The Soviet 1931-1933 Famines and the Ukrainian Holodomor

This seminal essay, that has gained wide recognition and has been published in the US, France, Italy, Russia and Ukraine, uses the many, outstanding studies published in recent years to sketch the outline of a new interpretation of the 1931-1933 Soviet famines and of the Ukrainian Holodomor. This interpretation takes into account both the general, and complex Soviet picture, and the undeniable relevance of the national question. The author thus furthered the understanding of the “Great Famine” and stimulated a debate that contributed to pulling down the wall that still stands between Ukrainian, Russian and Western students of the Soviet famines as well as the even taller and stronger one isolating these students from their colleagues studying the European twentieth century. At the end of the essay the author addresses the question of whether and in which sense the Ukrainian Holodomor belongs to the genocide category. He answers positively, but nevertheless remarks differences from the Jewish Holocaust and notes that the famine was not a “planned” genocide conceived in “Moscow” by Russians who were then also suffering from hunger, albeit less dramatically. Rather, Stalin and the communist party leaders decided to take advantage of a famine caused by their own blunders, but which they did not want or expect, to teach a lesson to peasants in general and Ukraine in particular. Their decision, taken in the fall of 1932, explains why the famine grew into aHolodomor. Insofar as this was therefore the consequence of conscious human policies, the term genocide can be used

The new Soviet archival sources

Les nouvelles sources fournies par les archives soviétiques. Hypothèses pour une évaluation critique. – Cet article présente plusieurs hypothèses sur les richesses et les insuffisances des sources fournies par les archives de la période qui précède 1953. Un bref aperçu des archives centrales de Moscou et de leur fonds est suivi d’une présentation des documents relatifs aux dirigeants du pays. Une cartographie des sources aujourd’hui accessibles précède un essai d’évaluation de l’ampleur des lacunes que l’on observe dans ce type de documents et de leurs causes. On analyse ensuite les raisons des biais que l’on peut rencontrer en étudiant ces documents, on examine avec une attention particulière les idéologies, les caractéristiques, les intérêts et les cultures des instances bureaucratiques soviétiques. Après une analyse spécifique de la documentation économique, la dernière partie de l’article soulève le problème des énormes lacunes constatées dans les documents relatifs à la vie et aux mentalités du peuple soviétique. L’abondance des rapports de la police politique ne peut pas compenser la rareté des documents produits au niveau individuel ni les traits spécifiques de leurs substituts (lettres aux journaux, etc.). Un bref exposé des solutions possibles aux nombreux problèmes qui tourmentent les spécialistes de l’histoire de l’URSS conclut l’article.The essay puts forward a number of hypotheses concerning the value and the weaknesses of the pre-1953 Soviet archival sources. A brief review of the Moscow central archives and of their holdings is followed by a discussion of the documentation pertaining to the people ruling the country. After mapping the territory of the sources that are today available, an attempt is made at evaluating the size and the relevance of the lacunae in this kind of documentation. The biases of the documents and their causes are then analyzed. Particular attention is here devoted to the ideologies, the characteristics, the interests and the cultures of the Soviet bureaucracies. After a specialized treatment of economic data, a final section raises the problem of the huge lacunae in the documentation pertaining to the life and the mentalités of the Soviet people. The abundance of political police reports cannot make up for the dearth of autonomously produced documents and the special features of their surrogates (letters to newspapers, etc.). A brief discussion of the possible remedies to the many problems plaguing the student of Soviet history concludes the essay

Nicolas Werth, L’ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs

This is an intelligent, humane and rich book, one from which even the specialist has much to learn. Werth carefully gathered together the exceptional documents unearthed after 1991 by Memorial researchers, to whom the book is properly dedicated, and ably combined them with those published by scholars such as Khaustov, as well as with what he himself discovered and learnt over the years, to produce the best book we have today on the Great Terror. Given the extraordinary quality of the documen..

Nicolas Werth, L’ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs

This is an intelligent, humane and rich book, one from which even the specialist has much to learn. Werth carefully gathered together the exceptional documents unearthed after 1991 by Memorial researchers, to whom the book is properly dedicated, and ably combined them with those published by scholars such as Khaustov, as well as with what he himself discovered and learnt over the years, to produce the best book we have today on the Great Terror. Given the extraordinary quality of the documen..

