Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T08:41:54.428Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Famine, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space: Contrasting Echoes of Collectivization in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2019

James Richter
James Richter*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jrichter@bates.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Stalin’s collectivization campaigns and the associated famine killed millions in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, yet the two countries commemorate the events quite differently. In Ukraine, the Holodomor (death by hunger) occupies a prominent place in the public sphere and is remembered most frequently as a genocidal policy against the Ukrainian nation. In Kazakhstan, the famine takes up little space in the public arena, and officials remain reluctant to call it a genocide. This article explores these differences using two models explaining variation in the politics of memory: one emphasizing the instrumental calculations of political elites and the other emphasizing the historical and cultural constraints that frame contemporary debates. These two models complement each other rather than compete. The contest over the famine in Ukraine was in part a consequence of eastern and western Ukraine’s differing histories, but it intensified when governing politicians deployed the memory of the famine instrumentally in the 2000s. In Kazakhstan, political calculations led the regime to emphasize unity and stability over divisive debates about the past, but historical factors made depoliticizing the famine feasible.

Keywords

memoryUkraineKazakhstancollectivizationHolodomor
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue on the Soviet Famines of 1930–1933 , May 2020 , pp. 476 - 491
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abylkhozhin, Zhuldyzbek, Kozybayev, Manash, and Tatimov, Makash. 1989. “Kazakhstanskaia Tragediia” [“Kazakhstan’s Tragedy”]. Voprosy istorii 7: 53-71.Google Scholar
Akiner, Shirin. 1995. The Formation of Kazakh Identity from Tribe to Nation-State . London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs.Google Scholar
Aldazhumanov, K. C. 2013. “K istorii goloda 1931–1933 godov v Kazakhstane” [“On the History of the Famine in the Years 1931–1933 in Kazakhstan]. In Tragediia Kazakhskogo Aula 1928–1934: Tom 1. Sbornik dokumentov [Tragedy of the Kazak Aul 1928–1934: Volume 1. Collected Documents], edited by Zulkasheva, A. S., 3–10. Almaty: Reritet.Google Scholar
Amar, Tarik Cyril. 2015. The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis and Nationalists. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Applebaum, Anne. 2017. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Asanova, Asel’. 2018. “V Almaty vozlozhili tsvety k pamiatniku zhertvam goloda 1931–1933 godov” [“In Almaty Flowers Were Laid in Front of the Memorial to the Victims of the Famine, 1931–1933”]. Kazinform, May 31. https://www.inform.kz/ru/v-almaty-vozlozhili-cvety-k-pamyatniku-zhertvam-goloda-1931-1933-godov_a3271390.Google Scholar
Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co.Google Scholar
Bartov, Omer. 2018. Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Bernhard, Michael, and Kubik, Jan, eds. 2014. Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1995. “National Minorities, Nationalizing States and External Homelands in the New Europe.” Daedalus 124 (2): 107–132.Google Scholar
Cameron, Sarah. 2010. “The Hungry Steppe: Soviet Kazakhstan and the Kazakh Famine, 1921–1934.” PhD diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
Cameron, Sarah. 2016. “The Kazakh Famine of 1930–1933: Current Research and New Direction.” East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 3 (2): 117–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquest, Robert. 1986. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Darden, Keith, and Grzymala-Busse, Anna. 2006. “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism and the Communist Collapse.” World Politics 59 (1): 83–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language, and Power. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demoscope. 2018. “What People of Kazakhstan Think about Joseph Stalin’s Personality?” March 13. http://demos.kz/eng/index.php?poll=71.Google Scholar
