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НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ • Листопад 2023 13 Quoting Rhea Clyman In Kharkiv, Rhea first reported seeing signs of the famine in Ukraine: “We had been two days in Kharkov, but we were all anxious to get away. The great Ukrainian capital was in the grip of hunger. Beggars swarmed round the streets, the stores were empty, the workers’ bread rations had just been cut from two pounds a day per person to one pound and a quarter.” — Rhea G. Clyman , “Girl from New Toronto Begs Bread in Russia Father Lured by ‘Job’,” Evening Telegram , May 15, 1933, p. 3. “The villages were strangely forlorn and deserted. I could not understand at first. The houses were empty, the doors flung wide open, the roofs were caving in.... When we had passed ten, fifteen of these villages I began to understand. These were the homes of those thousands of expropriated peasants ― the kulaks ― I had seen working in the mines and cutting timber in the North.” — Rhea G. Clyman , “Children Lived on Grass Only Food in Farm Area Grain Taken from Them/Mile After Mile of De - serted Villages in Ukrain[e] Farm Area Tells Story of Soviet Invasion,” Evening Telegram , May 16, 1933, 1, p. 36. In the Ukrainian village of Isoomka, villagers asked her to take a petition back to the Kremlin on their behalf and that of the surrounding villages: “Tell the Kremlin we are starving; we have no bread! We are good, hard-working peasants, loyal Soviet citizens, but the vil - lage Soviet has taken our land from us. We are in the collective farm, but we do not get any grain. Everything, land, cows and horses, have been taken from us, and we have nothing to eat. Our children were eating grass in the spring ...” “I left this village with the determination that their petition should not only be heard in the Kremlin, but by the rest of the world also. Stalin was building Socialism in one country, and peasant children were eating grass outside the doors of his Socialist cities.” — Rhea G. Clyman , “Children Lived on Grass Only Food in Farm Area Grain Taken from Them/Mile After Mile of De - serted Villages in Ukrain[e] Farm Area Tells Story of Soviet Invasion,” Evening Telegram , May 16, 1933, 1, p. 36. When reading Clyman’s articles, and those by other journal - ists of this time, it is important to note that: • The term Holodomor was not used commonly until later decades. In Rhea Clyman’s writings she refers to the Holo - domor instead as the “Famine” or “Famine-lands.” • At the time of Clyman’s writings, central and eastern Ukraine were under Soviet rule, which meant under the con - trol of neighboring Communist Russia. It was common usage among journalists in the 1930s to refer to Ukraine as “Russia” and use the Russian spellings of Ukrainian city names since this was an expectation of Soviet officials and because much of Ukraine had been part of the Russian Empire prior to 1917. Thus, Rhea Clyman writes about the “Famine-lands of Rus - sia” when referring to her three-week trip driving south from Moscow through eastern Ukraine and the Kuban region of the north Caucasus, which was heavily settled by Ukrainians. Recommended Articles Written by Rhea Clyman about the Holodomor: “Dares Warning of Death to Discover Grim Secret of Russia’s Famine-Land: Woman Takes Unmapped, Hazardous Trail Despite Dissuasive Efforts of Soviet and Embassies.” Toronto Evening Telegram , May 10, 1933, pp. 1-2. UA Moderna Journal, 22.11.2014, http://uamoder - na.com/shafka-dok/balan-rhea-clyman-holodomor “Wife of Communist Boss Brags to Starved Wom- en About Her Well-Fed Lot: ‘Strange,’ Russian States to Canadian Girl, ‘Your Workers Eat Meat and White Bread.’” Toronto Evening Telegram , May 17, 1933, pp. 1 & 3. UA Moderna Journal, 22.11.2014, http://uamoder - na.com/shafka-dok/balan-rhea-clyman-holodomor Additional information about Rh ea Clyman: • McMaster, Geoff (November 22, 2019). “His - torian reveals story of Canadian journalist who chronicled horrors of Holodomor.” University of Alberta. • Feduschak, Natalia A. (April 19, 2017). “New Chapters in the Ukrainian-Jewish Relationship Explored at Canada’s Limmud FSU (Part 1) – Rhea Clyman.” Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE). • Montgomery, Marc (December 2, 2019). “The Canadian who exposed the Holodomor.” Radio Canada International (RCI). • Gladstone, Bill (April 14, 2019). “Rhea Clyman chronicled Soviet famine.” • Masis, Julie (June 18, 2017). “How a female Jewish journalist alerted the world to Ukraine’s silent starvation.” The Times of Israel . • Mosleh, Omar (November 23, 2019). “Meet the Jewish Canadian reporter who interviewed Nazi leaders and blazed a trail for women journalists.” The Toronto Star . • Balan, Jars. “Rhea Clyman: A Forgotten Canadi- an Eyewitness to the Hunger of 1932,” in Victoria Malko (ed.), Women and the Holodomor Genocide: Victims, Survivors, Perpetrators . Fresno: The Press at California State University, 2019, pp. 91-117. Editor’s note: Dr. Malko’s publication is a collec - tion of the papers presented at the Holodomor symposium of the same name, organized by UNWLA Branch 111 (Los Angeles) and held at California State University, Fresno, in October 2018. The UNWLA was a sponsor of the symposium. Sophia Isajiw is the assistant director of educa - tion of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) and a research associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta.
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