In front of you there are 6 showcases that tell about the tragic events of the first genocide in the Ukrainian lands – the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933, which took away lives at least 4 million people of Ukraine.

This part of the exposition begins with the words of the author of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. This passage is a clear indication that Lemkin considered the Holodomor to be a typical genocide. Then one can see the exposition showcase "Ukraine on the eve of Stalin's" revolution from above "(showcase 1.29).

In the second half of the XIX – the first decade of the XX century 43% of the world barley crop was harvested in Ukrainian lands, 20% wheat was 10% corn. In 1910-1911, Ukrainian provinces produced 19.6 million tons of grain a year. Almost a quarter of the crop was exported.

The photo shows the typical images of that time – wealthy Ukrainian peasants who farm on their own land. The exhibits characterize the traditional way of life of the Ukrainian village of the early 20th century.

The situation in the Ukrainian village has changed dramatically since the First World War and civil war. The devastation, the reduction of acreage, the significant loss of human resources and, the policy of military communism, implemented by the Bolsheviks, catastrophic decline in production and export of Ukrainian grain.

These facts, as well as the catastrophic drought, were the causes and famine of 1921-1923. At this time, the state formally acknowledged the famine and responded to the situation in a particular way, including trying to help the peasants, involving both internal and external sources to overcome food difficulties. In the showcase you can see charity stamps, the proceeds of which supposed to go to the needs of the victims of famine. Well-known examples of international assistance to Ukrainian starving people in the South have been Agro-Joint's work. Already in 1923, in the magazine "Red Pepper", a copy of which you can see in the showcase in front of you, it was pathetically proclaimed that "Soviet Russia has overcome the famine and now must help the German workers".

In the next section “Collectivization. Resistance” it is analyzed one of the key causes of the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933 – the resistance of the Ukrainian peasantry to collectivization. Officially, the campaign of collectivization began in the USSR in 1928 and aimed to unite the individual peasant farms into collective – farms (Kolkhoz). Many sources have been preserved on the facts of resistance to collectivization in the Ukrainian regions. The map clearly shows that the largest number of them belongs to the territory of Ukraine.

From the very beginning, the collectivization campaign met the hidden and open resistance of the Ukrainians. The peasants refused to join the collective farms, sabotaging the orders of the authorities. Attacks on Soviet activists have increased. This is evidenced by the statistics of the Soviet special services. Thus, according to the secret-political department of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), in 1930 the most mass protests, facts of the spread of anti-Soviet leaflets, terror was in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. And in the spring of 1930, the largest armed uprising of peasants since the Civil War – Pavlograd Uprising. Residents of several settlements located in the territory of the Pavlograd district of Dnipropetrovsk region, with arms in their hands, rose up against the Soviet authorities.

In Showcase 1.31. copies of litigation materials in Pavlograd region are presented.

In showcase 1.32, the same region (including the villages of Verbki and Vyazivok) appears in the copy of the so-called Black Board, which is a list of collective farms and villages that allegedly “viciously sabotaged the grain procurement plan” and were subjected to the most severe repression by the state authorities - complete confiscation of all products stocks. To get on such a "Black board" meant the actual doom for death, because armed officers searched not only the collective farm pantries, but also the houses, taking away from the peasants all food supplies.

Thus, the causes of the Holodomor were high grain procurement plans, forced policies with the use of repression, grain harvesting, confiscation of food supplies by the authorities, and export of food outside Ukraine.

The organizers and implementers of the criminal plan to subdue the Ukrainian village were Soviet and party figures - representatives of different national groups, Russian Vyacheslav Molotov (Skryabin), Pole – Stanislav Kosior, Jew – Mendel Khatayevich, Ukrainian – Vlas Chubar and others.

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