ОПРИЯВЛЕННЯ МЕХАНІЗМУ ГЕНОЦИДУ: ДОКУМЕНТАЛЬНІ ДЖЕРЕЛА VS ДЖЕРЕЛА ОСОБОВОГО ПОХОДЖЕННЯ ПРО ГОЛОДОМОР В УКРАЇНІ 1932–1933 РР.

Abstract

Totalitarian states control information space, watching closely the appearance of only that information that does not contradict an official one. In this way, on the one hand, “classical archival” sources had been preserved, with content controlled by the totalitarian regime. On the other hand, ignored and repressed society members who had been persecuted or committed crimes against humanity remain unheard. Taking into account often liquidation by the dictators not only direct witnesses of their crimes, but also indirect ones (documents), it turned out that it is oral history is often the only proof able to be used in a court against the guilty in genocide. Mostly documents of local level have been preserved after archivocide in the Ukrainian archives of the party organs. These sources contain facts mostly «allowed» by the party. «Unallowed» facts as part of Holodomor history have to be searched for first of all in oral history. The goal of the research is to review some thematic aspects of Holodomor from the pint of view of their correlation in archival sources and oral history. Because of intentional liquidation of the sources of the Holodomor epoch (1930s), we do not have many facts from specialists in agriculture, medicine, education. Such facts, as well as a set of others, often absent or partly present in archival sources, can be found in oral history. Therefore, present in archival sources about the famine spots are often covered by oral history testimonies. Besides, sources of personal origin suggest vision from «below», often correlating with information blocks of archival sources: level of mortality, expressed in description of amount of corpses on the streets; methods of food confiscation; fate of kids; escape from a village as a survival strategy; black boards. Such parallel reading allows «revealing» of the sources produced by the Soviet totalitarian state.