The Ministry of Internal Affairs presented an electronic map with cases of the Holodomor of 1932-1933

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine has posted a map on its website that reflects the geography of cannibalism cases that were recorded and documented during the Holodomor of 1932-1933 by Soviet punitive bodies. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reports this.

Last year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in cooperation with the Holodomor Museum, digitized relevant archival documents. The Ministry of Internal Affairs specialists developed an electronic map and placed electronic copies of archival criminal cases on it. The electronic resource illustrates the scale and horror of the crime of genocide committed against Ukrainians by the communist regime led by Stalin.

Inna Yashchuk, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, believes that familiarizing ourselves with this information is essential to grasp the profound despair and hopelessness felt by the hunger strikers, caused by the policies of the Moscow communist totalitarian regime. Consequently, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has decided to change the situation by revealing this harsh reality to the world.

State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Inna Yashchuk

Therefore, to the 1,022 criminal cases digitized in cooperation with our museum, the Ministry of Internal Affairs added information about more than 1,000 cannibalism cases that were destroyed in 1956. However, brief information was preserved in the so-called selective lists for destruction. Now, in total, there are almost 2,050 tragic stories.

“Today we are presenting a map of the Holodomor. Thus, we ensure compliance with the requirements of the law on access to the archives of the communist regime’s repressive units. As of now, both researchers and the public will have free access to digitized materials,” emphasised Inna Yashchuk.

The set of documents involved in the project is an original and powerful source for multidisciplinary research on the Holodomor.

Using electronic map tools, it is observed that the spread of cannibalism clearly coincides with the geography of the regions most affected by the Holodomor, which was previously identified by Ukrainian researchers. This once again confirms the peculiarities of the genocidal policy of the Soviet Empire towards Ukraine and refutes the Russian myth of an All-Union famine in the USSR.

Project participant, Head of the Analytical Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Communications Department, Andrii Zahorulko, presented the thematic section of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ portal on the Holodomor to the event participants and said that the Holodomor map also included data on cannibalism from testimonies published in the volume of the National Holodomor Memory Book for the Kyiv region. This allowed for the verification of some oral history testimonies and the identification of cases not recorded by the punitive authorities.

“On the map, we saw where grain procurement was the strictest. There is something to research here, we can make correlations with the peasant uprising movement, especially in the southern Kyiv region, the current Cherkasy region. Consequently, the published archival files are a valuable source for research,” he noted.

Mykhailo Kostiv, Head of the Department of Research on Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes of the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide, thanked the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in particular archivists, for their assistance and provision of proper conditions for digitizing archival files.

Head of the Department of Research on Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes of the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide Mykhailo Kostiv

Photo – Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.