John Vsetecka

Mihaychuk Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

September 2023 - May 2024
Supported by HURI with the Jaroslaw and Nadia Mihaychuk Fellowship Fund

 

HURI Research Project

In the Wake of Hunger: Confronting the Legacies of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine during the 1930s

This manuscript project focuses on the early aftermath of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, now commonly known as the Holodomor. The orchestrated famine, which killed millions of people in just a short period of time, left in its wake a number of issues and problems that continued to affect those who survived. Although large-scale hunger began to subside by the fall of 1933, the effects and implications unleashed by the famine’s occurrence did not simply go away. Despite the deliberate silencing of the famine at the time, Ukrainians actively grappled with the tangible and intangible legacies of the famine throughout the remaining years of the 1930s while attempting to understand what it meant to live through such an atrocity. It was during these pivotal years that survivors first started to reckon with the emotional, physical, and traumatic tolls of the famine on their lives in varied ways. This project examines some of the problems left behind by the famine, as well as the multi-faceted responses to them, to show how the famine continued to remain of central preoccupation in both local and international contexts beyond its formal conclusion. Some of the famine’s resonating effects include mass death and survivors’ confrontations with the dead, the onset of grief and trauma, international humanitarian aid efforts and the fear of future famine that motivated such work, and poetry written about the famine that represented Ukrainian efforts to address the past on their terms and articulate what it was like to bear witness to mass starvation. As a whole, this manuscript project offers new perspectives about the ways that Ukrainians began to confront the legacies of the Holodomor and respond to this difficult past.

Biography

Dr. John Vsetecka one of two inaugural Mihaychuk Postdoctoral Fellows at HURI. He is a historian of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, with a particular interest in twentieth-century Ukraine. In June 2023, John defended his doctoral dissertation at Michigan State University. While there, he also earned a graduate certificate in digital humanities for his work on numerous projects related to his research. John is the founder and current co-editor of H-Ukraine (part of the larger H-Net Platform), which promotes and shares academic and scholarly content related to the study of Ukraine. During the 2021-2022 academic year, John was on a Fulbright grant in Kyiv before having to leave due to Russia’s full-scale invasion. Following the invasion, John spent time in Poland doing humanitarian work and assisting Ukrainian refugees as part of the humanitarian group forPeace. Additionally, John serves as a host for the New Books Network podcast in Ukrainian Studies. You can find his scholarship and public-facing writing in numerous journals, books, and online media platforms.