Maps and demography:

“In reality, the presence of famine was clear, but everything was done to conceal it.” (demographer Jacques Vallin, 2012)

~ MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine Great Famine

Project by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute together with partners in Ukraine. A variety of maps from Thematic Map Gallery of Ukraine clearly illustrate where the greatest loss of life occurred in relation to a variety of factors such as level of collectivization, blacklisting, and many other economic, administrative and geographic characteristics.

Of particular interest is the “Famine Web Map” which allows users to layer, sequence, and otherwise integrate the geographic displays. Also included: the “Famine Story Map Journal,” a brief chronology of the Holodomor through maps, photos, and narrative; and an article by Serhii Plokhii, “Mapping the Great Famine”, a detailed analysis comparing a variety of data as distributed geographically, in the context of archival documentation.

~ Ukrainian Lands During the Interwar Years.

Map depicts Ukraine with its geographic neighbors as existed between WWI and WWII. Both the political borders and Ukrainian ethno-linguistic boundaries are delineated. Also available on p. 588 of: A History of Ukraine; the land and its peoples, 2d ed.,by Paul Robert Magocsi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2010.

~ Average famine related daily losses of human life each month during 1933, in Ukraine.

These are numbers over and above the normal death rate.

Courtesy: Oleh Wolowyna (Univ. North Carolina), 2016. Based on latest research done by the US/Ukraine demographic team of Nataliia Levchuk, Omelian Rudnytskyi, Pavlo Shevchuk, and Oleh Wolowyna.

~“Demography of a man-made human catastrophe: The case of massive famine in Ukraine 1932–1933,” by Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Oleh Wolowyna, Pavlo Shevchuk, Alla Kovbasiuk, in Canadian Studies in Population, 42, no. 1-2, 2015. Pp. 53-80.

A scholarly presentation on the estimates of 1932–34 famine direct losses for rural and urban areas of Ukraine, and how and why the dynamics varied. Helpful introduction provides basic background history of the Holodomor, the parameters that specifically define the article’s data, and the difficulties in obtaining accurate numbers.

~ Mortality and Causes of Death in 20th-Century Ukraine, by France Mesle, Jackues Vallin, V. Shkol’nikov, S.I. Pyrozhkov, and Serguei Adamets. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012.

Particularly, Chapter 2: “The Crisis of the 1930s”, by Jacques Vallin (pp. 13-38).

Best understood by demographers; it demonstrates the difficulties in attempting to derive accurate estimates of population loss due to the famine in Ukraine in the face of highly unreliable data from that time. As the authors state: “In reality, the presence of famine was clear, but everything was done to conceal it.” (p. 13).

*From: Meslé, France, et al. Mortality and Causes of Death in 20th-Century Ukraine. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012. Chap. 2, P. 36.

*From: Meslé, France, et al. Mortality and Causes of Death in 20th-Century Ukraine. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012. P. 17.

*May not be reproduced for public distribution without permission from publisher.

“Famine losses in Ukraine in 1932 to 1933 within the context of the Soviet Union,” by Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Oleh Wolowyna and Pavlo Shevchuk; in: Famines in European Economic History: The Last Great European Famines Reconsidered. London: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 192-222.

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