The Experience of Fixation of Testimony about the Holodomor 1932–1933 and Organization of its Research in administrative District
Authors: HNATIUK Viacheslav 
Published: November 2024

Oral history is an important source of national and historical memories of a people, especially in relation to those periods of the life of an ethnic or national community that are existential for it, when it struggles for its survival and existence and when few written documents have survived. Therefore, in order to fully and completely record the testimonies of eyewitnesses of events of great importance in the history of the nation and the state, the state authorities, scientific institutions and the public must unite their efforts to fulfill this task in the best possible way. One of such important existential events in the history of the Ukrainian people was the Holodomor of 1932–1933 perpetrated by the criminal communist authorities of the USSR, a national Сatastrophe for Ukrainians that claimed millions of lives of our compatriots and was hushed up in the Soviet Union for decades. It is clear that this tragedy of the Ukrainian nation deserved the fullest possible recording of oral testimonies, also considering the fact that very few written documents about it have survived. The local authorities and the patriotic public of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi district of Kyiv region were aware of this, and with joint efforts there was organized a continuous recording of the testimonies of eyewitnesses of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in all populated areas of the district and a bookcompilation of these testimonies was published. The peculiarity of this book is that it was the result of mass collective cooperation of several hundred residents of Pereyaslavshchyna - representatives of the authorities, informants, scientists, recorders, donors. Another feature of the book was its 3-part structure, which consisted of a corpus of testimonies about the Holodomor in populated areas of the district, a broad analytical introductory article and copies of written documents that were found in the archives of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi and Kyiv. Later, especially during the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932– 1933, several more books similar to “The Holodomors...” appeared, created on a regional basis in the areas of Central-Eastern and Southern Ukraine that experienced this artificial calamity organized by the criminal authorities USSR with the aim of genocide of Ukrainians as a nation. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of Russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. Therefore, the issue of complete and continuous fixation of the oral history about the criminal actions of the Russian occupants in Ukraine arises again with particular urgency. And here you can use the experience of preparing for the publication of the book “Holodovka...”: close cooperation between the authorities and active representatives of civil society, the regional principle of collecting materials and publishing memorial books, the 3-part structure of such books. This organization of the oral history preservation process proved its efficiency and effectiveness on the example of the successful publication of the book “Holodovka…”. Similar approaches can be applied when recording testimonies about the actions of individual territorial military formations (battalions, brigades), testimonies of Ukrainian prisoners of war, civilians deported to Russia, forcibly deported Ukrainian children, etc. The methodology of collecting eyewitness testimonies (regional principle, close cooperation of local authorities with patriotic public, mass involvement of public representatives, 3-part structure of the collection) and their publication can also be applied to the recording of testimonies about the Holodomor of 1946–1947 from its still living eyewitnesses. Keywords: Holodomor, oral history, testimony, Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi region, National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve “Pereyaslav”.