2024 © eng: genocide-copyright
Prepared by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, the exhibition "Killed by Famine: Unknown Genocide of the Ukrainians" is based primarily on oral history, a popular contemporary method of social and humanitarian research. The subject of investigation of oral history is a subjective personal experience. Thus, the peculiar feature of the exhibition is that the facts from archive sources are approved by evidences of the survivors of the Holodomor manmade famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. The whole exhibition is based on this principle: any official information is supported by evidence of an eyewitness.
The exhibition is divided into four theme parts.
The first part, Ukraine before the Famine, consists of two posters. They showcase Ukraine’s natural wealth in the few centuries before the Holodomor: fertile land, corn as tall as a man, ponds full with fish, luxuriant vegetation. The idea is to show that in the early 20th century any natural famine in Ukraine was impossible, preparing the spectator for the fact that the 1932-1933 famine was manmade.
The second part is Causes and Reasons for the Famine. It contains four posters and represents the documentary part of the exhibition. They portray the main ideologist of the artificial famine in Ukraine, Joseph Stalin, and those who organized and executed it immediately in Ukraine: Viacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Vsevolod Balytsky, Hryhory Petrovsky, Vlas Chubar, Paviel Postyshiev, and Mendel Khatayevych. This block covers the reasons for the Holodomor: destroying the national spirit in peasants and destroying Ukrainian farmers as a class, creating the collective farms system, etc. In addition to the reasons, it shows the geography of the Famine, confirming the fact that it embraced solely the territories inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians.
The third part of the exhibition is called The Mechanism of the Famine. It contains 23 posters. Every poster, based on archive documents, is supported by another, containing eyewitness evidence. The spectator can see the process of dekulakization: expropriating private property from wealthy peasants, depriving them of any livelihood, and often even exiling them in Siberia. The next steps were the three stages of state grain procurements: August-September 1932, November 1932, and December 1932. During the last stage, not only seed grains were taken away from the peasants, but also the so-called surplus: beans, potatoes, and onions. As a result, the villagers found themselves in a grave situation. First they had to exchange their personal belongings for food, and then had to eat things they had never thought of eating before: cats, dogs, mice, various plants, etc. An act of unprecedented cruelty was the so-called Five Spikelet Law, signed personally by Joseph Stalin on August 5, 1932, resulting in the increased repressions against the peasantry. The next repressive measure against the Ukrainian peasantry was a Council of People’s Commissars’ decision On Blacklisting Villages Sabotaging Grain Procurements. It meant a total economic blockade of such villages from the outer world, termination of any deliveries, and thus total extinction of a village. To limit migration from villages, a passport system was introduced in 1932, which didn’t include the peasants, thus dooming them to certain death in the village. Simultaneously, grain exports from Ukraine had increased sixfold, compared to 1929. The posters of this block demonstrated that some districts in Kuban, with prevailing ethnic Ukrainian population, had also suffered from Holodomor. Another method of state robbery was a network of “torgsins” (stores for trade with foreigners) where peasants could get some food in exchange for gold and silver for unfair rates. In true, the torgsins were created for massive voluntary-compulsory confiscation of family jewels and other valuables. Other posters show that ambassadors of the leading European countries to USSR kept informing their governments on the terror of famine in Ukraine. However, their states remained neutral. The idea behind one of the posters is that, had the world responded to the outrage of the totalitarian state in Ukraine, this Holocaust could be avoided. As a result, the Ukrainians have paid for the Holodomor with 7 to 10 million lives, by various estimations.
The fourth part of the exhibition is called, Global Recognition and Perception of Holodomor. It contains four posters. For the long 75 years had the world been aware of what happened in Ukraine and completely ignored it. The first to condemn the Communist genocide in Ukraine was the Parliament of Estonia. During 15 years of Ukraine’s independence only 13 countries (Estonia, Canada, Argentina, the US, Australia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Spain, and Peru) have recognized the Manmade Famine in Ukraine as genocide. One of the posters in this block features quotations from state regulations of the states listed above. Another has in it the text of the Law of Ukraine On the Holodomor Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, approved by Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on November 28, 2006, which is about recognizing Holodomor a genocide of the Ukrainians. The last poster contains information on the fact that for the last few years every last Saturday of November, the Day of Memory of the Victims of Holodomor, the Ukrainian people commemorate those who died in the Famine of 1932-1933 by lighting the Candle of Memory in their window at 4:00 p.m.
