Under Gorbachev, a new critique of Stalinism was initiated in the official media that included rehabilitation of the victims of the 1930s Purges, and formerly taboo subjects were increasingly challenged. However, Ukrainian journalists were fearful of taking such a step without explicit written permission from the authorities.
1 In 1966, Kul’chyts’kyi notes, the then Ukrainian party leader Petro Shelest reportedly gave permission orally for the Famine to be mentioned in an article to be published in the newspaper for Ukrainians abroad, News from Ukraine. Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi has chronicled the background to the crucial decision to end this secrecy. 24 (June 1998): 4ĢIn the former Soviet Union, the Famine was a state secret for decades.
HAND OF FATE 2 QUESTING MACE PRO
As noted in Chapter 1, the Famine has generated an emotional debate in the West, and no consensus has resulted. In part, these disputes illustrate the continuing relevance of the Soviet period to life in Ukraine, despite the material and practical steps taken in forging an independent state. Yet, although the Famine is becoming part of Ukraine’s new national history, its progress to that status has been uneven, littered with public disputes and academic dissension, and with no consensus among historians as to its scale or even its origins. It brought about a period of intensive suffering on a hitherto unimagined scale. 1For independent Ukraine, no event has greater significance in the history of the developing nation-state than the Famine of 1932-33.