the engines. When he first came
sort of conveyor system, in front of the cows, on a track which was they told him they could not afford to pay 200 roubles a month for an
soon to be electrified. Each of the three boxes contained food; when the interpreter, but he discovered they were paying 468 roubles a month
cow finished one course, but not until, the lid of the box containing the for his room so he raised particular hell with Moscow and finally they
next course was automatically raised and the conveyor moved in front kicked out a lot of bureaucrats and put a lot of others in their place.
of her and so on. The next great sight was a most elaborate piece of My interpreter became very unhappy and said: “Why do you stay if
mechanism in four parts; in compartment number one the dust was to you find so much to criticize? You are just trying to make money out
be sucked off the cow by vacuum pumps, in compartment number two of the country, whereas many foreigners come here and spend their
she was to get a warm and then cold shower bath, in number three she own money to help Russia. I was a poor orphan boy only eight years
was to be dried and rubbed, and in compartment number four she must old when the revolution started. My mother was very poor and as my
pass a doctor’s examination before being allowed to go to the milking father had been a worker, the Government educated me and now I have
machines. I had a hard job keeping a straight face, especially when been sent here to open an office for Intourist.” The German-American
my Jewish interpreter (the manager of Intourist in Dniepropetrovsk) replied: “Like hell I am making money out of the country! Why I could
wanted to know if I did not agree that when Russian agriculture was not leave if I wanted to. I have been working very hard for 6 months, yet
thus fully mechanized, they would have surpassed America. the Government won’t give me a cent in foreign money to go to see my
In the evening I overhead an interesting conversation between a poor old mother who is dying in Berlin.” The Russian-American told
German-American and a Russian-American in “Insnab.” The first said: him he had nothing to grumble about; he said the grub in Insnab was
“Why in hell do you give men important positions just because they are the best he had tasted in Russia and now he had to go to a rock-crushing
communists and then as soon as they gum up the works you kick them plant 120 kilometres south where there was practically no food at all.
out and put a worse bunch of ignorant communists in their place. The On the way home from the farm my guide (the chief agronom for
foreign workers are the best friends the Russians have, yet they (the the Dniepropetrovsk oblast) told me that the population of the city had
Russians) won’t listen to them.” The second said: “You remind me of doubled since the Revolution, having increased by more than 100,000
the story about the British Ambassador who went to South America and in the past two years, and was now nearly half a million. He also told
when asked, on his return, what he thought of the people, he said they me that between 4 and 5 next morning he would call for me to take
were an ignorant lot of swine because he had been there six months me to a grain sovhoz. I got up next day (June 26th) at 4 a.m. and after
and they did not learn English.” Later I spoke to them and the German- fighting flies for five hours in my room went to Narkomzem to see what
American (he had homesteaded twice in Western Canada) told me that was the matter. I found them at a Party meeting. They ‘phoned for a car
he sat home at nights “and tried to think this here system out until he and promised one would arrive in a few minutes. I waited until nearly
went plum bugs trying to dope out the inconsistencies.” He had been out 2 p.m. and then left for lunch. In the evening I met the vice-president
of work in the States so he paid his passage over here and got a job at of Narkomzem on his way home from a Party meeting. He was very
300 roubles a month instructing Russians how to operate and take care surprised to hear that the agronom had not called to take me out to the
of locomotives. They had 10 big U.S. locomotives in the yards, recently country.
imported, but all of them were now spoiled because the Russians were Next day (June 27th), having many unkind things to say to the
agronom, I went to get my interpreter. I found him very upset because They told me they had just completed a special survey of the grain
he had received a letter from the director of Intourist calling him a crops and that they expected an average yield of 11 centners per hectare
bureaucrat. He said he would like to go back to his factory as there he as compared with 8.9 in 1913 and 9.5 in 1928; they expected 11.7 cent-
could see what he produced, but if he asked to go back, the union would ners per hectare of winter wheat and rye with year as compared with
put him on the black list for being afraid of his present job. I took him 10.3 in 1913 and 10.5 in 1928; and for spring sown crops (wheat, oats,
with me, and being as angry as I was, he translated all the unkind things barley, maize, peas, etc.) they expected this year 10.2 compared with
I said to the government agronom. The more I said, the whiter and more 7.5 in 1913, and 8.6 in 1928. They, of course, attributed the increased
frightened the agronom became so that when at last he pressed me to average expected yields to socialist organisation, good agricultural
take a document to Moscow saying that it was not his fault, I felt sorrow technique, etc. Last year they had 9.2 centners per hectare for eight
for him and said there was no use crying over spilt milk. He tried to grains. The figures for this year are ridiculous; I give them only to show
persuade me to stay two more days, saying the president would get a what optimists the communists are. Next I came to the problem of live-
car from the G.P.U. and take me to the country. But I told him I had stock. To my surprise I got the following data, which I am sure are reli-
promised to meet Dr. Schiller the next day in the Crimea. (I am very able because I copied them down from the president’s tables:
sorry now that I did not stay, as I learned on 11th July that Schiller
stayed in a town near Dniepropetrovsk for a week waiting for me to 1931 1928 1913 1937
answer his telegrams telling me to meet him in Odessa, and I stayed in (planned)
Simferopol several days longer than necessary waiting for Schiller to (All figures in thousands of head and for the end of year)
answer my telegrams. Needless to say neither of us received each others
telegrams.) Horses 555 1301 951 614
But to get on with my story about the agronom. He was so anxious All cattle 648 2163 949 1019
to please me that he called in the heads of six departments and I had a Milking Cows 389 937 451 840
five hour session with them. As usual I asked a lot of questions about All swine 354 1463 1346 2597
the crops and socialist organisation, before coming to the always deli- Sows 73 - - 909
cate subject of livestock population. They said that 90.6% of the land All sheep 261 1940 596 499
and 85% of the peasants in the oblast were collectivised; they had 92 Breeding ewes 151 - - 360
machine- tractor stations; 3,800 collective farms containing 400,600 Rabbits 385 3 2 1386
Chickens 2115 2937 1960 25000
families; there were 4,300,000 people in the district and 553,600 fami-
Bees (hives) 63 - - 236
lies. The following figures which they supplied are interesting in that
they show a decided planned shift from grain to technical and grass
crops: The above table illustrates very clearly the colossal price - in terms of
one of the most valuable assets of the country, livestock - of the collec-
Planned sown Planned sown area tivisation of agriculture in the very heart of the Ukraine. The planned
