Transformation of the Image of Cities in the Years of Holodomor-Genocide (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia as the example)

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of the image of Ukrainian cities during the Holodomor on the basis of narrative and oral historical sources. It is demonstrated on the example of selected cities that the Holodomor organised by the leadership of the CPSU(b) and the USSR government was carried out not only in the Ukrainian countryside, but also in the cities of the USSR and covered all social groups of the USSR population. The analisis is focused on three cities: Kharkiv was selected for analysis as it was the capital of the USSR, while Kyiv was chosen as a city with an influential cultural and social status, Zaporizhzhia was chosen as a centre that was being developed and which played an important role as an outpost in the context of industrialisation.

The image of the city for its residents underwent significant changes during the Holodomor. According to the testimony of eyewitnesses of those events, among the new phenomena that changed the appearance of cities, one should first of all include the long queues for bread, which people occupied since the night, the bodies of those who died of hunger, first of all, peasants who were looking for salvation, became a commonplace of city life. The city streets, as eyewitnesses testified, were filled with homeless people begging for alms, crime was growing rapidly, which was manifested in numerous thefts and robberies. The communist regime, denying the genocide it had committed, tried by all means to erase references to the Holodomor from the city space. Therefore, today it is a matter of principle not only to investigate this crime in detail, but also to establish the places of mass burials of the dead.