Diener, Alexander C. 2016. “Imagining Kazakhstani-stan: Negotiations of Homeland and Titular Nationality.” In Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes, edited by Laruelle, Marlene, 131–154. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Finkel, Evgeny. 2010. “In Search of Lost Genocide: Historical Policy and International Politics in Post-1989 Eastern Europe.” Global Society 24 (1): 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forest, Benjamin, Johnson, Juliet, and Till, Karen. 2004. “Post-Totalitarian National Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia.” Social and Cultural Geography 5 (3): 357–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grozin, A. V. 2014. Golod 1932–1933 godov i politiki pamiati v Respublike Kazakhstan [The Hunger of 1932–1933 and the Politics of Memory in the Republic of Kazakhstan]. Moscow: Institute Vostokovedenie RAN.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2009. “Cause Without a Rebel: Kazakhstan’s Unionist Nationalism in the USSR and CIS.” Nationalities Papers 37 (1): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillis, Faith. 2013. Children of Rus’: Right Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himka, Jean-Paul. 1988. Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himka, Jean-Paul. 2011.“The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: Ukrainian Nationalists, Nazis, and the Carnival Crowd.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 53 (2–4): 209–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himka, Jean-Paul. 2013. “Encumbered Memory: The Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 14 (2): 411–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Interfax-Ukraine. 2010. “Sobolev: Yanukovich’s Refusal to Recognize Holodomor as Genocide Against Ukrainians a Betrayal.” Kyiv Post, April 27. https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/sobolev-yanukovychs-refusal-to-recognize-holodomor-65180.html.Google Scholar
Jilge, Wilfried. 2004. “Holodomor und Nation: Die Hungersnot im ukrainischen Geschichtsbild.” Osteuropa 58 (12): 147–164.Google Scholar
Kindler, Robert. 2012. “Opfer ohne Täter: Kasachische und Ukrainische Erinnerung an den Hunger 1032/1933.“ Osteuropa 62 (3): 105–120.Google Scholar
International, Kazinform. 2012. “Kazakh President Laid Flowers to Victims of Famine.” May 31. http://www.inform.kz/eng/article/2468314.Google Scholar
Kozybayev, Manash. 1998. Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane v 1931-1933 gg.: Sbornik dokumentov I materialov [Forced Collectivization and Hunger in Kazakhstan in 1931–1933: Collected Documents and Materials]. Almaty: Fond “XXI”Vek.Google Scholar
Kudaibergenova, Diana T. 2016. “Nationalizing Elites and Regimes: Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Authoritarian and Democratic Contexts.” In Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes, edited by Laruelle, Marlene, 113–130. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2011. “The Media, History and Identity: Competing Narratives of the Past in the Ukrainian Popular Past.” National Identities 13 (3): 287–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2018. “Shedding Russianness, Tecasting Ukrainianness: The Post-Euromaidan Dynamics of Ethnonational Identifications in Ukraine.” Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 119–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kundekbayeva, Zhanat, and Kassymova, Didar. 2016. “Remembering and Forgetting: The State Policy of Memorializing Repression in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan.” Nationalities Papers 44 (4): 611–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). 2017. “Pidtrimka viznannia OUN-UPA uchansikame borot’bi za derzhavnu nezalezhnist’ Ukraini” [“Support for Recognition of OUN-UPA Participants as Fighters for National Independence of Ukraine”]. October 13. http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=rus&cat=reports&id=718&page=1&t=3.Google Scholar
LaFreniere, Kelsey. 2012. “Commemorating the Holocaust and Hungary: The Politics of Hungarian Memory.” BA Honors Thesis, Bates College.Google Scholar
Laruelle, Marlene . 2016. “Which Future for National Patriots? The Landscape of Kazakh Nationalism.” In Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes, edited by Laruelle, Marlene, 155–181. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Liber, George. 2016. Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mamashuli, Asylkhan. 2014. “Istorik: ‘Golod nosit cherty genotsida’” [“Historian: The Famine Carries Traits of Genocide”]. Radio Azattyq, May 5. https://rus.azattyq.org/a/interview-o-golode-istorik-aldazhumanov/25372297.html.Google Scholar
