[Aaus-list] March 7 - STATE VIOLENCE AND CONTROL OF INFORMATION IN UKRAINE (THE 1920S-1930S): NEW ARCHIVAL FINDINGS AND METHODOLOGIES

[ma2634 at columbia.edu]

STATE VIOLENCE AND CONTROL OF INFORMATION IN UKRAINE (THE
1920S-1930S): NEW ARCHIVAL FINDINGS AND METHODOLOGIES

Friday, March 7, 2014
12:00pm

Marshall D. Shulman Seminar Room (1219 IAB)

Please join the Harriman Institute for a discussion with Serhii
Plokhy, the Mykhailo Hrushevskyi Professor of Ukrainian history at
Harvard University, Matthew Pauly, an Assistant Professor in the
Department of History at Michigan State University, and Olga
Bertelsen, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia
University.

Serhii Plokhy, the Mykhailo Hrushevskyi professor of Ukrainian history
at Harvard University and the director of the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute, will discuss the Soviet collectivization policies
in Ukraine and the Harvard Mapa Project, the graphic identification of
historical data in a GIS (Geographic Information System) format. The
Harvard Mapa Project constructed a series of interactive maps, a
digital atlas of Ukraine that makes it possible to analyze empirical
and statistical data from a spatial perspective. This methodology
allows researchers to compare political, economic, demographic,
environmental, and other indicators in relation to a given
administrative unit, such as an oblast (region), raion (district) and
so on. "Mapping" Soviet imperial tactics encourages innovative data
analysis and helps answer questions about the Holodomor, the Ukrainian
famine of 1932-33, one of the biggest political crimes in world history.

Matthew Pauly, an assistant professor in the Department of History at
Michigan State University, will provide insight into Soviet cultural
politics and control of the intelligentsia (teachers) in Ukraine. He
will discuss Soviet Ukrainization policies in the context of the
mounting group criminal cases that were launched by the Soviet secret
police in 1929 against an alleged nationalist conspiracy hatched by
the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The efforts of leading Ukrainizers had
been condemned, distorted, and criminalized. His research analyzes the
motivations for Soviet charges that linked Ukrainian teachers with the
dissemination of nationalist ideology among the Ukrainian youth. The
purging operations among teachers were designed to ensure effective
control of the peripheries and rural/urban union in the republic for
the successful collectivization campaign in the Ukrainian countryside.

Olga Bertelsen, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harriman Institute
(Columbia University), will discuss the methods of information control
in the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1930s through the examination of two
archival documents recently discovered in the Ukrainian State Archive.
They reveal that the state launched a chain of cover-up operations to
conceal the methods of collectivization in Ukraine much earlier than
in 1932-33, at the peak of the Ukrainian famine.  The flow of
information was blocked in 1928, immediately after Stalin launched
collectivization in Ukraine. Beyond the anatomy of imperial cover-up
operations,  the documents contextualize and substantiate the debates
about two very important issues related to the famine of 1932-1933:
first, the intentionality of the state's actions in Ukraine; and
second, the "Ukrainian" interpretation of the famine, debates that
seem to be far from sterile.

This event is part of the 2013-2014 Harriman Institute Core Project,
"Empire and Information," which is being directed by Professor Austin
Long and two postdoctoral fellows, Dr. Olga Bertelsen of Nottingham
University and Dr. Ksenia Tatarchenko of Princeton University.  The
project will bring together an interdisciplinary set of scholars to
discuss the processes, institutions, and mechanisms through which
empires collect information and develop an understanding of their
subject territories and populations.