Toward the transnational memory of Holodomor: The famine commemorative genre and the Ukrainian diaspora

Abstract

This article traces the emergence of the public memory of Holodomor by focusing on the history of Famine commemorations outside of the Soviet Union from 1933 till 1983. By following Jeffrey K. Olick’s call for a dialogical analysis of memory genres, it attempts to unravel the complex cultural mechanism through which commemorations of the Famine evolved not only through their interactions with immediate political context but also in response to earlier commemorations. Two Famine commemorative genres informed this process: that of national mourning and that of anti-Soviet protest. Drawing on my multi-sited and multilingual research, this article argues that the process of creating the public memory of the Holodomor has been transnational, multidirectional, and path-dependent. The framing of the Famine as the Holodomor, a genocide against Ukrainians, was an outcome of negotiations that occurred across time and space. Ukrainian diaspora members, it is further argued, played a prominent role in this process.