area in 1932 in 1937 figures for 1937 illustrate the incurable optimism of the communists
(in thousands of hectares)
who, having caused terrific destruction in all branches of agriculture,
Winter Wheat 1809 2150
are busy, also too often on paper only, with the “socialistic reconstruc-
Spring Wheat 592 128
tion of agriculture.” Taking the figures for the end of 1928 to represent
Winter Rye 436 200 100 per cent, the central oblast of the Ukraine (and I know of no reason
Barley 669 321 to believe that it is not at least typical of the Ukraine as a whole; in all
Oats 165 110 probability the Kiev oblast is much worse) lost in three years 57 per
Millet 46 10 cent of the horses, 70 per cent of the cattle, 76 per cent of the pigs and
Maize 506 800 87 per cent of the sheep. It is doubtful if at the present moment the live-
Peas and Beans 7.5 15 stock population is appreciably greater than it was at the end of 1931,
as the heavy losses during January to May of this year would certainly
affect the greater part, if not all, of the gains due to the natural increase
of young stock in the spring. But so effective is the Russian propaganda Winter rye 9 367 65
that Mordecai Ezekiel, the assistant chief economist of the U.S. Federal Oats 38 146 2
Farm Board, in a formal paper at the last annual meeting (Dec. 1931) Maize 35 252 26
of the American Farm Economic Association, stated in part as follows:
Peas 2 19 7
“Even with the smaller grain harvest, other foods may be more abundant
Potatoes 8 50 29
in Russia this winter than last, for livestock of all kinds is increasing
rapidly, and in many regions the production of fruit and vegetables for Sugar beets 5 11
canning has been expanding rapidly. It was experiences such as this” (a
few weeks in Russia as a tourist in the winter of 1930-31) “reflecting (Note; The manufacture and sale of sugar is a Government monopoly;
the increasing diversity of Russian agriculture, that made me feel that collection prices (recently doubled) are very low so individual peasants
some day the food standards of Soviet Russia would be far above what will not plant.)
they had been under the Czars.” In a private letter recently to my friend I left Dniepropetrovsk at 4 p.m. on June 27th for Simferopol, the
Dr. Black (the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at capital of the Crimea. Watching the crops until it got dark I saw what I
Harvard University and also the chief economist of the Farm Board), expected and what I had seen in all other parts of the Ukraine I visited
I mentioned that I did not think much of Ezekiel’s analysis of Russian - good winter wheat where the land was moderately well cultivated, all
agriculture and got the reply that perhaps Ezekiel’s zeal for reform had spring crops late and very weedy, much land recently in cultivation now
led him astray. I too believe in the need for many reforms but I do not idle, much good grass but no livestock, practically no hay made, virtu-
like to see people like Ezekiel completely fooled by communist propa- ally no summer fallow, and everywhere a magnificent crop of weeds.
ganda and guided tours, and my faith in one of my favourite papers is Nearly all the people in my carriage were important government
shaken when I read such comments as the following: “Every Liberal employees as they all seemed to have ticket brons. A very cocky skilled
will be with Mr. Wells when he cries for a movement which can ‘do worker opposite me pointed to a small group of cattle out of the window
for Liberalism what the Communist Party has done for the Communist and said “those are collectivised.” I agreed that they were probably
idea in Russia. If the same faith and energy and devotion which the collectivised, but said I had seen very few cattle all day. He said they
Communists have awakened for the Five Year Plan can be mobilized had many cattle, but they were all in the communes and collectives
in this country to support the changes which Mr. H. G. Wells outlines it away from the railroad, so I asked him why butter cost from 8 to 10
will be well with us” - from editorial in Manchester Guardian of August roubles per pound in the bazaar. He replied that butter was only 1 rouble
1st, 1932. per pound to him and when I asked him how much he got, he said his
At the present time they have 92 machine-tractor stations with 3,900 body was quite strong and the others laughed. He asked the price of
tractors (2,137 imported), but in 1933 they plan to have 144 machine- my clothes and thought they were very expensive as he had paid only
tractor stations with 5,400 tractors, and in 1937 21,500 tractors. They 30 roubles for his suit, 12 for his boots and only 2 for his underwear
do not expect the tractors to last more than four years, as they work in the closed workers shops. I tried as best I could to explain to him
from 2,400 to 2,500 hours per year and the life of tractors in Russia that he might just as well try to tell me the people in the U.S. were
is 10,000 to 12,000 working hours as compared with only 7,500 in all happy because Henry Ford had a lot of money, as to expect me to
the U.S. So far they had only 159 combines, but the number would be believe that the Russian people (especially the peasants who still made
rapidly increased. up about 70 per cent of the population, despite the feverish rate of urban
The area sown of the principal crops, for the 1932 harvest, in the population growth) were enjoying life just because a handful of skilled
oblast by “sectors” follows:- workers were comparatively well-to-do. He was too stupid to see the
point but a high official of the central transport department sitting next
to me could see it, but he would not agree with my next argument that
Sovhozes Kolhozes Individual
peasants in recent years the number and productivity of people producing food
in Russia had been declining very rapidly (without as yet any appreci-
(In thousands of hectares) able measure of success in substituting machine production), that the
Winter wheat 128 1600 88 number of people wanting to consume food had increased very rapidly
Spring wheat 58 266 7 and, therefore, that an even worse food crisis than the present one was
not only possible but probable, and that another drought would bring
a serious famine. Later when he was telling me they must export grain
Seed from State Grain Reserve
this year to pay for machinery, I said that they could not expect their Sir Esmond Ovey to Sir John Simon
workers to work if they exported their food, and that I had heard that the 27 February 1933
miners in the Don Basin were working very badly because they were
all hungry. To my surprise, he replied that what I said was only 50 per ...In a decree of the Central Committee and the Council of People’s
cent true. The skilled worker (who, a short time before, said he would Commissars dated the 25th February it is now stated that in view of
give his shirt and pants to make Volgostroy the success that Dniepros- the loss of a part of the harvest in the steppe zone of the Ukraine and
troy was) to my great surprise fully agreed with what I said and told the in the Kuban region of the North Caucasus owing to unfavourable
transport official that it was a big mistake to export food...14 climatic conditions, it has been found necessary to provide seed for
those areas from the State grain reserve, to the amount of about 20
million poods for the Ukraine and about 15 million poods for the North
Caucasus. These are, of course, the regions where the food situation is
worst and where the most violent measures have been taken to secure
the execution of the grain-collection plan. In spite of what the decree
says, it would not appear to be the climatic conditions which played
the decisive role in bringing these regions to their present sorry pass.15
14 Ibid., 104-129 15 Ibid., 214.

