Research grants 2015
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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2015 HREC Research Grants Competition
In 2015, HREC held a second grants competition to support research, preservation and publication 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; soundness of the proposal, including methodology; and preparedness to undertake the proposal (based on CV, letters of recommendation and demonstrated preparedness). HREC awarded nine grants for a total of $25,395, ranging from $1000 to $5,000.
Individual Projects 2015
Olga Bertelsen
A Social History of the Holodomor: Voices from the Kharkiv oblast, 1926-1934
Dr. Bertelsen examines archival materials that shed light on the everyday lives of the Ukrainian peasantry in the Kharkiv oblast from 1926 to1934, their attitudes toward Soviet power, and toward each other. The study examines behavioral changes under conditions of physical abuse, state violence and hunger. Letters of complaint, protocols of the inter-district oblast court for 1932-1933 and the GPU’s reports constitute the evidential base for the analyses. The study will include an exploration of women’s, men’s, children’s and the elderly’s behavioral patterns and strategies of survival, and an analysis of their individual and collective sensibilities, and attitudes toward the regime.
Valentyna Borysenko
Documentary and oral historic evidence of purposeful genocide by hunger (Holodomor) during 1932-1933 in Ukraine
The research project “Documentary and oral historic evidence of purposeful genocide by hunger (Holodomor) during 1932-1933 in Ukraine” aims at examining the social and psychological consequences of the Holodomor, including: deformation of national traditions and devaluation of values, which had a negative influence on moral and ethical behavioral norms and caused conformity and spread a culture of fear that persists today. Little known documents will be examined, including those from the Luhansk region (Starobilsk, 1933) that indicate that all of the children of an orphanage there died of “hunger disease.”