No Novel for Ordinary Men? Representation of the Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the Holodomor in Ukrainian Novels

The article focuses on cultural representation of the rank-and-file perpetrators of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. While it is generally accepted that most perpetrators of mass violence are ordinary people with rather banal motives, the rank-and-file perpetrators of the Holodomor remain on the margins of cultural memory in Ukraine. When they become the focus of artistic expression, perpetrators are often framed according to several distinct modalities based on the vesting of agency. In samvydav novels this agency dispersed: some perpetrators are indoctrinated, some settle scores, many simply follow orders, whereas authors in post-Soviet Ukraine and in the diaspora tend to displace agency by locating it with the savage, ethnically different Other or locals influenced by the Other. In Soviet novels, by contrast, the agency is embraced. The article traces and analyses these modalities following a sequential chronological trajectory.
Holodomor Research and Education Consortium