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5 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ • Листопад 2022 In one such conversation, I spoke with Yana Grinko, a curator at the National Museum of the Holodo - mor Genocide in Kyiv, whose prescient words I of - ten recall. More than five years ago, in May 2017, she explained to me: I am a child of independent Ukraine. The russian occupation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine were so unexpected for me. But when I remembered the history of the Holodomor, I understood that Ukrainians should have foreseen this. What is now hap - pening in Donbas and Crimea is not the end of russian encroachments toward Ukraine. Today, the russian president denies the fact of the Holodomor as a genocide. Actually, he denies the existence of the Ukrainian nation. Now, as we confront the question of genocide in Ukraine today and in the case of the Soviet-era Ukrainian Holodomor, some principles from aca - demic research can help to organize this conver - sation. Comparative genocide studies is an inter - disciplinary field dedicated to understanding this unique form of annihilating violence — as well as other forms of severe mass atrocities. The field has existed and grown since the term “genocide” was birthed in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust by Raphael Lemkin — a lawyer who also described the Holodomor as a Soviet genocide. The tragic, historically momentous origins of the category of genocide under international law — as well as the pain associated for all victims of geno - cides and other heinous crimes — can make this word contentious and easily politicized. The cate - gory of genocide is also important for a variety of professionals who engage this issue, ranging from politicians who support the passage of genocide resolutions, lawyers who prosecute these crimes, community activists who provide important memo - rial and moral conscience efforts, and academics who work to forecast and provide guidance to poli - cymakers in real-time about stopping these terrible acts. These differences of professional goals can also cause working definitions of the term “genocide” to be operationalized and used in different ways. As a genocide scholar working to understand the past to guide our genocide prevention actions to - day, I began my investigation into the Ukrainian Holodomor by examining Soviet archives seven years ago. I looked at both recently declassified documents as well as older collections published after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. By the time I finished my ac - ademic analysis, I had gathered every mention I could find of records to and from Joseph Stalin and his inner circle pertaining to Ukraine, publishing this analysis in the peer-reviewed academic journal Genocide Studies and Prevention in 2021. 1 In this article, I demonstrate an empirical, social science case that genocidal criteria are found in the Ukrainian Holodomor. When I began this project in 2015, I was aware of Jo - seph Stalin’s terrible crimes, but I needed to under - stand more about the specific patterns of violence present in this case. Many good-faith academic de - bates exist about defining genocides — arguments that are never intended to minimize the suffering of any victim group but that are intended to help us precisely classify violence so that our efforts to stop it might be tailored to the ground dynamics. This work gets com - plicated! Some genocide scholars like Adam Jones have noted that the field of academic genocide studies has suggested more than 40 working definitions of “gen - ocide,” which contributes to debates about whether specific cases meet academic definitions of genocide or whether some cases adhere to definitions codified in international law. In my work, I draw from other scholars who have re - viewed the field of genocide scholarship and point - ed out that, despite these debates, key areas of con - sensus are present. First, we look at a genocide as an unfolding process that is characterized by different patterns across time but that has at least one key mo - ment of genocidal motivation overlapping with geno - cidal actions (referred to as mens rea and actus reus in international law). Many historians of the Ukrainian Holodomor are careful to note the linkage of events in 1932–1933 with other Ukrainian famines and vi - olence in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. For example, the well-known Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchyts- ky has similarly emphasized genocidal intentionality in the Holodomor, although he dates its roots to the wider all-Union famine in 1927. These historiographies are very important for understanding the full context of Stalinist and other persecutions of Ukrainians. Yet as the purpose of my research is to examine the overlap of genocidal motives and actions, I focused my study 1 Hook, Kristina (2021) "Pinpointing Patterns of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach to Violence Escalation in the Ukrainian Holodomor," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal : Vol. 15: Iss. 2: 10–36. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911- 9933.15.2.1809
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