THE HARVARD ORAL HISTORY PROJECT (BEGINNING OF 1950S): TESTIMONIES BY REFUGEES FROM THE USSR ABOUT THE 1932–1933 FAMINE

Abstract

In conditions of launching of the Cold War as well as fight with a new enemy – Communism, by order of the USA government research institutions initiated various research projects with the goal of understanding of political processes that took place in the USSR. One of them is “Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System” (1948–1953). Its goal was to get information about development of Soviet society from 1917 to mid 1940-s. For its implementation mass interviewing of non-returnees and recent refugees from the USSR according to special questionnaires was organized. The project was carried out by American reseаrchers – anthropologists, social psychologists on the territory of Western Germany, Austria and USA. Out of more than 4 thousands of informants 300 candidates were selected. 705 interviews were written down. Despite extremely wide spectrum of questions that were proposed for questioning, a question about the Famine of 1932–1933, as a result of silencing of this tragedy by the Soviet authorities, was absent. And still during the interviews here and there, in various parts of questioning, spontaneous stories about the famine of 1933 appeared, mostly from Ukrainians. Given by them testimonies were filled with pain of suffering and losses. The article shows facts of recalling of 1932–1933 Famine by respondents integrated to the Harvard project with taking into account of ethnical belonging of informants who were born in the USSR, in particular, of Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians, as well as Kuban residents. The author makes comparative analysis of their testimonies. The article reveals that out of about 167 mentions about the famine the majority belonged to Ukrainians (57) and Russians (29). There are only few oral testimonies by Byelorussians. Only four narratives of Russians fixed in the Project were filled with the categories similar to those present in the narrative by Ukrainians. Oral history by Byelorussians contained even less details – they just state fact of a famine. To the contrary, relatively few testimonies about the famine on Kuban’ (9) turned out to be similar to those that comes from the territory of the UkrSSR. They strikingly reflect course of horrible calamity in details that in general are absent in Russian and Byelorussian narratives.