The tragedy of the Holodomor-genocide: television content of Ukraine in the 1990s and 2010s

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the research is an attempt to expose the television content in Ukraine in the 1990s and2010s, the ways it presented the events and evaluations of the Holodomor genocide tragedy of 1932–1933.Scientific novelty. In the article, for the first time in Ukrainian historiography, various aspects of coverage of the Holodomortopic in the mass media in the period after 1991 were investigated. The main attention was paid to television, which had its ownnotable features. First of all, these are waves of etheric activity that changed with the state of amorphousness, and vice versa.Such dynamics were determined by the perturbations of the country’s political leadership and its, so to speak, «personal vision» of history. And the speculative use of the Holodomor theme for political purposes. Sometimes it had a positive effect, as at the times of third president V. Yushchenko. Conclusion. It has been evidenced that during the «orange rule», there was a rise in an unprecedented public awareness of the crimes of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Against that background, the reestablishment of the historical memory of the present Ukrainians was obvious. Synchronously, the formation of a request for in-depth knowledge of this historical period was observed. In general, it was a constructive state policy aimed at promoting the development of civil society in Ukraine. The author proposed a working hypothesis that the processes then became irreversible. Even with the change in the attitude of the next political leadership of the country during the presidency of V. Yanukovych toward the Holodomor, a critical mass of the civil society still remained. Having involved information sources, some of which were first introduced into scientific circulation, the author offers a wide range of views, interpretations, and impressions of the television content. If desired, they can be classified according to certain criteria, in particular, divided into pro-Russian and pro-European (i.e., democratic). The former conditionally reflect the historical memory of the executioners, therefore the «creators» of the Holodomor genocide, the latter represent their victims. At the same time, the historical memory presented in the media, namely, television, of Ukraine in the 1990s and 2010s was significantly influenced by the momentary political situation.