MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — The University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies hosted the 4th installation of the “Bridges of Memory: Connecting Communities and Classrooms” event series about the Holodomor on June 30 over Zoom. In partnership with the Ukrainian American Community Center of Minneapolis, the event brought speakers Luda Anastazievsky and Stefan Iwaskewycz together in conversation with moderator Nikoleta Sremac.
A part of the Community Dialogue and Educator Workshop Series, the event served as an introduction and overview of Holodomor from the experiences and perspectives of local survivors and survivor community open to educators and all audiences, both those with a deep understanding of the genocide or none at all.
Anastaziesky, the UACC Programming director, started off the event by introducing the history of the Ukrainian-American community in Minnesota. She explained that among the four waves that brought Ukrainians to the United States, the third and fourth (1946-early 1950s and 1991 to present) contained many survivors and descendants of Holodomor survivors.
Iwaskewycz took his discussion of Ukrainian history as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution, bringing in Anne Applebaum’s quotes from her groundbreaking book Red Famine: “… the Bolsheviks came to Ukraine not so much as liberators, but as a colonial power seeking resources. Wherever the Bolsheviks went, there were requisitions of foodstuffs.”
“And the Ukrainian peasantry resisted and fought back… Thus was established the problem — the dynamic — that would plague the first decade of the USSR’s existence in Ukraine, and that would prompt Stalin to choose genocide as a solution…”
Iwaskewycz projected popular Soviet posters from that era on the screen. Both targeted “kulaks,” a derogatory term used to describe wealthy Ukrainian farmers.
“These posters give you the idea of the language Soviet leaders used to create an image of an enemy,” said Iwaskewycz.
He described how Soviet authorities stripped kulaks of all their land and property and shipped them off to far off lands in Siberia. Oftentimes they executed them instead.
Projecting an image of Ukraine that mapped all of the rebellions to Soviet rule in the early 1930s, Iwaskewycz emphasized the intense repression efforts made by the Soviet secret police that targeted the Ukrainian people. “Ukraine, with its history of resistance to Soviet rule, was a threat to the Soviet regime,” he said.
“These mass repressions, along with manipulation of state-controlled grain purchases and collectivization through the destruction of Ukrainian rural community life set the stage for the total terror, the terror by hunger, or the Holodomor,” he added.
Iwaskewycz also discussed “Stalin’s unrealistically high grain procurement quotas”. The decree of “Five Stalks of Grain” that was put into place in August of 1932 condemned anyone that took grain from a collective farm to death or imprisonment. Children were not spared.
Because of this, he explained, Ukrainian farmers started leaving the country in search of food. Stalin, however, had a plan in place to prevent them from doing this too.
“Stalin and Molotov issued decrees preventing them, the farmers, from leaving, and started a system of internal passports which were denied to Ukrainian peasants so they could not travel without permission,” he said.
Iwaskewycz described how the authorities blocked any supplies from coming into villages. He labeled this a “collective death sentence.”
“Activists organized by the communist party were dispatched to the countryside. They were taking away every single scrap of food they could find, even the potatoes that were cooked on the stove, literally leaving nothing,” he explained.
Iwaskewycz is a grandson of a Holodomor survivor. He explained that his interest in Ukrainian history stemmed from her stories and his heritage. “My own grandmother recalls her mother falling to her knees and crying at the foot of a soldier who had taken the last bit of bread that her mom had just baked,” he shared.
Reflecting on the question of whether Holodomor meets the criteria to be called genocide, all speakers unequivocally stated yes. “When a state confiscates not only grain, but any and all foodstuffs, its intentions are murderous. There can be no other explanation,” said Iwaskewycz. “It was mass murder. Planned in advance and well organized not only of those who the Kremlin regarded as saboteurs, but also of children and the elderly,” he said. “This is how and why one can say it was genocide.”
Iwaskewycz described these events as a broader attack of the Ukrainian nation, one that also compromised the social, religious, and political leadership of Ukraine. “Consequently, the largest non-Rusian ethnic group within the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians, were decimated, putting an end to their aspirations for autonomy and independence for decades.”
He concluded his presentation by stressing that the Holodomor was, indeed, a genocide, meeting all criteria of the word’s definition.
Reflecting on Anastazievsky and Iwaskewycz’s presentations, Sremac said that “It’s truly shocking how little this story is known for many many people in the U.S.”
When asked about his experience being a grandson of a Holodomor survivor, Iwaskewycz explained that his grandmother often told stories of her childhood and life. However, when it came to talking about Holodomor, she never spoke of it.
“She told us of this childhood and World War II stories frequently, really to anyone who would listen…, but she never spoke of the Holodomor. She only made a few vague references now and then about the starving times.”
When he started to understand that his grandmother had survived the Holodomor– after reading history books and understanding that where she was from and the time period indicated that she must have experienced it– Iwaskewycz said that he asked her why she was so hesitant to talk about it. “She didn’t like to talk about it because it was much harder to remember. For her, there was a silence that fell upon the Holodomor, and that’s something that Ukrainians are dealing with to this day.”
Shifting the conversation to Ukrainians’ modern-day recognition of Holodomor, Anastazievsky stated that “we commemorate Holodomor through community events, exhibits on the history of the Holodomor, art installations, educational events for children, and community candle-lighting vigils.”
In addition to her role as an activist in the Ukrainian community in the Twin Cities, Anastazievsky is also a teacher for Minneapolis Public Schools. She mentioned her efforts to bring Holodomor education to her school, where she was successfully able to bring a traveling Holodomor exhibit and teach a lesson on the Ukrainian genocide to seventh and eighth graders in collaboration with the social studies teachers. Holodomor is not currently taught in Minnesota schools.
The Ukrainian community in the Twin Cities continues to be highly active in the fight for Holodomor recognition.
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota is one of the very few institutions of higher education that includes a focus on the Holodomor in its work on teaching about genocides. Anastazievsky, in a follow-up interview with the Kyiv Post, recognized the Ukrainian Center’s ongoing partnership with CHGS as a major accomplishment for Holodomor education and recognition.
Event link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io4JCrEDdlo