Conditions among Population Situation in Soviet Union

of Soviet Union
1 June 1933
9 April 1933
(3.) …Another caller, who appeared at the Embassy a week ago
with a large portfolio full of documents, which he wished to deliver
(4.) …Letters have been addressed to the Embassy begging for
began abruptly by saying that the information he had to offer would be
England’s help against the present regime. One of these, from the
interesting to the Embassy in view of the deterioration of Anglo-Soviet
Ukraine, states that the Communist administration has ruined the
relations. His materials related to the widespread famine which affected
working people and has reduced them to starvation, barbarity and
certain districts from which he had just returned, and regarding which
even cannibalism. After the words “England, save us who are dying
the world was in utter ignorance. He was then told that the Embassy
of hunger; help us to get rid of the Bolsheviks,” the letter is signed by
was not in the want of further information, and left with reluctance.18
“The Committee of One Hundred,” and a postscript adds: “Oh, Mr.
Ambassador! We cannot express in a letter all our misery; we are being
forced to cannibalism by our ‘Workers’ Government of Desperates’;
save us!”16
(8) …Reports indicate that nowhere is the situation worse than in
the Ukraine, where the only hope of the desperate population seems to
lie in the rumour of a contemplated annexationist coup on the part of
Poland.17
16 Ibid., 224.
17 Ibid., 225. 18 Ibid., 232.
Comment by Soviet citizens Soviet Agriculture

