Honest History 7: How Soviets brought Ukraine to heel with Holodomor (VIDEO)

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh story in the Kyiv Post’s “Honest History” project, a series of stories and videos that aim to debunk myths about Ukrainian history that are used by propagandists. This series is supported by the Black Sea Trust, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Black Sea Trust, the German Marshall Fund or its partners.

At the beginning of 1933, Oleksandra Handzyuk, then an 18-year-old Ukrainian woman, lived in a big family that included her parents and five siblings.

By the end of spring, besides her, only her mother and a sister were alive. The rest starved to death, one by one.

So did nearly 250 of their neighbors in Kharliyivka, now a village of 686 people in Zhytomyr Oblast, some 130 kilometers west of Kyiv.

Read the full story.