21 August 2006

Holodomor Archives Open and Online

Incredibly, the following was released on August 18th:

Ukraine`s national intelligence agency the SBU on Friday opened up formerly-secret state archives on brutal Soviet era-famines causing the deaths of millions, according to Deutsche Press Agence (DPA).

SBU historians after four years of reviewing old KGB records made public more than 3,000 pages of 130 official state documents.

It was the first time any former Soviet republic had released to the public archival information concerning the mass starvations, said Vasyl Danielenko, an SBU spokesman.

The entire formerly-classified archive of the former Soviet republic Ukraine was now available for viewing in paper or digital format, or at the Internet web site www.ssu.gov.ua, he said.

The Soviet government in its early years of existence presided over three deadly and wide-reaching famines - in 1921-22, 1932-33, and 1946-47.

Between six and ten million Ukrainians died of starvation in 1932-33, after Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the forced confiscation of food from the Ukrainian countryside.


The first page of the archive is here. The scans are .JPG and each one has a zoomed in version.

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