More than 90 years have passed since the tragic events of the Famine of 1921-1922. The dreadful deaths of thousands hardworking, righteous farmers, their spouses, children, grandchildren and their elderly parents murdered by the Bolsheviks’ policy is still a shock for every honest and intelligent Ukrainian.
A deep study of the famine’s reasons and its bitter consequences for Ukraine and Ukrainian people is of great importance today, due to the need for consolidating the nation and forming a civil society.
Thus, the National Museum “The Memorial in Commemoration of Famines’ Victims in Ukraine” in assistance with the State branch archive of the Security Service of Ukraine have arranged the following exhibition, being the first attempt of a complete and profound reflection of events of the 1920s, a collection of various documents and exhibits. The peculiarity of this exhibition is the combination of documents and agricultural tools, art works and sculptures creating a full and exhaustive overview of the past.
The “Famine of 1921-1922: Reasons and Consequences” exhibition consists of three parts. It includes archive materials and documents extracts of the information boards, information posters and a film. The selected materials explain the whole idea of the social and economic policy of the Soviet government in the early 1920s –from the “Red Terror” and procurement and up to the “New Economic Policy” and the agricultural tax in kind. In the meantime, they show the role of military units in pushing down national resistance in Ukrainian countryside and products confiscation processes. The following documents reveal the cynicism of the press writing about “fighting starvation” in the Volga region and demonstratively keeping silence about the humanitarian catastrophe in the Ukrainian SSR, as if the higher officials knew nothing about it.
Special attention should be paid to the archive materials revealing the Secret Services operative reports – information overviews, agents’ messages, statistics illustrating the process of oppressing the national liberation movement in Ukraine, ruining the natural course of things – the so-called “dekulakizations” meaning robbing well-to-do farmers, deporting them to distant regions and depriving them of their rights to vote. An important part of the exhibition is dedicated to the ways and methods of sending humanitarian aid to the starving ones from different organizations and individuals – mainly from other countries.
The exhibition will be accessible for the visitors in the Memory Hall of the Museum from February 20th till April 15th, 2013.