EDITORIAL: James Mace, son of Ukraine (12/18/05)

EDITORIAL

James Mace, son of Ukraine

One month ago, at the time Ukraine was commemorating the solemn Day of Memory for Victims of Famines and Political Repressions, President Viktor Yushchenko conferred the Order of Yaroslav the Wise, second degree, on the American scholar James E. Mace. The honor was bestowed for personal contributions to the Ukrainian nation in revealing the truth to the world community about the 1932-1933 Great Famine in Ukraine, for fruitful research work and public activities. Sadly, the much-deserved medal was awarded posthumously. Dr. Mace died on May 3, 2004, at the much too young age of 52.

Who was this American who lived, and died, in Kyiv? Born in Oklahoma, he was a historian who was drawn - Ukrainians would say by fate - to study a land far from his own. We first wrote about him in 1983, when the Ukrainian American community and Ukrainians worldwide were marking the 50th anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-1933. He was then the junior collaborator of the eminent scholar Dr. Robert Conquest, who was working on the landmark book "The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine" (Oxford University Press, 1986).

Dr. Mace had become familiar with the causes and consequences of the Famine as a graduate student at the University of Michigan while working on his doctoral thesis about national communism. He told The Weekly in 1983 that he saw the Great Famine as Stalin's attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation by imposed starvation within the framework of dekulakization, that Stalin had decided to break once and for all the national consciousness of the peasantry. The Famine was, in his words, "the crime of the century that nobody's ever heard of." Dr. Mace said he was confident his research would unequivocally show that the Famine was in fact a premeditated attempt at genocide.

In that same interview with The Weekly (published on March 20, 1983), Dr. Mace said he hoped someday to write his own book on the Famine - "There's never going to be just one book on the Famine" - and that he would like to continue studying Ukrainian history.

That he surely did. Dr. Mace "will forever be associated with the Great Famine of 1932-1933," we wrote in the editorial that marked his passing last year. "More than anyone else, it was Dr. Mace who brought the Famine to the awareness of the public - in the United States, in Ukraine and around the globe..."

Dr. Mace continued to research, write, speak and otherwise expand and disseminate knowledge of Ukraine's genocide, the Holodomor. His paper "The Man-Made Famine of 1932-1933: What Happened and Why" became the lead article in The Ukrainian Weekly's book "The Great Famine in Ukraine: The Unknown Holocaust." (1983; second edition, 1988). In 1986 he became the staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Great Famine, which produced extensive documentation about the Famine and issued a report that characterized it as genocide committed by Soviet authorities.

Ultimately, Dr. Mace resettled in Ukraine, where he touched the nation through his work and his writings, including weekly columns in the newspaper Den (The Day). Oftentimes it seemed he understood the nature of Ukraine, which he called a "post-genocidal society, better than Ukrainians themselves did, and he searched for truth and justice in the name of the people of Ukraine.

Dr. Mace adopted Ukraine as his home, and Ukraine adopted him as its son. He was buried in Kyiv at the renowned Baikove Cemetery, the final resting place to many of Ukraine's heroes. James E. Mace became one of those heroes. The posthumous medal awarded by President Yushchenko is yet another recognition of that fact.

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