on Situation in Soviet Union
4 July 1933
To British Embassy, Moscow, to the Northern Department of the
Foreign Office
(9.) An interesting commentary on the present tendency to stake the
19 June 1933
fate of the harvest on the success of the party’s mission in the sphere
of agriculture is provided by a speech of Postyshev at a session of the
Monsieur 1’Ambassadeur, Our whole Soviet press comments at
Central Committee of the Communist party of the Ukraine on the 10th
all times very truthfully, and in great detail, upon all circumstances
June. Postyshev, who is supposed to be a close adherent of Stalin, was
of current Soviet life, but probably owing to lack of space has not
transferred from Moscow to the Ukraine last year, apparently to carry
mentioned certain small details of everyday life. For example it has
out reforms or reorganisation on the lines desired by the “Centre.” His
not mentioned that in the Ukraine millions of the population have died
long speech of the 10th June is a review of his conclusions after a year’s
from hunger. The population would be glad to eat carrion but there is
activity, moulded into an appropriately optimistic ideological form.
none to be found. People are eating frogs. They are digging up horses
Partly, perhaps, in a spirit of “self-criticism,” he attributes the reverses
that have died from glanders, and are also eating them and finally they
suffered in the class war in the Ukraine during the last year to lack
have not only invented the method of killing and eating each other but
of alertness in the party, but it is probable that he adopts this line for
also dig up dead bodies and eat them. These are all of course details, but
the further reason that deficiencies in the party are held to be remedi-
in so far as history has not known such details they are worthy of some
able, and it is by remedying them that eventual agricultural triumphs are
attention on the part of the decaying west, and of humanity in general.
presumed to be finally assured. Postyshev stated that it was the failings
(Unsigned)19
of the Ukrainian Communist party which had enabled “wrecking and
counter-revolutionary elements to find the widest base for their activi-
ties in the Ukraine.” He represented the whole Ukraine as having been
honeycombed with wrecking organisations during the last year, and
made numerous references to spies, “Petliurists,” and “agents of foreign
counter-intelligence services,” whose “bourgeois nationalist activities”
were most noticeable on the cultural front but were equally pernicious
elsewhere. He alleged that separatist organisations existed in league
with foreign capitalist circles, and stated that “the absence of Bolshevik
watchfulness had led to the party organisation in the Ukraine showing
themselves to be fouled with Petliurist, White Guard, spying and anti-
Soviet elements.” Several columns of such abuse in the published text
of Postyshev’s speech were merely a prelude to a more lengthy cata-
logue of the failings of the party in its agricultural mission. Postyshev
gave a series of examples of deviations in the party line in guiding the
course of last year’s grain deliveries and in interpreting the Govern-
ment’s agricultural policy, which were, he implied, as responsible for
the failures of the grain delivery plans as the wrecking which had jeop-
ardised the success of the sowings. Some of the instances quoted by
Postyshev showed “Left” tendencies - such as the instructions given in
one area that the whole year’s delivery plan should be completed in one
month; other examples showed evidence of encouraging “the consumer
19 Ibid., 238
tendencies of collective farmers, which are used by the class enemy in

