Maniak Collection

HREC’s Maniak Collection contains valuable witness accounts gathered in the late 1980s by journalist Volodymyr Maniak. Maniak received thousands of accounts from survivors of the Holodomor after he published appeals for memoirs in Ukrainian newspapers. The HREC collection contains scans of the original letters and accounts, most of which are accompanied by a transcript. A selection of the accounts have also been translated into English.

Volodymyr Maniak was a central figure in bringing the existence of the Holodomor to the attention of the Ukrainian public in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Born on 6 November 1934 in Kryshtopivka, present-day Volochynsk raion, Khmelnytskyi oblast, Ukraine, he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Lviv University in 1956. Eventually he went on to a career as a writer and member of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. Over time Maniak developed serious misgivings about the version of history offered by the Soviet regime.

The Maniak Collection can be accessed through the Holodomor Digital Collection. It is developed in collaboration with Our Digital World, features extensive metadata and is fully searchable.

Some letters are in the process of being migrated from the current website version of the Maniak Collection which still contains around 100 unique letters.

A selection of the letters are also in the possession of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre and may be accessed here.