«Міліони українців вислані, перестріляні, загинуло голодовою смертю!»: маніпулятивне визнання факту Голодомору радянською спецслужбою в 1934 році

The article shows how in the first half of 1934 the Soviet secret service manipulatively publicly recognised the fact of the Holodomor in Ukraine and its catastrophic consequences. It is proved that this task was carried out by the secret agent of the USSR ODPU Vasyl Khomyak (1897 – after 1954), a Galician, a former soldier of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the Naddniprians Sich Riflemen, who had been secretly collaborating with the Chekists since 1921. He published in the OUN journal «Rozbudova natsii» a Moscow-fabricated version of the causes and course of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine.The author establishes that the critical assessments of the Bolshevik regime and the confirmation of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine contained in the article were intended to establish the reputation of Vasyl Khom'yak as a sincere supporter of the Ukrainian independence and anti-communist movement. The paper argues that the publication of this article was one of the elements of a large-scale operation aimed at infiltrating a representative of the Soviet secret service under the guise of an active participant in the Ukrainian anti-communist movement into the inner circle of the OUN leadership. Although the published article contained a recognition of the Holodomor, it also manipulatively offered such explanations of the causes of the famine and the course of events of 1932–1933 in Ukraine that removed a significant part of the responsibility for the crime from the Kremlin, and thus, according to the Chekists, misled the public opinion of Western countries, creating a ‘false trail’ that was supposed to mislead the assessment of the 1932–1933 famine. The article confirmed that the explanations of the causes of the Holodomor used in the article were subsequently repeated in many official and propaganda Soviet publications of the 1930s–1980s

Ukraine, Holodomor, ODPU, OUN, propaganda, Holodomor denial.