“Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933”. Series “Poland and Ukraine in 30-40’s of the XX Century. Unknown documents from special services archives”. Volume VII. Warsaw-Kyiv, 2009. (In English).
The presented volume consists of 230 documents from Ukrainian and Polish archives. 134 documents come from the archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), 58 from various state archives in Ukraine and the remaining 38 documents were obtained from Polish archives that originated in Polish diplomatic and military sources. With the exception of about a dozen of Polish documents, all of them have never been published before.
The documents from the SSU are mainly interrogation protocols, classified information obtained by various means by the Soviet security agencies, as well as political and operational directives. The most interested Soviet documents are those with information pertaining to the Holodomor that were possessed by Western diplomats and obtained by the Soviet operatives, which were installed in the consulates of Germany, Italy, Turkey and Japan in Ukraine. There are also documents, which describe disinformation operations about the Ukrainian Holodomor that were organized by the Soviets during visits of the Westerners.
Judging from the published documents, Western diplomats were informed about the famine in Ukraine very well. For instance, the Italian diplomats pointed out collectivization as a reason of the food supply crisis that will eventually lead to a famine; the Turkish diplomatic sources were amused that the Soviet government is exporting grain abroad instead of feeding their own people; and the German consul general in Odesa prepared a maliciously detailed report on state grain acquisitions and the consequences of those activities. A Polish diplomat reported to his country that the famine in the Soviet Union is not spread across the geographical regions, but is rather determined by the administrative boundaries between the republics. In the other document there is information that the famine in right-bank Ukraine (west of the Dnipro river) was not contained to 1932-1933, but was still widespread in April of 1934.
A few documents published in the book deal with German and Polish minorities in Ukraine during the Holodomor.
Number of documents pertain to the reaction of Ukrainians in Poland on information of the Holodomor in Ukraine, and the attempts of the Polish police to prevent massive demonstration against it.
Lastly, other documents describe the preventive measures taken by the Soviets against the survivors of the Holodomor to contain the truth about what occurred.