Les famines soviétiques de 1931-1933 et le Holodomor ukrainien

RésuméPour ébaucher l’esquisse d’une nouvelle interprétation des famines soviétiques de 1931-1933 et du Holodomor ukrainien, cet article se réfère aux études, nombreuses et remarquables, parues ces dernières années. Cette nouvelle hypothèse interprétative tient compte tant du contexte soviétique général que de l’importance indéniable de la question nationale. L’auteur espère ainsi faire progresser la compréhension de la « Grande famine » et stimuler un débat qui permette d’abattre le mur qui s’élève aujourd’hui entre les chercheurs ukrainiens, russes et occidentaux spécialistes des famines soviétiques et celui, plus haut encore, qui sépare ces historiens de leurs collègues spécialistes du xxe siècle européen. À la fin de l’article, l’auteur pose la question de savoir si le Holodomor ukrainien relève du génocide et si oui, pourquoi. Il y répond par l’affirmative, tout en soulignant ce qui le différencie de l’Holocauste juif, précisant que la famine ne fut pas un génocide « planifié », conçu à « Moscou » par les Russes, qui, eux aussi, souffraient alors de la faim, bien que de façon moins dramatique. Stalin et les dirigeants du parti communiste ont plutôt décidé de tirer parti de la famine -- causée par leurs propres erreurs, mais qu’ils n’avaient pas voulue, ni espérée -- pour faire la leçon aux paysans en général et à l’Ukraine en particulier. Cette décision, prise à l’automne de 1932, explique que la famine se soit transformée en Holodomor. Aussi, dans la mesure où le Holodomor résulte d’une politique appliquée consciemment, nous pouvons utiliser le terme de génocide.AbstractThe present article uses the many, outstanding studies published in recent years to sketch the outline of a possible new reading of the 1931-1933 Soviet famines and of the Ukrainian Holodomor. This reading takes into account both the general, and complex Soviet picture, and the undeniable relevance of the national question. The author hopes this way to further the understanding of the “Great famine” and to stimulate a debate that will contribute to pulling down the wall that stands today between Ukrainian, Russian and Western students of the Soviet famines as well as the even taller and stronger one isolating these students from their colleagues studying the European twentieth century. At the end of the essay the author addresses the question of whether and in which sense the Ukrainian Holodomor belongs to the genocide category. He answers positively, but nevertheless remarks differences from the Jewish Holocaust and notes that the famine was not a “planned” genocide conceived in “Moscow” by Russians who were then also suffering from hunger, albeit less dramatically. Rather, Stalin and the communist party leaders decided to take advantage of a famine caused by their own blunders, but which they did not want or expect, to teach a lesson to peasants in general and Ukraine in particular. Their decision, taken in the fall of 1932, explains why the famine grew into a Holodomor. Insofar as this was therefore the consequence of conscious human policies, the term genocide can be used

Avant-propos

Nous présentons ici des textes d’un colloque intitulé « Assessing the new Soviet archival sources » qui a eu lieu à l’Université de Yale aux États-Unis en mai 1997. Ce colloque a pu se tenir grâce au soutien d’un certain nombre d’institutions que nous tenons à remercier ici, notamment l’Université de Yale, le Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, l’Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici et la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Hormis les auteurs de cet avant-propos, un certain nombr..

Preface

This special issue of Cahiers du Monde russe aims to, albeit in a partial way, present the new approaches to the Soviet Union at war that have developed over the last twenty years thanks to newly available sources. Numerous works on the period cover unchartered territory in areas as diverse as civilians in the war, frontoviki profiles, representations of the conflict, the latter’s impact on the Soviet system, relationships between state and society, or even between men and women. However, the..

Preface

This special issue of Cahiers du Monde russe aims to, albeit in a partial way, present the new approaches to the Soviet Union at war that have developed over the last twenty years thanks to newly available sources. Numerous works on the period cover unchartered territory in areas as diverse as civilians in the war, frontoviki profiles, representations of the conflict, the latter’s impact on the Soviet system, relationships between state and society, or even between men and women. However, the..

Evaluation of gene expression profiles of pig skeletal muscle in response to energy content of the diets using human microarrays

The aim of the research was to compare gene transcription profiles of Musculus longissimus dorsi (MLD) between pigs fed diets with high (HED) or low (LED) energy contents. Two groups of 4 Casertana pigs were reared from 3 to 12 months of age in the same environmental conditions and fed HED or LED. In the HED, the ave rage daily gain and back fat thickness were significantly (P<0.05) higher than in LED pigs. Differential expression of genes in MLD of pigs fed diets with different energy density was assessed by a human high-density complementary DNA (cDNA) muscle microarray consisting of 4670 probes and further confirmed by quantitative real time RT-PCR analysis. Seven of the genes up-regulated in MLD of HED pigs were invo l ved in the glycolytic and ox i d a t i ve metabolism (phosphoglycerate mutase 2, glyc e ra l d e hyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, NADH dehydrogenase ubiquinone1 beta 9, muscle pyruvate kinase, enolase 3, muscle creatine kinase, isocitrate dehydrogenase 3 (NAD+) gamma) and four in the contractile apparatus (tropomyosin 1 alpha, troponin C2, fast, fast skeletal myosin light chain 2, troponin T3, skeletal, fast). Instead, HED diet reduced the level of expression of muscle proteins associated with slow fibre type (troponin T1, skeletal, slow, supervillin, myosin binding protein C, slow type, titin, myosin, heavy polypeptide 7, beta, calponin homology-associated smooth muscle) and signal transduction (SH3-binding domain protein 5-like, hypothetical protein FLJ21438, protein kinase cAMP-dependent, catalytic, rho guanine nucleotide exchange factor 15). The down-regulation of CTSB was also observed for HED group. From the results it can be assumed that high energy content of the diet influence physiological processes in the muscle tissue by switching slow fibres into fast reacting fibres and thus enhancing meat quality