Interview: The Holodomor. A Wound in Contemporary Ukrainian Identity
The Interview for Orientemedio News (Interviewer Manuel Férez Gil)
Q. To start the interview, we would like to know a little about your biography, studies, and professional career.
A. I was born and raised in Ukraine. Similarly to many other Ukrainians, my first formal degree has little to do with my current profession. I completed a Master’s in Management at Kyiv National Economic University. However, right after I graduated, I started to pursue a career in a completely different field—graphic design. I worked as an editorial designer and also created art projects on the side.
At some point, I realized the necessity of continuing my education and getting a degree in visual communications. In 2017, I applied for the United States Fulbright Graduate Student Program, and a year after that, I traveled to the United States to pursue a degree in Visual Communication Design at the University of Notre Dame. While there, I conducted a series of independent research projects. I was the only international student from Eastern Europe in my department. I almost immediately realized that even the most socially and culturally aware Americans know very little about my country and that part of the world in general.
As a result, I spent my graduate studies creating work that informs people about the history of Eastern Europe and more specifically about the crimes committed by the USSR. During this time, I created several projects, including a series of posters called HØLØDØMØR that walk the audience through the history and consequences of this genocide. I also created an animated short film entitled My Name is Eugenia Sakevych-Dallas. The film shows the incredible strength and unbreakable spirit of a woman who survived the Holodomor and the Second World War. She later became a successful model in Europe and the United States.
Yuliya and her series of collages, Rivne, Ukraine, 2017
Q. When we talk about the Holodomor, we refer not only to a historical event but also to an identity mark of the Ukrainian nation. For our readers who have not yet heard about the Holodomor, it would be good if you did a brief review of it.
A. The Holodomor was a genocidal famine of Ukrainians orchestrated by the Soviet Union under Stalin that occurred in 1932-1933. The word “Holodomor” derives from the Ukrainian “moryty holodom” which means "to kill by starvation".
After the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine became an independent country. However, it was almost immediately conquered by the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin forced Ukrainian farmers to give up their private property, land, and livestock and join state-owned collective farms. Most farmers regarded this as a return to serfdom and refused to join. The Soviets imprisoned, deported, and executed wealthy farmers and eventually everyone who resisted. Their families were evicted, and their property was confiscated in the name of the state. Around half a million people in Ukraine were dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to uninhabited areas in Siberia without food or shelter. The rebellion in Ukraine intensified but was brutally suppressed by the authorities. As a result, by the end of the 1920s, most of the rural population of Ukraine was forced to join the collective farms.
In the early 1930s, the Soviet authorities in Moscow increased a grain production quota for Ukraine so that it was impossible to fulfill. The grain was supposed to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance Salin’s industrialization plans. To ensure the fulfillment of these quotas, the USSR passes a series of decrees. One of them—“the law of five ears of wheat”—made taking even the smallest amount of “collective farm ‘property” punishable by death or ten years imprisonment. If someone was caught with just a few ears of wheat, they were likely to be shot on the spot. Even if they were children.
Practically speaking, this law prohibited people from owning any food. As a result, those in rural areas starved and died in droves. To prevent them from traveling to cities in search of food, the Soviets implemented a system of internal passports and closed the borders. In June 1933, at the height of the famine, 28,000 people starved to death every day. Nearly a third of them were children under 10. Stalin denied the famine in Ukraine and continued exporting millions of tons of grain, which would be more than enough to save those who starved.
The Holodomor is undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. This genocide caused irreparable trauma to the Ukrainian people. The Soviets, and later the Russians always denied the Holodomor, and the perpetrators were never punished.
Yuliya with her work on display at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 2022
Q. You are a modern Ukrainian artist and, like many Ukrainian artists, you face a double challenge: on the one hand, to separate yourself from being classified as a "Russian artist" or from the "post-Soviet" world and, on the other hand, to make your identity known as a modern Ukrainian national. How do these two challenges intersect in your work?
A. For me, as well as for many Ukrainians, it is painful that Russia has appropriated Ukrainian art and artists for centuries. Long before the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire carried out cultural expansion by appropriating painters, writers, poets, and musicians who were not only born in Ukraine but also focused their work on Ukrainian history, people, traditions, and everyday life. Some prominent examples are the painters Ivan Aivazovski, Ilia Repin, Kazimir Malevich, and Aleksandra Ekster, writers Mykola Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, and many others. This cultural appropriation was so successful that until this day, Western authors and art critics falsely define these artists and their work as Russian.
I, however, have not faced this challenge personally. Although I was born in the USSR, I grew up understanding that the Soviet Union was an oppressor that had conquered my country and people for decades. My grandmother was exiled to Siberia as a child along with her mother and siblings after their father was arrested and killed by the Soviets in the aftermath of World War II. She spent years in Omsk, Siberia, doing hard manual labor and struggling to survive. Only after the death of Stalin in the late 1950s was she able to return to Ukraine.