his struggle against the interests of the proletarian State.” Postyshev’s
Conditions in the
speech concluded with an enumeration of the chief differences between Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
this year’s grain campaign and the campaigns which have preceded it.
In the first place there was the system of a fixed tax instead of contrac-
tual obligations; secondly, there was the influence of the newly-created William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon
political departments; thirdly, there was the increase of mechanisation 17 July 1933
in Ukrainian agriculture; fourthly, there was the increased interest of
the collective farmer in concluding the agricultural year as soon as Unauthorised estimates of the number of people who have died,
possible, since in accordance with the new system of grain deliveries either directly or indirectly, from malnutrition in the past year vary up
he would then be free to dispose of his produce. The fifth peculiarity of to as much as the fantastic figure of 10 million. It is, I think, quite
this year’s grain campaign was, according to Postyshev, the fact that a impossible to guess what the figure may be. I am told by a member
decisive blow had now been dealt to the class enemy owing to the expo- of the German Embassy that in the German Agricultural Concession
sure of “a number of counter-revolutionary wrecking organisations.”20 in the North Caucasus, five men have been employed in gathering and
burying the corpses of peasants who have come in from outside this
oasis of plenty in search of food and have died. One of the erectors
employed by Metropolitan-Vickers in the Ukraine says that people died
of starvation in the block of apartments in which he lived, one of them
outside his door. He says that he refused to believe the stories he heard
of conditions in the villages outside and walked out to see for himself;
he found, as he had been told, that some villages were completely
deserted, the population having died or fled, and that corpses were lying
about the houses and streets. His Majesty’s consul in Moscow occa-
sionally visited by Canadians of Russian origin settled in the Ukraine
who tell him the same dreary, if less lurid, story of want, hopelessness
and desolation.21
21 Ibid., 255
20 Ibid., 250-251.
Harvest in the Ukraine reprimanded and warned in the course of the same decree.
3. As reported in paragraph 2 of my despatch No. 401 of the 17th
July, the final quotas of grain deliveries by Ukraine State farms are to
William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon be increased, in spite of the unsatisfactory progress of harvesting and
15 August 1933 grain collections in these farms, to which the official criticism reported
in my present despatch bears witness. A further decree of the Council
1. ...I have the honour to report that the progress of the harvest in the of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the party of
Ukraine is being criticised in the press as most unsatisfactory. The plan the 10th August provides for similar increases in the quotas of grain
of grain collections in July for individual and collective farms was only to be provided by State farms in the central and eastern areas of the
completed to the extent of 84.6 per cent., and, instead of there being Union, and it would therefore appear that the Government have decided
any sign that this leeway was being made up in the first five-day period that, on the whole, conditions are favourable for a more than average
of August, the general rate of collections during this period still further harvest and that any deficiency in returns, at any rate on the part of State
declined, their average extent among collective farms in the Ukraine farms who are supposed to lack nothing in equipment and organisation
being only 12.5 per cent, of the August plan. The most backward district necessary for a successful harvest, must be due to deliberate opposi-
was Vinnitsa, where the collective farms only fulfilled 5.2 per cent, of tion to the Government’s plans. There is as yet, however, no sign that
the plan. The individual farms in the Ukraine are still more backward the quotations for grain deliveries by individual and collective farms,
and grain deliveries in the first five- day period of August are stated to which were based at the beginning of the year on the estimate of an
have amounted on an average to only 2.6 per cent, of the monthly plan. average harvest, are to be increased. Indeed, a decree of the Council
The progress of reaping in the Ukraine, apart from the further process of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Commu-
of grain deliveries, is also criticised as backward. Somewhat more than nist party issued on the 2nd August once more draws attention to the
half of the standing crops had been reaped by the 6th August, but the fact that “no counter-plans regarding grain deliveries can be permitted,
rate of reaping is reported to be gradually falling off. and those guilty of permitting counter-plans will be prosecuted under
2. The backwardness of grain deliveries in the Ukraine is strongly the Criminal Code.” This warning is probably largely directed against
condemned in a recent decree of the Central Committee of the Ukraine counter-plans below the plans fixed by the State, but it is also clearly
Communist party, which compares the position in the Ukraine unfa- intended to prohibit those in excess of the plans sanctioned by the
vourably with that in such districts as the Northern Caucasus, Middle Central Government. The specific purpose of the decree is to define
and Lower Volga, and Crimea, where the July plan for grain deliveries the obligations which have to be met by collective farms before distrib-
was completed in full. The decree singles out the Odessa, Dniepro- uting the surplus produce to their members. It observes that “certain
petrovsk and Vinnitsa districts as the most backward, and points out collective farms have already fulfilled their annual plan for deliveries
that in the latter district individual farms only fulfilled 1 per cent, of of grain to the State” and it enumerates the following further obliga-
the August plan of grain deliveries during the first five days of August. tions which have then to be fulfilled. These are the delivery of grain
The State farms in certain districts, it adds, namely, Vinnitsa, Kharkov under the regulations for payment in kind to machine-tractor stations
and Donetz, have actually not yet started their grain deliveries, “while for work undertaken by them, the collection of excess funds for winter
payments in kind for the work of machine-tractor stations have been and spring sowing, the creation of insurance seed funds (amounting
practically nil.” The Central Committee of the Ukraine Communist to 10-15 per cent, of the annual consumption of seed and the creation
party reproaches the local party organisations and the political depart- of forage funds to the amount of the annual consumption of forage by
ments in the State farms and machine-tractor stations as responsible socialised cattle. Over and above such appropriations, states the decree,
for the unsatisfactory course of the harvest in the Ukraine, and it warns no further funds are to be created and the amount remaining is to be
these organisations that, if the situation is not quickly remedied, disci- distributed in entirety between collective farmers “in accordance with
plinary measures will be applied to them. These threats are to apply the number of labour days worked by them.”
in particular to the party committees and political departments in the 4. In connexion with the perpetual warfare between the Central
Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk and Vinnitsa districts. Certain officials of Government and Soviet grain producers, an article by Vyshinsky, enti-
particular State farms and local branches of the grain trusts are likewise tled “The Prosecutor’s Department and the Struggle for the Harvest,”
which appeared in the Izvestiya of the 3rd August is of some interest.

