Between politicization and historicization: the Holodomor in Ukrainian historiography

During the last 20 years, the 1932-33 famine has been a focal point of scholarly and political debate. The impetus leading to reflection on the Holodomor was provided by a commission of enquiry set up by the US Congress, and this contributed to a new self-understanding on the part of Ukrainian society. There was a close relationship between academic investigation of the scale of the catastrophe, its causes, and the motives that led to it, and the demand for the dissolution of the USSR and the question of a new social order in Ukraine. Ukrainian and international historians have done detailed work on the political, economic, and social aspects of the mass extermination, and have posed in new ways the questions of guilt, international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide, and expiation.