Hence, I would never allow my work to be labeled or misidentified as post-Soviet or Russian. Moreover, my work directly contradicts false historical narratives created by Russia to support their false political aims in the Ukrainian war.
Film My Name is Eugenia Sakevych-Dallas on viewing at the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine
Q. As with other genocides and/or massacres (the Armenian genocide, and the Jewish Shoa, to mention the two best known) there are two ways to approach them: from the particular, that is, they were events that a specific people/nation suffered. , or from the universal: they were abuses that human beings did against other human beings. How to place the Holodomor and your artistic creation in these two poles?
A. I believe that raising awareness about the genocide in general serves the cause of promoting social justice and human rights. I have often said in presentations about my work that only by understanding and condemning the crimes of the past can we prevent such crimes from occurring in the future. However, it's important to understand that the Holodomor and other repressions in the Soviet Union had a specific purpose—they suppressed the national identities of the various ethnic groups that made up the Soviet Union. In addition to the Holodomor, there was also the famine in Kazakhstan in the 1930s, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, and numerous other repressions.
Therefore, in addition to promoting the broader cause of human rights, I hope that my work helps Western audiences learn about the oppression of ethnic groups by the Soviet Union and its successor—Russia. I also hope that it provides context for people to understand the modern-day war in Ukraine.
Q. What have been the exhibitions and/or conferences in which you have participated and that have left a mark on you as an artist?
A. Ironically, one of the exhibitions that has had a significant influence on me as a visual communication designer is one that I’ve never been to :). While researching how genocide should be communicated to audiences that have never experienced such events, I stumbled upon an exhibition that fascinated me—the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. It’s designed in a way that not only informs the audience about the events of the Rwandan genocide but also inspires them to take steps toward preventing future genocides. This approach is the basis of a framework called the Inzovu Curve. The name of the curve is inspired by its shape, which is reminiscent of an elephant trunk (the word ‘inzovu’ means ‘the elephant’ in the local Rwanda language Kinyarwanda). This framework maps the viewer’s journey in a way that they encounter and reflect upon the atrocities of the genocide by learning the stories of incredible human strength and bravery. These stories, albeit tragic and horrific, have the potential to prompt the audience to contribute to the cause of genocide prevention via sharing information or donating. As a designer and artist, I was greatly inspired by this approach and started to utilize it in my work.
Yuliya talks about her work at the University of Ottawa, Canada, 2022
Q. The Holodomor remains unknown in Latin America, a region that has suffered all kinds of imperialism and colonialism throughout its history. Why, in your opinion, is it that the Holodomor is still unknown in our region, and what role could artists like you play in making it known and raising awareness about it?
A. Though there are likely a multitude of reasons why the Holodomor is largely unknown in Latin America, and in the Americas in general, one reason in particular stands out to me. That is, the Holdomor was carefully concealed by the Soviet Union during and long after it occurred. These efforts were so successful that many people in the Americas have never even heard the word ‘Holodomor’, despite this genocide being one of the deadliest in history.
From the very beginning of the Holodomor in the 1930s, Soviet officials denied a famine was taking place and refused all offers of international aid. All newspapers and mass media in the USSR belonged to the state and were strongly regulated. The Soviet press could not report on the famine, and it was never acknowledged in Soviet historical accounts. Travel into and within the USSR was restricted making it difficult to document the tragedy. Most of the photos of Ukraine published in the 1930s were officially approved by the USSR. They were propaganda made to portray collective farming in a positive light. Any photographs that do show the death and starvation that took place were taken in secret and some were smuggled out of Ukraine. This limited photographic evidence did not bring immediate international attention to the famine. The Soviet government controlled foreign journalists’ access to the country. Those few journalists who were able to enter the USSR and attempted to speak out about the famine were deported, persecuted, and criticized by state-controlled media. Journalists who depicted the USSR in a positive light were given extra privileges, such as access to important officials and luxury housing accommodations. Archival sources confirm that most Western governments were well aware of the famine in Ukraine at the time. However, they chose not to interfere with the internal affairs of the USSR. This policy of non-interference likely contributed to a sense of impunity among Soviet leaders. In the later 1930s, the Soviets began repressing those who attempted to speak out about what happened through executions or threats of violence. After the beginning of WW2, Western governments considered the Soviet Union an important ally, and Stalin was considered a ‘necessary evil’. This perception persists to the current day, leading to the general obscurity of the Holodomor and a low awareness of the crimes committed by the USSR in the Americas.
However, it's important to note that awareness and interest in this subject are on the rise. Many Latin American countries have formally recognized the Holodomor as a genocide. Numerous authoritative historical accounts of the crimes of the USSR are now available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. From my experience, people are interested in learning about the history of Eastern Europe and the crimes committed by the USSR, as it is particularly relevant to the present-day war in Ukraine. In my work, I utilize interactive components like augmented reality to communicate and explain complex historical issues to unfamiliar audiences in an accessible manner. I believe that modern artists have a key role to play in raising awareness about numerous crimes against humanity.
