Franziska Dorau:
Holodomor: About the Famine of 1933 - Unearthing Ukrainian Secrets.
“Secrets” is the name of a game played by little girls in Ukraine. They dig a hole in the ground, fill it with random colorful objects, cover it with a small pane of glass, and then fill it back up. The next day, they come back to their hiding place and look at the shimmering, glittering treasure beneath the glass. Their grandmothers did the same thing - with the Christian icons that they wanted to save from destruction by the Soviet powers. This is how Ukrainian author, Oksana Sabuschko, describes it.
In Soviet-controlled Ukraine, there were many things people could only hold onto in secret. This included any remembrance of the three-and-a-half to four million Ukrainians who died from the famine caused by Stalin’s collectivization policy during the early 1930s. For six decades, it was a crime to speak about the famine of 1932 and 1933. After Ukraine gained its independence, this famine became known as “Holodomor” - and was declared an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Since then, it has played an important and controversial role in the formation of a Ukrainian national identity.
During a trip through Central and Eastern Ukraine, the author interviewed survivors of the Holodomor about their memories. They spoke of the fertile, black Ukrainian earth, about the wealth the farmers had worked hard for prior to the “Great Famine” - and about how a class struggle was staged in their villages in the early 1930s, which served to rob the farmers of their livelihood and force them to enter the kolkhozy. Harvests, livestock, as well as families’ personal rations were confiscated - until the country collapsed into a man-made famine. At the same time, millions of tons of grain were exported from the Soviet agricultural regions into the “socialist fatherland” or sold to Europe at bargain basement prices.
Today, many of the survivors still remain uncertain of just who was to blame for the famine in Russia’s “breadbasket.”
About the Author's Research: In July 2010, I traveled to Ukraine and spent time in Kiev, Kharkiv, and the villages Chominzy, Samiske, and Bezrucky, conducting numerous interviews with people who personally survived the famine as well as historians and authors. My presence in the country and interest in the Holodomor was met with positive reactions from all sides. I had the feeling that it particularly did the older interviewees good to finally be able to talk about the memories they had repressed for so many decades. But sometimes the desire to tell their stories is still associated with the fear of repression.
About the Author: Franziska Dorau was born in Vienna in 1979 and studied Comparative Literature in Vienna and Paris. She has been Cultural Editor and a featured author at ORF, Austria’s national public radio broadcaster, since 2006. She is particularly interested in nation building in the post-Soviet and post-colonial regions.
Holodomor: About the Famine of 1933 – Unearthing Ukrainian Secrets.
“Secrets” is the name of a game played by little girls in Ukraine. They dig a hole in the ground, fill it with random colorful objects, cover it with a small pane of glass, and then fill it back up. The next day, they come back to their hiding place and look at the shimmering, glittering treasure beneath the glass. Their grandmothers did the same thing - with the Christian icons that they wanted to save from destruction by the Soviet powers. This is how Ukrainian author, Oksana Sabuschko, describes it.
In Soviet-controlled Ukraine, there were many things people could only hold onto in secret. This included any remembrance of the three-and-a-half to four million Ukrainians who died from the famine caused by Stalin’s collectivization policy during the early 1930s. For six decades, it was a crime to speak about the famine of 1932 and 1933. After Ukraine gained its independence, this famine became known as “Holodomor” - and was declared an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Since then, it has played an important and controversial role in the formation of a Ukrainian national identity.
During a trip through Central and Eastern Ukraine, the author interviewed survivors of the Holodomor about their memories. They spoke of the fertile, black Ukrainian earth, about the wealth the farmers had worked hard for prior to the “Great Famine” - and about how a class struggle was staged in their villages in the early 1930s, which served to rob the farmers of their livelihood and force them to enter the kolkhozy. Harvests, livestock, as well as families’ personal rations were confiscated - until the country collapsed into a man-made famine. At the same time, millions of tons of grain were exported from the Soviet agricultural regions into the “socialist fatherland” or sold to Europe at bargain basement prices.
Today, many of the survivors still remain uncertain of just who was to blame for the famine in Russia’s “breadbasket.”
About the Author's Research: In July 2010, I traveled to Ukraine and spent time in Kiev, Kharkiv, and the villages Chominzy, Samiske, and Bezrucky, conducting numerous interviews with people who personally survived the famine as well as historians and authors. My presence in the country and interest in the Holodomor was met with positive reactions from all sides. I had the feeling that it particularly did the older interviewees good to finally be able to talk about the memories they had repressed for so many decades. But sometimes the desire to tell their stories is still associated with the fear of repression.
About the Author: Franziska Dorau was born in Vienna in 1979 and studied Comparative Literature in Vienna and Paris. She has been Cultural Editor and a featured author at ORF, Austria’s national public radio broadcaster, since 2006. She is particularly interested in nation building in the post-Soviet and post-colonial regions.
Holodomor: About the Famine of 1933 – Unearthing Ukrainian Secrets.
- Producer: Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting Network)/Deutschlandradio Kultur 2011
- First broadcast on Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF): January 15, 2011, on the Ö1 network as part of the “Hörbilder” series.
- First broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur: April 2, 2011, at 6:05 p.m.
- Length: approx. 54 minutes
- Editor: Lisbeth Jessen
- Narrators: Irina Wanka, Markus Hering
- Sound: Robert Pavlecka
The show was produced as part of the European Broadcasting Union’s “Master School on Radio Features” program.
Audio
