Research grants 2014
The HREC Research Grants Competition is held annually to support academic research on the Holodomor, the publication of research results, the preservation of materials, and the organization of and participation in academic venues. Each year, a new thematic focus is established, though proposals for other topics are considered. The applications are reviewed by a committee of scholars and HREC associates.
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2014 HREC Research Grants Competition
In 2014, HREC held its first grants competition, with a focus on support of research and preservation of materials related to the Holodomor. Grant applications were considered in amounts up to $5,000. Submissions were evaluated for their relevance to the stated aims of the competition, which is to support research on the Holodomor and preservation of materials; soundness of the proposal, including methodology; and preparedness to undertake the proposal (based on CV, letters of recommendation and demonstrated preparedness).
HREC awarded eleven grants for a total of $33,300, ranging from $993 to $5,000. Two grants for $5,000 were awarded to Canadian institutions engaged in projects to preserve rare witness testimonies.
Individual Projects 2014
Natalia Bem
The Government and the Ukrainian Peasantry during the Collectivization of Agriculture and the Holodomor: Politics and Mass Consciousness
This project will result in the completion of a manuscript and the publication of a monograph, to be completed by spring 2015, about the relationship between the government and the Ukrainian peasantry, including political attitudes during the collectivization of agriculture and the Holodomor. Chronologically, this study will focus on the period from 1928–33. The following research tasks are planned: researching the political attitudes of different segments of the Ukrainian peasantry (‘kurkuls’, middle peasants, poor peasants) at different stages; determining the dominant forms of protest by the peasantry during the forced collectivization; ascertaining female perceptions of the political and economic campaigns in the village, and the motivation behind their behaviour; analyzing the moral and psychological consequences of the Holodomor on the Ukrainian village.
Relying on a rich base of evidence, primarily archives and oral histories, the research will examine not only the historical facts, but attitudes towards these facts and reactions to them, recreating the perceptions of peasants to Stalin’s policies.
Olga Bertelsen
A Social History of the Holodomor: Voices from Kharkiv Oblast, 1926–1934
The purpose of the study is to recreate the scale of personal human tragedies under Stalinism, as well as the transformation of individuals under the threat of state violence. Through the voices of the peasants from Kharkiv oblast, the study will analyze a spectrum of human behavioral traits, from individual heroism to violence, including psychological and psychiatric transformations, before, during and after the Holodomor. The Holodomor amplified and exacerbated Ukrainians’ distrust of Soviet power. It could be argued that precisely this factor determined the scale and nature of subsequent Soviet repression in Ukraine. The project will also contain an analysis of new demographic data that will shed light on human losses during the Holodomor in the villages of Kharkiv oblast. Most important, the study will examine the dynamics of population losses in the context of political and social developments at the time. The significance of this study lies in the nature of the sources, which can contribute to a social history of the Holodomor that reveals behind statistics the real people who fell victim to the practices of the Soviet regime.
Collaborative Projects 2014
UCRDC
Restoration of Outtakes of Harvest of Despair Interviews
In preparation of the film Harvest of Despair, which was produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, the interviews taken from witnesses, victims, scholars and journalists were quite lengthy (1–3 hours). Only a small portion of the filmed interviews was used in the film. The outtakes, which have been kept in the UCRDC archives, include invaluable and irreplaceable material, including interviews with such well -known witnesses as Malcolm Muggeridge, Petro Grigorenko, Olha Mak, and Vasyl Sokil and scholars such as James Mace. But the material exists in formats from the technology of the time, i.e. on 16 mm celluloid film. Accessing that material today is problematic as equipment and technicians able to do this are disappearing, to say nothing of the deterioration of the film stock over time. All the same, there is substantial interest in accessing the full interviews.
In 1980s filming, the images and sound were captured on separate channels and then synchronized. Furthermore, in the case of Harvest of Despair, the parts used in the finished film were cut out of the originals; for synchronization they have to be edited back into the originals and then transferred to new film that can be digitized for accessibility and long-term preservation. Yurij Luhovy, the editor of the original film, has helped the UCRDC examine the outtakes of the interviews and determined that such a restoration can be done. The material is irreplaceable. Harvest of Despair interviews were done with witnesses who had been adults during the Holodomor and are now deceased. Any interviews done more recently had to rely on the testimony of those who had been children in 1932-33.
In preparation of the film Harvest of Despair, which was produced by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, the interviews taken from witnesses, victims, scholars and journalists were quite lengthy (1–3 hours). Only a small portion of the filmed interviews was used in the film. The outtakes, which have been kept in the UCRDC archives, include invaluable and irreplaceable material, including interviews with such well -known witnesses as Malcolm Muggeridge, Petro Grigorenko, Olha Mak, and Vasyl Sokil and scholars such as James Mace. But the material exists in formats from the technology of the time, i.e. on 16 mm celluloid film. Accessing that material today is problematic as equipment and technicians able to do this are disappearing, to say nothing of the deterioration of the film stock over time. All the same, there is substantial interest in accessing the full interviews.
In 1980s filming, the images and sound were captured on separate channels and then synchronized. Furthermore, in the case of Harvest of Despair, the parts used in the finished film were cut out of the originals; for synchronization they have to be edited back into the originals and then transferred to new film that can be digitized for accessibility and long-term preservation. Yurij Luhovy, the editor of the original film, has helped the UCRDC examine the outtakes of the interviews and determined that such a restoration can be done. The material is irreplaceable. Harvest of Despair interviews were done with witnesses who had been adults during the Holodomor and are now deceased. Any interviews done more recently had to rely on the testimony of those who had been children in 1932-33.