Robert Conquest’s book <I>The Harvest of Sorrow</I> republished in Ukraine

The book by the well-known Western historian Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, was recently republished in the Ukrainian language. This key book on the Holodomor was published in English in 1986 but was translated into Ukrainian only in 1993. The launch of the second Ukrainian edition took place at the US ambassador’s residence in Kyiv, a move explained by the fact that with the assistance of the Department of Press, Education and Culture of the US Embassy to Ukraine The Harvest of Sorrow was published by the Volyn-based Teren Art Agency within the framework of the program “Lessons of History: the Holodomor of 1932-33,” which is part of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund.

“Thanks to this book many people throughout the world became aware of the Holodomor. The author showed and described the horror of the Holodomor. Some people who visited Ukraine in 1932-33 could not even write about the things they had seen. As Robert Conquest admits in the foreword to his book, Boris Pasternak visited Ukraine during that period and said afterwards: ‘It is impossible to recount what I saw there. There was such inhumane, incredible distress and sorrow that everything began to look unreal and my mind could not grasp all the horror. I became ill. I could not write for a year,’” US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor quoted the writer as saying.

Ambassador Taylor also noted that unlike Pasternak, Conquest succeeded in describing all this horror and did this in such a way - through painstaking effort — that both the personal sufferings of a single person and the suffering of the entire society were shown. According to the ambassador, the historian reached the conclusion that the ascertained facts and Stalin’s motives prove his involvement in this catastrophe. Thus, there can only be one verdict of history: this was a crime for which responsibility must be taken. On her part, Kateryna Yushchenko, the head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, stressed that 75 years after these tragic events Ukrainians have a great responsibility to let the world know about the Holodomor. According to the Ukrainian president’s wife, people both in Ukraine and abroad are now coming to the real understanding of the scale of this crime: how many people were dying and how the regime did this in a systemic, cynical, and massive way.

According to Ukraine’s First Lady, the main program of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund is to elucidate the question of the Holodomor. “We are gathering evidence, making films, and helping to organize the Light a Candle Action. (This action was the brainchild of the late James Mace, who first broached this subject in his column “A candle in the window” in The Day on Feb. 18, 2003. Together with Conquest, he also spoke at the US Congressional Hearings on the Holodomor — Author). This action has to be expanded throughout Ukraine, so that everyone in every house will remember their ancestors, their grandfathers and grandmothers, who perished during the Holodomor. Many countries have recognized the Holodomor. UNESCO did so two weeks ago, and the United Nations recognizes the Holodomor. They will not immediately say that this was genocide. But we must prove this to them. Everyone used to say that there was no famine. Today it has been acknowledged that there was a Holodomor, but not genocide. But with the help of facts, research, orders, and decrees we will prove that the Holodomor was an act of genocide,” she stressed.

The initiator of the second edition of the book, the writer and former dissident Yevhen Sverstiuk considers The Harvest of Sorrow the best book on the history of 20th-century Ukraine. “This book was written by a person of great talent and intelligence, whom I would place alongside Orwell. Our history books did not take into account inaccessible materials. Information written abroad about life in Ukraine and the USSR was broader, more objective, and more analytical.

This is a book that was written by a free man, who thinks in a free way and has a huge amount of material to work with. Yesterday’s slaves cannot contemplate the facts about their life deeply,” he noted.

In Sverstiuk’s opinion, the genocide in Ukraine and the Nazi genocide are linked. “If one could engineer the Holodomor genocide in a large country in peacetime and conceal this from the world, why can one not secretly execute a numerically small nation in wartime? It is known that the Fuhrer learned from the Leader,” Sverstiuk emphasized. After directing attention to the importance of the nature of the assessment given to this historical phenomenon, he noted that we often err in the everyday assessment, whereas the sense of this phenomenon is defined by the word “genocide.”

William TAYLOR: “A judiciary analysis is crucial to recognizing that the Holodomor was an act of genocide” What is being done in the US in order to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33, and does the United States recognize that the Holodomor was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation? These and other questions are raised in The Day’s blitz interview with US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine William TAYLOR.

The American Senate and the House of Representatives have approved a law that has been signed by the president. This law provides for the construction of a memorial dedicated to the Holodomor in Washington, the US capital. The Ukrainian government is financing its construction.

When will this memorial be built?

I don’t know. I hope very soon. There is a large and well-known monument to Taras Shevchenko in Washington. A monument to enslaved nations was built in the US in the 1950s. And this new memorial will be another great Ukrainian monument.

What about the resolution on recognizing the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people? Will such a decision be made by the two chambers of the American Congress?

The resolution in this form was not approved by the two chambers. What was actually approved was the decision to build a memorial. We have to carry out a judiciary analysis in order to recognize the Holodomor as genocide. But the American government has not done this yet.

But there is a book by Robert Conquest, about which you spoken today and whose author addressed Congress at one time and gave evidence.

True, there is much evidence. And Conquest’s books are an indisputable part of it. Congress also considered this issue, but it has still not approved a resolution that would define the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

But this is a contradiction. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs had recommended the resolution on recognizing the Armenian genocide.

And you see what kind of problem it has caused.

But in the Ukrainian case there should not be any problems because the totalitarian regime that existed at that time is blamed for the genocide against the Ukrainian people, not another nation.

Yes, that’s true. I don’t think that there will be any problem with Ukraine. But a problem linked to other tragedies can arise. Again, a judiciary analysis must be completed in order to approve such a resolution, and this has not been done yet. If this is done for Ukraine, a similar analysis will have to be conducted with respect to other tragedies, and this will be quite complicated.

Does this mean that in approving the draft resolution on recognizing the Armenian genocide the Democrats in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs did not think it through?

Yes. It’s true. But the draft law approved by the committee has not been submitted to the House of Representatives.

I’d like to return to the topic of the judiciary analysis. Is the American government afraid of conducting this analysis and recognizing that the Holodomor was genocide? After all, many countries, including those located on the American continent, have recognized that the Holodomor was an act of genocide that was perpetrated by a totalitarian regime?

Yes, that’s true. One can say the same thing about Turkey in 1915. The current government did not exist at that time, and there was no current Constitution of Turkey; the Ottoman Empire existed then. Thus, it was a completely different regime.

In general, the issue is quite complicated. We are very glad that the US has approved a law that has come into force and according to which a monument to the Holodomor will be constructed in Washington.