Memory, Narratives, and Information Warfare: Sociocultural and Historical Dimensions of the Holodomor

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Analysis of historical memory by contemporary Holodomor researchers in Ukraine represents interest for the Ukrainian and international strata because they influence social consciousness, deal with political manipulations, conflicts and reconciliation among the nations. Implementation of the results of such researches can contribute to preservation of memory about the genocides, wars and other calamities and to their prevention in the future. The Holodomor illustrates how the generations of survivors and their descendants kept memory about the genocide despite total soviet ban to recall the famine, leaving only a limited space for the narratives and memoirs among Ukrainian diaspora abroad. Soviet regime employed various propagandistic methods: censorship, manipulations, disinformation, liquidation of historical sources, discredit of survivors and researchers. These strategies continue to develop during ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, including Holodomor memorials’ demolishing and implementation of the Soviet narratives on occupied territories. Conceptually new is analysis of Artists’ role in the propagandistic campaigns during the Holodomor, their forced employment to agitation and influence over collective memory. The survival strategies are analyzed, in particular, usage of non-traditional food and its influence over individual and collective memory. Thanks to oral history, archival sources and artists’ memoirs this panel illustrates how memory about the Holodomor was formed, deformed and erased in the Soviet period and ongoing informational and conventional warfare of Russia against Ukraine.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Tetiana Boriak, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

Papers

• Taste of Survival: Unconventional Food in Holodomor Oral History - Tetiana Perga, National Academy of Sciences (Ukraine) / TU Berlin (Germany)

• Artists in the Propaganda Campaigns of the Authorities in the Villages During the Holodomor - Olga Ryabchenko, U of Cambridge (UK)

• Holodomor Oral History: Resistance to Denial and Transformation of Memory - Tetiana Boriak, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

• War with the Memory of the Holodomor in the Context of the Modern Russia-Ukraine War - Natalia Kuzovova, Kherson State U (Ukraine)

Discussant

• Yana Prymachenko, Inst of History NASU (Ukraine)