Mark, Rudolf A. 2004. “Die Hungersnot in Kazachstan: Historiographische Aufarbeitung im Wandel” [“The Famine in Kazakhstan: Historiographical Work in Transition”]. Osteuropa 58 (12): 112–130.Google Scholar
Marples, David R. 2007. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. Budapest: Central European Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Aleksei. 2003. The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century. Budapest: Central European Press.Google Scholar
Mostovoi, Zakhar. 2017. “Baibek otkryl v Almaty pamiatnik zhertvam golodomora” [“Baibek Opened the Monument to the Victims of Holodomor in Almaty”]. 365Info.Kz, May 31. https://365info.kz/2017/05/ bajbek-otkryl-v-almaty-pamyatnik-zhertvam-golodomora/.Google Scholar
National Digital History of Kazakhstan. 2013. “Kollektivizatsiia v Kazakhstane.” August 1. http://e-history.kz/ru/contents/view/294.Google Scholar
Nechet, Tatiana. 2014. “Pamiatniki zhertvam holodomora: bol’, zastyvshaya vo vremeniiu” [“Monuments to the Victims of Holodomor: Pain Frozen in Time”]. Komsomol’skaia Pravda v Ukraine, November 22. https://kp.ua/life/479353-pamiatnyky-zhertvam-holodomora-bol-zastyvshaia-vo-vremeny.Google Scholar
Ohayon, Isabelle. 2013. “The Kazakh Famine: The Beginnings of Sedentarization.” Science-PO: On-Line Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/kazakh-famine-beginnings-sedentarization.Google Scholar
Payne, Matthew J. 2011. “Seeing Like a Soviet State: Settlement of Nomadic Kazakhs, 1928–1934.” In Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography, edited by Alexopoulos, Golfo, Hessler, Julie, and Tomoff, Kiril, 59–86. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pianciola, Niccolo. 2001. “The Collectivization Famine in Kazakhstan, 1931–1933.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25 (3–4): 237–251.Google ScholarPubMed
Pianciola, Niccolo. 2018. “Stalinskaia ‘ierarkhiie potrebleniya’ i velikii golod 1931–1933 gg. v Kazakhstane” [“The Stalinist ‘Hierarchy of Consumption’ and the Great Famine of 1931–1933 in Kazakhstan”]. Ab Imperio 2: 1–37.Google Scholar
Pop-Eleches, Grigore, and Robertson, Graeme. 2018. “Identity and Political Preferences in Ukraine—before and after the Euromaidan.” Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 107–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svoboda, Radio. 2017. “77% Ukraintsiv vvazhaiut Golodomor 1932–1933 rokiv genotsidom-opituvannia” [“77% of Ukrainians Consider the Holodomor of 1932–1933 a Genocide—Survey”]. November 20. https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news/28864303.html.Google Scholar
Rees, Kristoffer Michael, and Williams, Nora Webb. 2017. “Explaining Kazakhstani Identity: Supraethnic Identity, Ethnicity, Language, and Citizenship.” Nationalities Papers 45 (5): 815–839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risch, William Jay. 2011. The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“See Which Countries Recognize Ukraine’s Holodomor as Genocide on an Interactive Map.” 2015. Euromaidan Press, November 7. http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/11/07/see-which-countries-recognize-ukraines-holodomor-famine-as-genocide-on-an-interactive-map/.Google Scholar
Shevel, Oxana. 2014. “Memories of the Past and Visions of the Future: Remembering the Soviet Era and Its End in Ukraine.” In Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration , edited by Bernhard, Michael and Kubik, Jan, 146–170. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vachudová, Milada. 2005. Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration after Communism. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasil’ev, Valeriy. 2004. “Zwischen Politisierung und Historisierung: Der Holodomor in der ukrainischen Historiographie” [“Between Politicization and Historicization: The Holodomor in Ukrainian Historiography”]. Osteuropa 58 (12): 165–182.Google Scholar
Zhurzhenko, Tatiana. 2011. “‘Capital of Despair’: Holodomor and Political Conflicts in Kharkiv after the Orange Revolution.” East European Politics and Societies 25 (3): 597–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar