The Role of the Holodomor in Soviet and European History

While the Holodomor's causes, dynamics, and tragic consequences in the 1930s have been reasonably well ascertained over the past decades, the comparative context for that decade and the impact of the Holodomor on subsequent Ukrainian and Soviet history have yet to be explored in depth. Professor Graziosi will provide a comparative context, taking into account dekulakization, the Kazakh famine, and the famines in the Northern Caucasus, the Kuban, and the Volga region, with particular reference to the German Volga Republic. The comparative impact of these events on the Soviet Union for subsequent decades will then be analyzed, especially but not solely as far as the peasant, national, and demographic questions are concerned. From his discussion about the impact of  knowledge, ignorance, and neglect of the famines on Western Europe's historical, political, and intellectual milieux, Professor Graziosi will then address their "rediscovery," which started in the 1980s, and will analyze the role this rediscovery has played in the countries of the European Union after 1992 and on through the years following Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.

 

Andrea Graziosi is Emeritus professor of history at the Università di Napoli Federico II and a past President of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History and of Italy’s National Authority for the Evaluation of Universities and Research. He is an associé of the Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre- européen (Paris) and a fellow of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. as well as a research advisor to the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. His publications include Histoire de l’URSS (Paris, 2011; Bologna, 2012; Moscow, 2016); Lettres de Kharkov. La famine en Ukraine, 1932-33 (Paris 1989 and 2013; Torino 1991; Kyiv 2007); The Great Soviet Peasant War, 1917-1933 (Cambridge, Ma, 1997; Napoli, 1998; Moscow, 2008); Guerra e rivoluzione in Europa, 1905-1956 (Bologna, 2001; Kyiv; and Moscow, 2005); The Battle for Ukrainian (Cambridge, MA, 2017) with Michael Flier; and Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept (Montreal 2022), with Frank Sysyn. He founded and coedited in Moscow, up until 2010, the series Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii, and is a regular contributor on foreign policy in major Italian newspapers and media.