Vyshinsky draws attention to the importance of the establishment of
Tour by Mr W Duranty22 in North
the Prosecutor’s Department of the U.S.S.R. on the 21st June in the Caucasus and the Ukraine
“struggle for the harvest,” and observes that “the process of trans-
forming collective farms into truly Bolshevik organisations” is meeting
with “fierce opposition by the class enemy,” who is now carrying on “an William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon
underground struggle” and is utilising all “legal methods.” It is there- 26 September 1933
fore the particular duty of the Prosecutor’s Department “to tear off the
mask” from the class enemy, and Vyshinsky admonishes the Prosecu- (5) According to Mr Duranty, the population of the North Caucasus
tor’s Department and Soviet judicial authorities in general for the defi- and the Lower Volga has decreased in the past year by 3 million, and
ciencies in their work in this respect during the present harvest season. the population of the Ukraine by 4-5 million. Estimates that he had
In the R.S.F.S.R., he says, “there are over 700,000 persons working in heard from other foreigners living in the Ukraine were that approxi-
the departments of justice,” and “this powerful army” must be drawn mately half the population had moved either into towns or into more
into the struggle for the protection of the harvest. Vyshinsky describes prosperous districts.23
as two of the main dangers pilferage of grain and the tendency to post- (7) From Rostov Mr. Duranty went to Kharkov, and on the way he
pone the threshing until August and September in face of strict instruc- noticed that large quantities of grain were in evidence at the railway
tions from the Central Government that it is to begin almost immedi- stations, of which a large proportion was lying in the open air. Condi-
ately after reaping. This tendency, he says, is being manifested in the tions in Kharkov were worse than in Rostov. There was less to eat, and
Ukraine. In the struggle for the harvest the Procurator’s Department the people had evidently been on very short commons. There was a
must “co-ordinate their work more closely with that of the political dearth of cattle and poultry. Supervision over visitors was also stricter
departments, with the press, with the komsomol Tight cavalry,’ with in Kharkov. During the year the death rate in Kharkov was, he thought,
branches of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, with party control not more than 10 per cent, above the normal. Numerous peasants,
commissions, &c.,” and Vyshinsky recommends the organisation of however, who had come into the towns had died off like flies.24
a regular military paraphernalia, including “signalling posts, control (12) At Kharkov Mr Duranty saw the Polish consul, who told him
posts and supporting detachments.” the following story: A Communist friend employed in the Control
...William Strang Commission was surprised at not getting reports from a certain locality.
He went out to see for himself, and on arrival he found the village
Minutes completely deserted. Most of the houses were standing empty, while
others contained only corpses.25
A tremendous effort is being made to speed up the harvesting [.....] (13) Mr. Duranty thinks it quite possible that as many as 10 million
R. L. Speaight. 21/8. people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the
Soviet Union during the past year.26
22 Walter Duranty, journalist for the New York Times, notorious for being a Soviet
apologist and for his articles denying that people were dying of starvation.
23 Carynnyk, Luciuk and Kordan, ed., The Foreign Office and the Famine, (Lime-
stone, 1988), 310-311.
24 Ibid., 310-311.
25 Ibid., 312-313.
26 Ibid., 313.
Notes Famine Conditions in the Soviet Union

Tour of Ukraine Notes by J.M.K. Vyvyan for a Reply to Lord Charnwood in the
by Mr William Henry Chamberlin27 House of Lords, 25 July 1934
William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon Parliamentary Question

