Through an extensive analysis of newspapers, political speeches and protests, “Starving Ukraine” by Serge Cipko examines both Canada’s reporting of the Holodomor, the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933, and the country’s response. In doing so, Dr. Cipko alludes to how public domestic reaction to crises impacts how those events play out on the world stage. The book also explains Canada’s role in raising the Famine issue during the USSR’s acceptance into the League of Nations.
Canadians came to learn about the Holodomor through many sources, though some of the reports were found to be contradictory. Meanwhile the perpetrators of the Holodomor, the Soviet government, denied that the Famine ever happened, or denied that it was a systematic targeting of the Ukrainian people.
Myrna Kostash, author of “Bloodlines” and “All of Baba’s Children,” wrote: “After reading ‘Starving Ukraine,’ no one can say they ‘didn’t know.’ Indeed, this compelling, pitiless, but always readable account of the revelation of the Great Famine, engineered by the Stalinist state, reveals the breadth and depth of public discussion across Canada about what was happening in Soviet Ukraine. Our newspapers and magazines, left and right, town halls and Legion halls, legislatures and even the Alberta Wheat Pool all weighed in, in an often heart-breaking, often nerve-wracking, and always dramatic discourse about the ransom paid in human suffering to raisons d’état cruelly masquerading as Revolution.”
Prof. Cipko is coordinator of the Ukrainian Diaspora Studies Initiative for the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He is the author of “Ukrainian in Argentina, 1897-1950,” and co-author of “One-Way Ticket: The Soviet Return-to-the-Homeland Campaign, 1955-1960.”
Readers may obtain copies of the book at booksellers and online retailers. Additional information can be found on the publisher’s website, https://uofrpress.ca, by e-mail [email protected]; or telephone, 306-585-4758.