Fascinating memoir and exploration of a little-known period of recent history
"Collective Memories of a Lost Paradise: Jewish Agricultural Settlements in Ukraine During the 1920s and 1930s"
HANOVER, N.H., March 21, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- An oral history comprised of interviews with members of Ukrainian collective farms that were organized after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Belenky explores a little-known corner of history, traveling to Ukraine to record the memories of elderly men and women. They were the children of the kolkhoz movement—a push toward collective farms first fueled by revolutionary fervor and later "encouraged" by the Soviet state, until they were disbanded in the early 1990s. The interviewees tell stories of peaceful lives on farms, and friendships that cut across ethnic and religious boundaries, which were shattered in 1941 when the Nazis swept into Ukraine during World War II. These Ukrainian Jews are among the relative few who lived through the war; often, they returned to their old villages and farms to find that all their neighbors had been murdered. The author has a personal stake in this story, as his father worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a philanthropic organization that sent experts to Ukraine in the 1920s to educate people on farming techniques, animal husbandry and equipment maintenance. Belenky's book is split into sections featuring his journal, in which he muses on his family history and his oral-history project, and the histories themselves, which are grouped by topic. The reader experiences life on the kolkhoz through the interviewees' recollections from childhood to the horrors of war to piecing their lives together in the aftermath. Although more historical context, photographic documentation and maps of the interviewees' journeys would have made the book even more compelling, Belenky has here delivered a truly engaging work.
A remarkable oral history of the kolkhoz people of wartime Ukraine.
Media Contact: Robert Belenky Maddoggerel Publications, 603 678-4155, maddoggerel@icloud.com
News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com
SOURCE Maddoggerel Publications
Number of Visits: 5652
The latest
- Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor – 33
- Memoirs of Majid Yousefzadeh
- Oral History News/April–May 2026
- Expert Panel Session on Oral History of the Country – (Part 1)
- 100 Questions/ 32
- Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor – 32
- Ta An Setareh (Up to that Star) (Part One)
- Memoirs of Mohammad Kazem Taqavi
Most visited
- Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor – 31
- 100 Questions/ 31
- Ta An Setareh (Up to that Star) (Part One)
- Theory Two: The Borderline Legitimacy Crisis of Oral History in the Academic System
- Memoirs of Mohammad Kazem Taqavi
- 100 Questions/ 32
- Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor – 32
- Expert Panel Session on Oral History of the Country – (Part 1)
From Revolutionary Circles to the Military Arm of the Islamic Government
In those days, it became clear that certain institutions had to be established very quickly—institutions suited to the temperament, expectations, and lingering aspirations of the younger generation; young people who had been politically active before the Revolution and, in some cases, had been directly entangled in arrests, imprisonment, ...Authenticating Oral History: From Possibility to Necessity
The use of oral history as one of the historical sources has long been one of the principal challenges facing oral historians and those who employ it in contemporary historiography. The development of international standards for oral history, as well as IRIB standards, was intended to address the criticisms raised in this regard. The relationship between Diplomatics in written records and oral history is reciprocal.100 Questions/27
What is the place of research ethics in compiling oral history?We asked several researchers and activists in the field of oral history to express their views on oral history questions. The names of each participant are listed at the beginning of their answers, and the text of all answers will be published on this portal by the end of the week.
Photo Album from The Doctor of fly
The Doctor of fly, authored by Fatemeh Dehghan Niri, presents the memoirs of Dr. Mohammad-Taqi Khorsandi Ashtiani, Professor Emeritus and a subspecialist in Otolaryngology at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Compiled within the framework of oral history, the work recounts different stages of his life—from childhood and years of ...