14 October 1933
The Lord Charnwood - To call attention to information circulated
(7) In the Ukraine he [Chamberlin] had the impression that the in this country upon apparently good authority according to which
population could find nothing better to do than to die as a protest.28 the systematic policy of the Russian Government has recently caused
widespread starvation among the population of grain producing areas
in Russia, and is likely to do so this year through the measures taken
for the rapid introduction of collectivist cultivation and the enforcement
Famine Conditions in the Soviet Union of a law transferring property in the produce of agriculture to the State,
and through the removal by the Government of grain for purposes of
Foreign Office notes of Laurence Collier for a reply to a Parliamen- exportation, and for the supply of the Army, without regard to the needs
tary Question made by Sir Waldron Smithers of subsistence of the cultivators of the grain; To ask His Majesty’s
30 June 1934 Government whether they have information which tends to confute this
allegation against the Russian Government; and to move for Papers.
The truth of the matter is, of course, that we have a certain amount
of information about famine conditions… and there is no obligation
on us to make it public. We do not want to make it public, however, 17 July 1934
because the Soviet Government would resent it and our relations with
them would be prejudiced.29 I understand from an informant, Mr. Muggeridge, whom Lord
Charnwood is seeing next week in order to acquire further material
for use in putting his motion, that the motion is the result of informa-
tion supplied by Dr. Amende, a representative of the [I]nterdenomina-
tional Relief Association at Geneva, who is conducting an anti-Soviet
campaign in this country.
The motion tends to put His Majesty’s Government in the position
of either defending the internal policy of the Soviet Government, which
we have no reasons for doing, or making unfavourable statements
about conditions in the Soviet Union which are also open to objec-
tion, however richly they are deserved. It therefore seems desirable, in
replying to Lord Charnwood to indicate, if possible, that it is not His
Majesty’s Government’s business to comment on the internal affairs of
another country, and that the information at their disposal is not accu-
mulated for this purpose, so that there are no papers suitable for laying.
27 Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, deemed in Foreign Office comments
at the end of the report to have the reputation of being somewhat pro-Soviet, but much less
(Sir W. Smithers was informed in reply to a question in the House of
so than W. Duranty. Commons on July 2 that there was no suitable information on similar
28 Carynnyk, Luciuk and Kordan, ed., The Foreign Office and the Famine, (Lime- points.)
stone, 1988), 334. It is of course possible to criticise Lord Charnwood’s judgments
29 Ibid., 397.
of cause and effect in Soviet policy and conditions, but it may be felt Vyvyan’s notes appear to provide as good material as is possible in
that to do so would be gratuitously making out a case for the Soviet these delicate circumstances.
Government, R
and it seems preferable to deal with the facts behind Lord Charn- July 8
wood’s arguments as little as possible. The measures and laws to which
he refers are not very well chosen, e.g. the “rapid introduction of collec- I hope that Lord S will avoid anything which palliates without real
tivist cultivation” is now an event of three to four years ago, and by the justification. I agree that the passage noted by Sir R. Vansittart should
“law transferring the produce of agriculture to the State,” he seems to not be used; my inference is that the dictators of Moscow have starved
be referring to a law of August, 1932, making collective farm property the country districts for ulterior purposes. There are passages in Moscow
count as State property and to various other legislation emphasising the in Winter - apparently a sober account & well worth reading - which
State’s interest both in the production and disposal of imply this. 102 Lord Charnwood will presumably base his case partly
agricultural produce which have no direct bearing on the creation of on this book. I like the reply that we have no independent information
famine. Nevertheless it is true that (1) the policy of the Soviet Govern- to contradict such allegations.
ment has for some time past had a deplorable effect on conditions in [illeg.] July 16
the agricultural part of the Soviet Union by dislocating the former
system of production and (2) grain has been collected for export from Note of points for use in reply to Lord Charnwood
the Soviet Union when starvation existed in grain producing areas, and
there seems no reason for implying a denial of these facts. 1. It is not His Majesty’s Government’s business to enter into
I submit a list of points that might be used in dealing with Lord controversy on the subject of the internal affairs of foreign countries;
Charnwood’s motion. their information is not collected for this purpose and there are, there-
M. Vyvyan fore, no papers suitable for laying which bear on Lord Charnwood’s
6/7 arguments on the subject of living conditions and food supplies in the
Soviet Union.
Mr. Vyvyan’s notes should prove useful for dealing with specific 2. His Majesty’s Government are familiar with the information
points in Lord Charnwood’s speech. published about food supplies and conditions in the agricultural districts
The main facts, however, cannot be disputed - that there has been of the Soviet Union which have doubtless given rise to Lord Charn-
general, and forcible, “collectivisation,” and that there is now a condi- wood’s question. As regards matters of fact, His Majesty’s Government
tion of acute distress, amounting practically to famine in many cases, in have no material for contradicting this information except what has
the chief grain-growing regions of the Soviet Union. Lord Charnwood been published through Soviet official sources which is generally avail-
can judge for himself whether these two facts are cause and effect. able and upon which people can form their own opinions.
L. Collier 3. If it is unavoidable to enter into the substance of Lord Charn-
July 6th wood’s allegations, it might be pointed out that apart from facts, Lord
Charnwood has made judgments of cause and effect. His Majesty’s
I certainly think that we sd. walk delicately - especially at the present Government have no reasons to defend Soviet economic policy, which,
moment after M. Maiski’s talk with Sir R. Vansittart etc. I agree in the as a policy of control and planning, is presumably more responsible
notes. than any other Government’s policy for conditions in the country in
L. O. which it is practised, whatever people’s judgment of those conditions
7 July may be. But there is no information to support Lord Charnwood’s
apparent suggestion that the Soviet Government have pursued a policy
The moment wd. be ill-chosen for giving offence in Russia. But of deliberate impoverishment of agricultural districts of their country,
in no case wd. it do for HMG to appear to palliate Soviet policy and whether or not their policy is considered to have had that effect.
its disastrous consequences in this respect. The least said the soonest 4. The diversion of supplies from the countryside for whatever
mended; but what is said must be in accordance with the facts. Mr. purpose naturally leaves less available for the producers, but His
116 Foreign Office Excerpts Bibliography 117
Majesty’s Government have no information to bear out the argument

