Political repressions as the way of influence on the population were used by the Soviets all the time. In the 1930s repressions were mass and were used against all categories of population. The first victims of the regime were the ones with an ideology different to the Soviet power. The artificial elimination of people from professional and social activity and killing them had destructing consequences to the whole Ukrainian nation.
However, the violation was not enough for Stalin and his surrounding and they started it again. In 1930-1931 Ukraine was pushed into another famine. The forced collectivization of private peasants land, strengthening of the economic and administrative pressure and repressions resulted into a total “cleaning” of the not fully occupied territories by means of grain procurement campaigns in 1932-1933. The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic was the first to experience the cynicism of the regime and the one that lost the greatest number of people. For decades, the truth about the awful crimes of the Soviets was kept in secret. Only when Ukraine gained independence the nation got an opportunity to restore historical justice for millions of the repressed compatriots.
The aim of the exhibition “Repressions in the Time of Famine” is to present the legislative and normative basis and the mechanism of repressions against peasants in the USSR, to reveal the ways of punitive policy and to systematize the statistics as for the number and age of the repressed, to answer the question whether the attitude of the population to Stalin’s totalitarian regime was negative.
The exhibition “Repressions in the Time of Famine” consists of 3 parts. It includes archive materials and documents at the exhibition stands, posters and a video installation. The presented documents characterize different forms and methods of the repressive policies in the USSR – dekulakization, deportation and exile, fining and confiscation of property, deprivation of voting rights and the ban on receiving passports, exclusion from the Communist Party and criminal prosecution for political motives. Important parts of the exhibition are pictures and sculptures depicting the sufferings of millions of our ancestors by means of art.
The exhibition runs in the Memory Hall of “The Memorial in commemoration of famines’ victims in Ukraine” from the15th of May till the 29th of June 2013.
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| Repressions against peasants in 1932-1933 | “Fighting with Kulaks” |
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| Ideological Indoctrination of Peasantry |
Deprivation of the Right to Vote and Passportization |
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| Repressions Against Independent Farmers |
Arrests and Imprisonments |
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| “Party purge” | The “Orikhiv Сase” |
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| “Counter-revolutionists” |
Rehabilitated by History |