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сіють смерть і голод. Hryhir Chyhyrynsky. Нью Йорк, 1972.
In the early 1930s Joseph Stalin weaponised food to

starve millions of Ukrainians to death deliberately and
systematically. This atrocity is known as the Holodomor,
meaning “death by hunger”. Some of the survivors of
the Holodomor settled in the UK after the war and their
experiences are being published here for the first time,
supported by excerpts of documents of the Foreign Office
from that terrible period and how the British Government
at the time recorded and dealt with what it was hearing.
The book includes details of local authorities in the UK
that have recognised the Holodomor as genocide and
locations of Holodomor memorials in the UK.
Association of Ukrainians
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Holodomor Book Final Small 2021 Print

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﻿ 1

This book is dedicated to the memory of

domor, while most of their international colleagues chose to turn a blind

What was the Holodomor?

From the early 1920s, Ukraine suffered a series of famines. The

seen and understood.” tion of whole districts.

Manchester Guardian. Jones was murdered in Mongolia in 1935 in suspicious circum-

FCO letter to the Association of Ukrainians in GB.

It is important that the events of the Holodomor are not

Kateryna Buriak Rev. Mychajlo Diachenko

that my stepmother’s godmother would be able to help us. We arrived

That period was sorrowful. Many members of our family died. My

Andriy Skok Vera Smereka

When I returned home from my grandmother’s house, I remember

7 Easter bread. 8 Malva.

City of Bradford Council

City of Bradford Council unanimously passed the following motion

2.(1) Ukrainian Grove, edge of Bradford centre.

2.(2) Memorial Gardens, Bradford.

3. Ukrainian Catholic Church, Halifax.

4. AUGB Huddersfield Branch.

5. Memorial Gardens, Rochdale.

Holodomor. Dedicated on the 22nd November, 2009 by the Ukrainian

7. AUGB Ashton Branch.

8. Aberystwyth University, Wales.

10. Junction of Blenheim Place and Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. Aberystwyth 11

11. Ukrainian Catholic Church, Leicester.

Key: Details pages.53-54,

(1) National Holodomor memorial.

Commemorative plaque to Gareth Jones.

Top: 1963. Ukrainians in

Foreign Office Excerpts

These documents, published as “The Foreign Office and the Famine”

stone, 1988), xix.

Conditions in Soviet Union Conditions in Ukraine

8 Ibid., 5-6. 9 Ibid., 79-80.

...It is impossible so much as to have one’s shoes blacked without

Protection of Property of State Mr. Cairns’ Investigations

14 Ibid., 104-129 15 Ibid., 214.

Conditions among Population Situation in Soviet Union

Comment by Soviet citizens Soviet Agriculture

tendencies of collective farmers, which are used by the class enemy in

which appeared in the Izvestiya of the 3rd August is of some interest.

Notes Famine Conditions in the Soviet Union

William Strang (Moscow) to Sir John Simon Parliamentary Question

Majesty’s Government have no information to bear out the argument

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the

Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. W.W. Norton

Dushnyck, Walter. 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine. Ter-

Gamache, Ray. Gareth Jones. Eyewitness to the Holodomor. Welsh Aca-

Іnternational Commission of inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine.

Kalynyk, O. Communism The Enemy of Mankind. Documents about the

Пиріг, Р. Голодомор 1932-1933 років в Україні. Документи і матеріали.

Самчук, Улас. Марія. Хроніка одного життя (3-е видання).

Семенко, Ю. Голод 1933 року в Україні. Демократичне Об’єднання

Сенишин, Галина. Бібліографія голоду в Україні 1932-1933. Ukrainica

Сергійчук, В. І. Голодомор 1932-1933 років як геноцид українства. ПП

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